Jeremy Hardy thinks… about Lexit

This article is taken from the latest issue of Red Pepper – try our pay-as-you-feel subscription to get the print magazine

The left case for Brexit was an interesting exercise, a bit like a Marxist review of The Very Hungry Caterpillar or one of those games where you work out whether it would be better to have no arms or no legs.

A number of people put the case in their own words – a bit like when Greenpeace suggest the text of a letter to MPs and you tweak it so it looks like you’ve thought about it. Yes, imagine Corbyn trying to nationalise the railways and Brussels trying to stop him. But let’s see if we can get Corbyn into a position where he can nationalise the railways before we worry about that, shall we?

Let’s not help the hard right to indulge their fantasy about ‘elites’, especially when ‘Finance’ has always been code for Jews. Let’s look at who the winners are. UKIP are tearing into Labour’s base like never before. Racists are in fine voice, appearing not to share Farage’s professed fondness for the Commonwealth. Britain First are weighing up the merits of deportation versus genocide.

The corporations and banks are adjusting but they’ll be fine. The Tories are okay. I doubt they’ll split. They all hate each other anyway, it doesn’t stop them holding onto power. The only occasion when they’ve had to go into rehab for any length of time, they had a talented understudy in New Labour, which wowed audiences with its re-interpretation of the role. That’s why the Tories hope to replace Corbyn with Chuka; they can’t be in government without occasional breaks. But the Labour right can’t seize the party; they can only split it.

Then, I suppose we might see this much-heralded space opening for the left, but what makes you think your faction will occupy it? There are other pamphleteers out there, you know.