Stop Brexit march to Parliament. London, UK, March 2017. Ik Aldama/Press Association. All rights reserved.
All of the talk about the ‘backstop’ and a ‘frictionless border’ is about future trade between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK). The fact that both the EU and the UK are much more interested in the movement of goods than they are in the movement of people, speaks volumes. For both main parties, people are secondary to the pursuit of profit.
Left-wing supporters of Brexit are caught between the contradiction that the Brexit victory, (which they campaigned for), could not have been secured without an anti-immigrant campaign (which they oppose, in principle, if not always in practice). These Lexiteers attempt to evade the uncomfortable fact that Leave would not have won without the support of xenophobes. They do so by either attempting to downplay the significance of anti-immigrant sentiment to the Leave victory, or by claiming that they support a fantastical creation that only exists in their own imaginations, which they call “a workers’ Brexit”. Very few of these Lexiteers bother to engage with the reality of what Brexit will mean.
