Over the last thirty years organised labour and social democratic parties have managed to wrest some limited concessions from the EU on workers rights, but the EU is and always has been a project of European capital that is antagonistic to workers interests and socialism
Notwithstanding formal legal guarantees, EU economic and social policies over the last twenty years have undermined workers rights and seen an increase in inequality right across the EU: brexitblog-rosalux.eu/2019/07/25/bre…
Driven by the crisis of the last decade, the EU is putting increasing downward pressure on workers rights and living standards, and enshrining this anti-worker/anti-socialist logic in its core constitutional texts: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
For example in France, it is the drive to undermine workers rights (pushed by the European Commission and dutifully prosecuted by Macron) that has led to mass protests by working class people: ft.com/content/3e2bce…
Alongside attacks on workers rights, the EU pushes and has constitutionalised a logic of fiscal discipline, labour flexibility and privatisation, under the mantra of austerity, which has devastated Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal and more: research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/publication…
The "four freedoms" of the EU empower business at the expense of working people and democratic governments, placing fundamental limits (along with the rules on state aid, competition etc.) on the ability of governments to pursue radical social change: eui.eu/Documents/MWP/…
The constitutional architecture of the EU has been developed, since at least Maastricht, to insure that these principles and policies that favour business over working people, cannot be reformed in any meaningful way: ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/02/29/dan…
As such, the only feasible way to build a transformative, socialist government and economic system for the many, is to break with the EU: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
We did not need the Brexit vote to let us know that the Tories want to attack and undermine workers rights, they were doing it long before 2016 - but opposing the Tories and all of their designs will not be achieved by clinging to illusions about the nature of the EU
The working class in the UK needs to be to the fore in break with the EU, and breaking the back of a fragmented Tory party - we can only do that by leaving the EU, and fighting tooth and nail to transform our societies
Moves towards a second referendum, a farcical government of national unity, or any other liberal delusion will simply hand the next decade to the right in the UK.
#NeitherBorisNorBrussels
#LeaveFightTransform
#NeitherBorisNorBrussels
#LeaveFightTransform
