POLITICS, as poet Paul Valery said, “is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs that properly concern them”. Anyone wondering who the European Union serves should recall how the troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) pillaged Greece, and how it is crippling Portugal, Spain and Ireland too. The EU has evolved not into an enlightened organisation, safeguarding all citizens’ living standards, but as a brutal collection agency for reckless mega-banks. It is as kindly and reasonable as a swarm of sharks towards any vulnerable, bleeding member-state. Yet the media brush this aside to blame racism and ‘Little Englandism’ alone for the Brexit referendum result.

Forget frothy dreams of European solidarity; a sales pitch for the gullible. The European project’s ideal, always thin and mostly decorative, receded long ago. In its stead, and unmistakeably in charge, are financial and corporate magnates whose philosophy affords no room for average citizens. The widely decried ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU, despite decades of bitter complaints, was never to be remedied and, if anything, worsened. Surprise over the referendum result is what ought to be surprising.

Is Brexit the apocalypse that EU enthusiasts predict? Smug commentators chortle that many would recast their vote if they knew what an exit meant. Perhaps. On the other hand, these mostly working-class voters knew well that they were voting against an organisation whose elitist priorities relentlessly inflict harm on their lives and livelihoods. Pro-EU forces rankle at the reality of a citizenry exercising their right to reject the plans technocrats devised for them. Bear in mind that the EU has a habit of sending voters to poll again and again until they deliver the answer it wants. So don’t imagine there aren’t backroom schemes under way.

Ultimately, EU’s economic policies caused Brexit.

The case for Brexit was muddied by prominent right-wingers scapegoating immigrants — a common tactic, which the media latched on to — fanning deeper reasons for Euro-scepticism. Yet ‘freedom of movement’ is indeed tied to employer interests. If every immigrant were handed a compulsory trade union membership card upon arrival, businesses would lobby hysterically for strict immigration controls and likely get them.

In a sagging economy, immigration is a handy means for increasing demand for goods without employers having to boost worker pay. By contrast, a high-growth economy with rising wages has, previously, provided a tolerant enough environment for migrants. Since the 2008 crash, however, austerity-addled EU leaders have steered a costly low-growth course with no end in sight.

The Tories, who imposed 20-25 per cent cuts in public spending, need no prodding to enact cruel policies. But every EU state, except Sweden, regardless of political leanings, is compelled by EU directives to cut spending to meet the 3pc deficit spending limit and the 60pc national debt to GDP limit. The rule bans Keynesian remedies — except when it comes to injecting hundreds of billions into ailing big banks. The public has to pay for deficits created by this magnanimous exception to the anti-Keynesian creed. The result of eight years of austerity is a rising eurozone debt level, stagnant growth, double-digit unemployment and a combined GDP below levels in 2008.

Pitifully, some sufferers of these policies could only grasp this through the distorting lenses of race and nationality. Few, if any, Western newspapers cared to address the refugee crisis as human ‘blowback’, from the unnecessary wars that Nato and the US waged throughout the developing world so as to stoke the military-industrial complex and generate enemies to justify its spending.

Austerity is a pe­r­fect pretext for redistributing we­a­lth from the bottom to the top, so no one at the top is complaining. While the xenophobia has un­doub­te­dly been ugly, there is another ugliness at play, exemplified by the indignation of those who decry ‘leave’ proponents as nothing but ignorant racists. This chorus of erudite squeals arises principally from the professional classes, the top fifth or so; Oxbridge-educated, who can afford a London property or two, and blithely dispatch offspring overseas to snap up jobs they do not anticipate getting at home.

They are oblivious to, or unconcerned about, the mounting evidence that the EU is failing the working-class majority. These folks don’t look quite so virtuous when one considers the privileged statuses they enjoy and hang on to — at anybody else’s cost — but, oh yes, they are sophisticated.

Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic former Greek finance minister, may be right; that although the EU is a ‘monster’, it is one that can and must be tamed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t the ghost of a chance of that happening without a shock like Brexit. For nothing less would do to force remaining members to examine and reorder the EU in order to answer its people’s needs instead of those who want to fleece them.

The writers are the authors of Parables of Permanent War and No Clean Hands.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2016