This is an updated version of a blog I
submitted to the Huffington Post a week ago. If they publish the original blog
now, it will already be out of date, the disastrous Article 50 vote having
taken place, and with the events that have occurred demonstrating beyond doubt
the accelerating danger posed by Trump.
If there is any reason at all to put an
immediate halt to Brexit, it is President Trump’s first week in office,
culminating in Prime Minister Theresa May’s desperate visit to be the first
leader to swear fealty – and then her inexcusable refusal to condemn the
so-called Muslim Ban.
May scrambled in Farage’s fetid footsteps,
obviously keen not to lose any of the momentum or populist support she has
gained since adopting most of UKIP’s far right policies.
Only hours before, Trump became the only
President in living memory to publicly endorse the use of torture. And hours
later, on Holocaust Memorial Day of all days, he signed the Refugee Ban and
initiated a policy now being referred to as the Muslim Ban. Citing 9/11 three times, he banned visa
applications and re-entry from a number of middle-eastern countries – though
markedly ignoring the countries where the 9/11 bombers actually originated.
But then of course, Trump has substantial
business interests in those countries.
Refugees in transit that landed after the
edict and US citizens returning from holidays or business trips abroad were
detained at their point of entry and denied access to legal representation.
Foreign students and US citizens were warned by their universities and
employers not to leave the country in case they are not allowed to return.
These actions, breaking treaties and
showing no respect for international law, mean that the United States already
meets the definition of ‘rogue state’.
But in addition to these acts of inhumanity
and xenophobia, Trump is acting entirely irrationally. His first actions were
to sanction the parks service for posting photos that showed the actual size of
his inauguration crowd. His press officer was made told to go in front of the
press and deliver demonstrable lies – something that was later referred to by
one Trump’s staff to be ‘alternative facts’. After being challenged on his
repeated lie that millions of illegal votes were cast in the election – this
being the reason why he lost the popular vote – Trump announced that he would
initiate a federal investigation. And being told in no uncertain terms that his
Mexican wall would not be paid for by Mexico, and the Mexican president
cancelled his state visit, Trump immediately announced a 20% tariff on all
Mexican imports.
May has finally admitted that UK would have
no chance of remaining in the EU single market and that we would also be
withdrawing from the customs union. Both of these actions will result in the UK
losing tens of thousands of jobs, rising prices - inevitably pushing more
people into poverty. The loss in income tax revenue from the banking jobs already
announced will be far more than the oft-quoted £350m a week.
The government consistently has said that
it will not reveal what its post-brexit plans are, as it wants to keep its
cards close to its chest. But we have nothing left to offer – our hand is
already face up on the table.
In this context, May went cap in hand to
Trump, refusing to rule out that the NHS would now be up for grabs – this to a
US administration hell-bent on removing affordable healthcare from millions of
its own citizens simply in order to optimize profits for the private medical
and insurance corporations that supported Trump’s election. And before slicing up the NHS for sale, it
means that even our long-taken-for-granted food and industrial safety standards
may be threatened. Our self-imposed
isolation from Europe pushes the UK into depending on whatever crumbs the
protectionist Trump regime chooses to throw in our direction.
May went from Trump to Erdogan in Turkey,
to sell weapons to a regime that will probably use them on its own Kurdish
population. Whilst there, she shockingly refused three times to condemn Trump’s
actions, despite the effect it was already having on UK citizens and
residents. Days later, she went to an EU
leader summit in Malta to ‘act as a bridge’ between Trump and the EU, boasting
that she had won his guarantee to meet his treaty obligations to NATO. They
dismissed her, the Lithuanian prime minister saying that they didn’t need May
to be a bridge when they had Twitter.
Instead of throwing ourselves at the feet
of the Great Dictator, we should be distancing ourselves, uniting as closely as
possible with the rest of Europe in the face of this very real threat. We
should be looking at the possibility of diplomatic sanctions, not deals. This
is important not just for our national security and the benefit of the poorest
of our citizens, but to prevent the normalization of the racism and
discrimination that Trump’s policies will inevitably bring with it, not only to
the US but to our society as well.
This visit has already done great damage to
our standing internationally. The Murdoch press and our state broadcaster, the
BBC, might try to romanticize the ‘special relationship’, but the reaction in
the foreign press is not being reported domestically. Even the US press has
made disparaging comments about the UK and the PM in the wake of the visit.
So rather than Corbyn setting a
three-line-whip for Brexit (with no sense of the irony involved, him being a
notorious rebel against such measures in the past), he should have listened to his
MPs and what is fast becoming a majority of the people who actually voted in the
referendum in the first place. The people who will suffer most because of
Brexit, the normalization of Trump and increased economic dependence on the US
are the minorities, the poorest and most vulnerable in our society – the very
people that Corbyn claims to represent.
One of the big slogans of the brexit
campaign was ‘take back control’ - though this week they somewhat
hypocritically protested the high court re-affirming the primacy of parliament.
Did the brexiters campaign to simply hand executive control to an unelected PM
fully beholden to Donald Trump – where we have no say, no control, no rights
and no protections?
If there was any time that we needed the
support and status imparted by our membership of the EU, it is right now.
