Guardian calms down a bit

As predicted a couple of blogs ago, the issue of the possible savings from Brexit has reappeared in a nasty form for Remainers. The PM has claimed that the savings on EU annual payments will after all help to finance a growth in spending on the NHS. This is a terrible heresy and betrayal for guardinaistas everywhere, of course, because the claim has been seen as a straightforward  major lie, somehow crucial in persuading the gullible majority to vote for Brexit. Well, that and racism. The claim is further contaminated by being cited by B Johnson on the side of a bus, although there, I continue to insist, it is offered as something that only 'could' happen. In my view, a Tory Government was unlikely to actually spend the money as if ring-fenced, for the NHS, but I was never particularly offended by this, one of a constant stream of politicians' glosses we all take with a pinch of salt.

For the Graum editorial, it is still an easy matter -- the PM has lied (although the lie apparently mostly concerns implying Brexit savings are the major impulse for increased NHS spending). Lower down,some actual speech is recorded, which waters it down a bit:

the essential deception nevertheless endured. “Some of the extra funding” will come from money that now goes to the EU, she said at London’s Royal Free Hospital, “but the commitment I am making goes beyond that Brexit dividend.” That is true with bells on, since the NHS pledge dwarves any future savings on the UK’s Brexit payments.

 A lie becomes 'truth with bells on' in the wacky world of Guardinaland. A widely-cited tweet (sic) by the Head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies is also cited:

Extra spending can't be funded by Brexit dividend. 1) Govt has accepted Brexit will *weaken* public finances by £15bn pa 2) Financial settlement with EU plus commitments to replace EU funding already uses up all of our EU contributions in 2022 There is no Brexit dividend

This is also adding a few 'bells', of course. We don't know how long the weakening will last, and the financial settlement with the EU is a one-off.

Guardina writers are being  a little less hysterical, though. M D'Ancona bleats about the 'emotionally cunning' wording on the bus as ever (nasty proles who voted for Brexit are easily fooled by this). He notes May's strategic use of the new spending to get Brexiteer MPs on board, but then rightly calls for a serious debate on financing the NHS. Unfortunately the rational tone does not last to the end, where he revisits the basic Remainer hysteria by referring to 'the big red bus of magical thinking, hurtling toward the unknown'. . I tire of repeating that remaining in the EU would also bring an unknown, and probably npt entirely golden, future of course.

The Blessed P Toynbee spits ritually at B Johnson's 'bogus Brexit bus' but then launches a useful and critical discussion of NHS funding. She may be nearly back to normal, thank goodness!

However, the downright silly Z Williams makes much of a new petititon by Momentum trying to square the circle of a left-wing agenda with Remaining in  the EU. Williams pursues the argument -- both hard and soft Brexits are inadequate. The Tory version is 'thinly veiled racism vying with colonialist fantasy to see which can insist more trenchantly that the complicated is simple, a deficit is a dividend, black is white.' Even Labour's position 'serves the interests of capital while casually letting go of the European Union institutions that protected the individual – the only thing the EU has going for it'.

Honestly, where do you start with this luvvie stream of consciousness stuff? The ONLY advantage of membership of the EU is that it protects THE individual?  Think of the fascist individual mentioned elsewhere and you immediately get problems with the kind of abstract non-discrimination policies the EU pursues, so well criticised by the founders of the Full Brexit  (see earlier posts).  What about the other things mentioned a few inches above in the same column? 'workers’ rights...the environment ... solidarity with the European left ... the defence and enhancement of public services [and ] ' the fact we need the closest possible left-European alliance to defeat the fascism that is plainly on the rise.' None of these conflict with EU policies 'in the interests of capital'?  The Williams vision lurks in the background -- capitalists just go away with racists and fascists while individuals enjoy cheap strawberries in the summer -- or raspberries if they wish: it is the Guardinaists' Fifth Freedom to choose your soft fruit.

Meanwhile, what should a Momentum supporter do? 'Plenty of us would be savagely critical of the EU, but with the aim of reforming it, not abandoning it'. The 'left-European alliance' will solve our problems, where the well-organized, theoretically sophisticated and popular Communist Parties in France and Italy failed (I voted to join the EEC as it was in 1975 when those organizations looked as if they really would reform the system). While waiting for the alliance to form up somehwere,we can soothe our consciences with dishes of strawberries while we listen to Grime, and while the au pair bathes the children?