If one thing has become clear among all the mess and murk over Brexit in recent weeks, and even years, it is this: Remainers are obsessed with money...
Leavers are the true cosmopolitans
Elite Remainers see immigrants as little more than economic units.
Patrick West
21st December 2018
Spiked
If one thing has become clear among all the mess and murk over Brexit in recent weeks, and even years, it is this: Remainers are obsessed with money. Every time the spectre of Brexit coming to realisation looms, we are issued with calamitous warnings about what economic damage it will do to the economy. This was Remainers’ principal and sole line of argument back in 2016, and it remains the same today.
You can excuse this line of argument from big business. They rely on the imported cheap labour from mainland Europe to keep their industries going. This is why business leaders and factory owners are forever popping up on Radio 4 to declare dramatically that they are are already moving their companies to the continent. It is also why publications such as the Financial Times and The Economist have been so dogmatically pro-Remain. The business sector doesn’t care about principles such as democracy and sovereignty. I don’t suppose many businesspeople know their history or have a regard for culture and language. I don’t suppose they understand that multiethnic and multilingual empires either collapse – often in acrimony – or become dictatorships. And why should they? Their No1 priority is profit.
One would have ostensibly expected better from those on the liberal left, who dress up their affection for the EU in the language of internationalism, breaking down borders and generally spreading tolerance and understanding. It is from this moral high ground that they consequently feel at liberty to issue condemnations against Brexiteers, damning and demeaning them as insular, thick racists.
Don’t believe the deceitful, kindly rhetoric of the Remainer left. If they really cared about the world’s dispossessed, they would have long drawn attention, in the harshest of words, to the EU’s immigration policy, which, among other things, has made it difficult for citizens of the Commonwealth to come and live in this country. You know the ones. The Windrush generation and those who followed them: their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who came to be embodied in the England football team at this year’s World Cup.
When it comes to it, the Remainer left is foremost concerned with money these days and how Brexit will affect them. These people not only worry about the fate of the workforce in Britain, but also fret about the future of their foreign nannies, au pairs, plumbers and nurses who will look after them in their future dotage. Will they be deported? Gasp! What will happen to London house prices if there’s an exodus, they agonise. (Poor people will be able to afford to have somewhere to live, that’s what.) We have even got to the extraordinary stage that the metropolitan left now openly frets that a Brexodus might result in a rise in wages, a prospect that could be ‘bad for [big] business’.
This is why scare stories in the Guardian have for two years now centred to a lesser degree on the human-rights concerns of foreigners in Britain, and increasingly on what the City and stock markets abroad are saying.
The irony of all this is that, not for the first time, the ‘caring’ left is showing itself to be self-interested and greedy. While many British Brexiteers live among first- and second-wave 21st-century EU immigrants, many Remainers live apart and above from these immigrants – they are the home helpers and factory workers under their control. In Leaver east Kent, where I live, you will hear local accents and Eastern European accents mingle at queues at Iceland and Lidl supermarkets; at Waitrose or Marks and Spencer’s you never hear immigrants.
It was no coincidence that after the Brexit result, polls showed that positive feelings towards immigrants actually increased. This is because there are many Brexiteers who see immigrants as human beings, literally on an everyday basis. Meanwhile, there are money-obsessed Remainers who see immigrants as little more than economic units in a capitalist system.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/12/21/leavers-are-the-true-cosmopolitans/
Leavers are the true cosmopolitans
Elite Remainers see immigrants as little more than economic units.
Patrick West
21st December 2018
Spiked
If one thing has become clear among all the mess and murk over Brexit in recent weeks, and even years, it is this: Remainers are obsessed with money. Every time the spectre of Brexit coming to realisation looms, we are issued with calamitous warnings about what economic damage it will do to the economy. This was Remainers’ principal and sole line of argument back in 2016, and it remains the same today.
You can excuse this line of argument from big business. They rely on the imported cheap labour from mainland Europe to keep their industries going. This is why business leaders and factory owners are forever popping up on Radio 4 to declare dramatically that they are are already moving their companies to the continent. It is also why publications such as the Financial Times and The Economist have been so dogmatically pro-Remain. The business sector doesn’t care about principles such as democracy and sovereignty. I don’t suppose many businesspeople know their history or have a regard for culture and language. I don’t suppose they understand that multiethnic and multilingual empires either collapse – often in acrimony – or become dictatorships. And why should they? Their No1 priority is profit.
One would have ostensibly expected better from those on the liberal left, who dress up their affection for the EU in the language of internationalism, breaking down borders and generally spreading tolerance and understanding. It is from this moral high ground that they consequently feel at liberty to issue condemnations against Brexiteers, damning and demeaning them as insular, thick racists.
Don’t believe the deceitful, kindly rhetoric of the Remainer left. If they really cared about the world’s dispossessed, they would have long drawn attention, in the harshest of words, to the EU’s immigration policy, which, among other things, has made it difficult for citizens of the Commonwealth to come and live in this country. You know the ones. The Windrush generation and those who followed them: their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who came to be embodied in the England football team at this year’s World Cup.
When it comes to it, the Remainer left is foremost concerned with money these days and how Brexit will affect them. These people not only worry about the fate of the workforce in Britain, but also fret about the future of their foreign nannies, au pairs, plumbers and nurses who will look after them in their future dotage. Will they be deported? Gasp! What will happen to London house prices if there’s an exodus, they agonise. (Poor people will be able to afford to have somewhere to live, that’s what.) We have even got to the extraordinary stage that the metropolitan left now openly frets that a Brexodus might result in a rise in wages, a prospect that could be ‘bad for [big] business’.
This is why scare stories in the Guardian have for two years now centred to a lesser degree on the human-rights concerns of foreigners in Britain, and increasingly on what the City and stock markets abroad are saying.
The irony of all this is that, not for the first time, the ‘caring’ left is showing itself to be self-interested and greedy. While many British Brexiteers live among first- and second-wave 21st-century EU immigrants, many Remainers live apart and above from these immigrants – they are the home helpers and factory workers under their control. In Leaver east Kent, where I live, you will hear local accents and Eastern European accents mingle at queues at Iceland and Lidl supermarkets; at Waitrose or Marks and Spencer’s you never hear immigrants.
It was no coincidence that after the Brexit result, polls showed that positive feelings towards immigrants actually increased. This is because there are many Brexiteers who see immigrants as human beings, literally on an everyday basis. Meanwhile, there are money-obsessed Remainers who see immigrants as little more than economic units in a capitalist system.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/12/21/leavers-are-the-true-cosmopolitans/