it's some serious mental gymnastics to argue that opposing a free trade deal, and not supporting a single market, is in some way a betrayal of socialist values.

the british didn't lose their liberal party, it just fell into disuse. but, this is a good reason to bring it back. and, that is what i would say to the remainers: if you're so in love with neo-liberalism, why don't you marry it? why don't you join the liberal party?

i understand that the party wants to win elections. but, they really ought to take a stand on this, and go tell these liberals to be liberals, and stop the doublespeak around the situation. there's not a socialist on the planet that supports the euro. i mean a lot of us don't even support the concept of currency.

that said, there are aspects of the eurozone that most socialists would support, and that activists should be pushing labour to try and maintain some kind of continuity on. free mobility, for example, is certainly a socialist aim. i understand that the push back was largely about open immigration, and what the british people really said was that barely half of the people that voted wanted to restore some sovereignty around immigration. so, there's a large minority of voters that want less immigration. but, as a long-time opponent of nafta, i actually think that one of the major problems of nafta - that it created a lot of economic migrants - would be best solved with the kind of mobility rights that exist in the european union. i mean, that would be one of my major fixes for nafta: it should have eu-style free mobility. i've made that argument forcefully, for years. not decades, but maybe a decade. such free mobility would actually make it easier for workers to be tracked as they cross borders and harder for unscrupulous employers - which are the actual problem - to evade labour laws. what the british people are going to see, in the event of stricter limits on immigration, is a situation more comparable to the southern parts of the united states, where illegal migrants work without legal protections and under the table. employers will benefit. but this is going to actually exacerbate the economic problems that created the backlash vote in the first place. labour ought to be trying to win this argument, but, instead, they're not making it.

socialists, however, are not concerned about things like religious freedom, as we seek to abolish religion, and multiculturalism, as we seek to abolish nationalism. this is all boiler-plate liberal bullshit. so, these people should be told where they ought to go with it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.