Fear is, they say, wisdom in the face of danger. And in the final push countdown to the EU referendum, the British left should have good cause to be afraid. Poll after poll is now putting Leave in front, with a lead of up to ten points. Ukip’s political programme – until recently a pipe dream – is on the brink of becoming a reality, leaving the right wing of the Tory Party with the keys to Downing Street, unencumbered by pesky “red tape” (read: workers’ rights and environmental legislation) and with an explicit mandate to radically curtail immigration.
...
But for the left, the dangers of Brexit go deeper than the moral and human cost for workers and migrants. It is the right, not the left, that benefits from periods of economic chaos and social breakdown. Material defeats, and attacks on rights at work and on human rights, undermine the ability and the willingness of ordinary people to fight back against austerity. Add to that the spectre of rising nationalism and a popular mandate for smalltime racism, and the wrong outcome in this referendum could trigger the biggest rightward shift in British politics since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
...
The plan is to make immigrants, and by extension the EU, the scapegoat for falling living standards, and if left unchecked this plan will win. The only argument that can counter this momentum – and one which has the benefit of being true – is that housing shortages, falling real terms wages and a decline in public services are the fault of corporate greed and failed government policy. Only the left can wage the kind of ideological counterattack that we need in the final days of the campaign.
