Today’s shock win for the Leave campaign in the UK will send a wave of turbulence through world markets and add uncertainty to the already fragile global economic outlook. And there are two noteworthy political consequences for Australia.
The immediate outcome of the vote will be UK Prime Minister David Cameron resigning (with his actual departure to be some days or weeks hence). Most likely he will be replaced with the Leave campaign leader Boris Johnson. Crikey’s Guy Rundle has covered off the politics of the vote, and correctly notes that Scottish nationalists will now pursue another referendum; Sinn Fein is also talking about a referendum in North Ireland, which voted 56-44 to stay. At some point in the coming weeks, the British government will commence the formal process of negotiating its withdrawal with the EU. The problem for Britain is that the EU can adopt an all-care-and-no-responsibility approach to negotiations, because the UK automatically gets kicked out of the EU two years after commencing the exit process. There will be no pressure on the EU to agree to anything the UK wants — it can simply run down the clock to late 2018.
The economic consequences are already being felt — the pound has plunged nearly 9% against major currencies in just a few hours and equities markets have been hit hard (the ASX, for instance, is down nearly 4% today, making a mockery of Treasurer Scott Morrison’s statement that the implications would be “minimal” for Australia). There’ll be a recovery once the shock wears off, but it will take a long time for the real economic implications for the UK, the world’s fifth largest economy, to become clear — there have been repeated warnings from economists and key economic institutions that Brexit could lead to a UK recession. That means more uncertainty for the global economy, for which growth forecasts have already been repeatedly ratcheted down this year. That will, inevitably, flow through to Australia’s export markets, which are helping to maintain growth here as we transition from the mining investment boom. Whoever forms government after July 2 will have to add all that to their economic management plate.
There’s another, more subtle consequence for Australia. In the local election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull is under increasing pressure over his decision to stick with the Abbott government’s delaying tactic on same-sex marriage of holding a plebiscite after the election. Today, Turnbull admitted that no one in the government would be bound by the plebiscite result, meaning the entire $160 million process — which will likely bring homophobic abuse of same-sex couples legitimated in public discourse — will be a waste of time, and no better than an opinion poll that MPs can choose to ignore entirely. Like the moderate, centrist David Cameron holding a Brexit referendum, moderate, centrist Turnbull is holding the same-sex marriage plebiscite as a sop to the far right of his party. The UK campaign has meant an MP murdered by a Brexit supporter and shameless — and apparently successful — xenophobia and fearmongering from Leave campaigners. It demonstrated how events can spin wildly out of the control of those who set them in motion. Cameron will now pay for that with his job. What will happen to his Australian counterpart?
I don’t believe mr ‘me too’ Turnbull is a moderate centrist, he is a ruthless ex banker, which was pretty crooked in their dealings in USA in helping cause the GFC.
MT former ran a merchant bank. I wonder if he would be called before a royal commission into banking. Perhaps he might have to repay his bonuses.
“…shameless — and apparently successful — xenophobia and fearmongering…”
I can’t let that go by Bernard.
There was plenty of fearmongering on both sides of this campaign. And in any case, the Leave vote was quite decisive – 54% of the voting public. Most of those people are neither dupes nor xenophobes.
The commetariat and pollsters have been proven wrong, and they clearly are not happy about it.
Should read 52% of voting public. Still a clear majority though.
It could even read 52% of the around 65% of the voting public who went to the trouble of voting in this non- compulsory system.
OK. 52% of the voting public that voted (I think that was 69% in total, so 35.88% of the voting public voted leave. Given the argument for leave (which did have some worthwhile points in it’s favour, given the experiences of Greece and Ireland) was hijacked by Xenophobic groups pushing an anti-immigration agenda, and given many people were very poorly informed on what they were voting on, and given that even now, there is actually no plan in place, I’d say many of those people acted on xenophobic impulse, and even if they didn’t, given what they now have, yes- I’d call them dupes. They voted to leave an existing structure on an impulse without knowing what they were leaving or why, or what they were going into. You wouldn’t buy a house like that, you wouldn’t change jobs like that, and yet these people have consigned the future of their whole country for future generations to a foggy notion of what brexit might mean. Nothing will change for the better- Farrage has already admitted his anti-immigrant fantasies can not come to fruition, and the money promised is simply not there. The problem is, the dupes will simply blame someone else, like the Poles, the muslims, take your pick. Easier than taking responsibility for swallowing the lies handed to them by Johnson, Gove and Farrage.
It’s all about money. Money, money, money, money, money. A small and diminishing number have lots and lots and lots, and they’re getting more and more and more of it in relative terms as free market theory spirals inevitably up its own unsustainable a**ehole. A large and growing number have not so much, and they’re getting less and less and less in relative terms.
By and large, it’s the small and diminishing number of the monied who steward, shape, dominate our public debates, via that great non-existence pretend public realm the non-monied get to peer passively into, as our bit of ‘public’ democracy: Televisionland. The people who exist there are not simply politicians and press, but also celebrities, sports stars, heckling artists, useful idiot public intellectuals, lobbyists and analysts, business people, famed entrepreneurs, clever talking heads and attractive sashaying bodies of all stripes, in all fields…they’re all starting to blend into the same generic Televisionland Creature as far as I can see, so let’s just lump them all together as TV Content Providers. The vox pop extras, the Q&A audiences, the bit part walk-ons, the sufferers of passing marketable tragedies and the headline grabbing loonies…sure, we all get our fifteen minutes in the ‘public’ realm now, but we’re helplessly, temporarily conscripted into its truncating vocabulary when we do – and even if we manage to subvert that suffocating TV vocabulary briefly…it just expands and adapts to subsume our disruption in a single media cycle, negating its very point…and we won’t get a second invite.
Don’t ever go on television, exactly right – no-one does get out fully alive.
The Brexit vote, the Trumpites, the disdaining of a functioning centre for the ALA’s and UKIP’s, the Occupy movements and the Libertarian armoury-stashers, the extreme anti-vaxxers and the extreme pro-lifers, the crazy guy who shoots up the place shouting this or that slogan, the suicide bomber and the throat-cutter, the lonely single dad perched high on the Sydney Harbor Bridge at peak hour…everyone who doesn’t live in Televisionland wants essentially the same thing, even if most of us don’t quite know how to articulate it except through the prism of our own singular vocabularies: we want that minority of people with a disproportionate and growing share of the world’s money to shut up there in Televisionland; shut the f*k up with their self-justifying political, economic, social, ideological theories, their smug little -ismic explanations-after-the-latest-facts, their neat salving columns and prissy, earnest television chit-chat about everything that’s going wrong in the world (except them)…
…And just the share the f*cking money.
Share the f*cking money. Share the f*cking money just a little bit more fairly. It’s the money, money, money, money, money, stupids. Share the f*cking money.
Share the f*cking world’s wealth a little bit more fairly. All the rest is just Televisionland bullsh*t.
And this is not a ‘rant’, no matter how hard anyone in Televisionland might like to pretend that it, and its ever-more-ubiquitous non-Televisionland ilk, is. It is a simple statement of calm, decent, centrist, sane, civic self-preservation, with a few swear words tacked on. Share the money, you rich and powerful people. Share the world’s money more fairly, if you want to prevent the world from splitting into its tribal-default of (the tiny few) rich v. (the vast army of the) poor, along any one of a dozen and more opportunistic, red herring fault-lines, all of them eventually equally catastrophic for us all.
It’s not rocket science. Share. Share. Share the tribe’s food.
The only time the poor get a warm feeling from the trickle down is when the rich are pissing in their pockets.
The plebiscite has to be ditched. It’s been exposed as a vile, cynical ploy to delay equal marriage in favour of the outdated views of an arrogant minority.
After an MP was murdered as a result of the Leave campaign’s hate-mongering in the UK, we can’t continue with this project to legitimise anti-gay hatred here.
Is the LNP right wing concerned with collateral damage? Or is Power its own justification?
It’s a shame that Crikey is echoing the calls of nearly every mainstream media outlet by condemning the Brexit vote and explaining millions of people’s legitimate concerns about the EU by simply racism and fear. Surely fear of the unknown (Brexit) is stronger than fear of the status quo. Brits were brave in resisting a massive campaign from the world’s political and media elite and their democratic decision should be respected, not mocked. The EU is a massive gravy train for its top players that has helped to destroy Greece, centralise power, diminish national sovereignty and in many ways is a failed experiment. If I wanted the same analysis as everywhere else, I would not not be subscribing to Crikey, but in this case I am disappointed.
Oh dear me, RachelP…you have clearly not copped on to true role of (first rate, gutsy, striving, etc etc) alternative media sites like Crikey, their (idealistic, generous, courageous etc etc) alternative patrons like Eric Beecher, and even the (superb, acute, passionate etc etc ) analyses of the alternative writers and thinkers like Bernard, Guy Rundle and Helen Razer we find here.
It is, of course, primarily to provide a dissipating and neutralizing outlet via which angry but ‘fringe politics’-averse (Green Socialist Left, ewww…ALA ewwww) like you and me can slake our thirst for political dissent without having to do much more than sit at our keyboards and type furiously; while secondarily also playing an important part in maintaining a polite, plausible self-delusion, among the more mainstream media’s powerful and greedy avatars (who never-the-less like you and me too yearn to regard themselves well, when they tuck their children into bed at night), that theirs is an essentially benign and open stewardship of an essentially decent and free-thinking ‘democratic community’, in which we are all of us, for all our varyingflavors of analytical taste and minor political differences, skipping daintily into an egalitarian future of fairy floss and unicorn farts.
It’s just a show. It’s just a computer game. It’s panto.
Verily here on it will we – you and I and all the other Teh Interwebsy-thingsy-agiley-innovativey-placey-wacey comment box inmates, in our strait-jackets of madly oscillating zeros and ones – thunder and rage against the tax cut the victorious panto merchant banker will shortly grant to the same panto rentier-profiteers who, we all know, have no intention whatsoever of ‘trickling down’ a cent of it into our collective futures (Brexit…oh, the uncertainty, the uncertainty…no, on second thoughts, Malcolm, let’s park it in gold and property and trust and super funds and the Seychelles for a while longer yet); verily will we rage here-in at the vile panto-lies of the Murdochians (hiss hiss) that cynically stoked the Brexit panto-xenophobians (whackjobs, nutcases, and NQR, I think is the latest cute stake-my-writerly-claim-neologism), and temper our media-collegiate criticisms of what that noxious not-fit-to-hold-a-media-license-anywhere defiler of public discussion has done, yet again, with the usual gruff admirations of The Oz’s coverage of indigenous issues etc etc, and fond chuckles for the headline ingenuity of his tabloid subs…because, y’know, we’re all journos, too, and we might need a job at News one of these days…); verily will we lament the spinelessness of the ALP; verily we will collect and collate and present the incontravertible proofs and facts articulating the last three decades of dishonesty, deceit, predictable and predicted economic division…as it all collapses. As it all collapses upon its own contradictions and its architects skim off their loot and run, run, run like hell from the mess they have made.
And it won’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s a sideshow, a blind alley, a ghostly play here in cyberspace and it just doesn’t matter. It’s a post-fact world, a post-reality reality. It’s a simulacrum. Someone should write a book about its dangers. Oh, hundreds have been, for decades. And it doesn’t, it didn’t, matter.
What awaits us, here in our pleasant little dreamscape, are the passing pleasures of entertainment only, Reality Public Debate – cliches, platitudes, bumping up against the limits of language itself, even the finest…so, just sit back and enjoy it. Choose the easy buttons on the remote. The confirmation of our biases, a bespoke stroking of our atomized selves on click-click-click autopilot. It’s like being drugged.
Analysis not to your liking, even here? Rach: you can find anything you want, with a quick search.
Or write your own, like…well, we all do. I find my own voice especially soothing and, of course, analytically flawless in every possible way.