THE DECISION BY the British public to vote “Leave” in the referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union has provided Caribbean people with a unique opportunity to witness, in dramatic fashion, the direct consequences of political decisions
It has hopefully provided some useful lessons for Caribbean voters who have been treating national elections with the same offhanded frivolity that is reserved for cricket matches or carnival queen shows.
The sharp devaluation of the British pound, the trillions of dollars wiped off the value of investments in global stock investments, the undoubted negative impact on pensions, including those managed for and on behalf of Caribbean citizens, the potential drop in the British tourist arrivals to the tourism-dependent Caribbean countries, are but only a few, and only the earliest and most immediate consequences.
Far more troubling are the potential political economy shifts that the Brexit vote has portended.
The Brexit decision has opened a space for hyper-nationalists who frame their panaceas for the crisis of capitalism only within the narrowest notions of state-centric, xenophobic world views. Often, the types attracted to such thinking are insecure and anti-intellectual and their notions of “public policy” do not extend beyond the closing of borders, and the expulsion of “foreigners”.
Those who can appeal to the basest instincts to these types are beginning to have a large impact on global politics. This is seen in Donald Trump. It is also seen in recent Caribbean elections where conservative business types have emerged under vague promises of solving problems which “intellectual social democratic” types who believed too strongly in ideas of regionalism and global integration have failed to do.
It is expected that some Caribbean countries like Jamaica, and perhaps St Lucia, will begin to make anti-CARICOM noises, given the natural anti-regionalist world views of their newly elected leaders.
Not since the days of Adolf Hitler has the wicket been so well prepared for the emergence of alliances between conservative, pro-business types and the frustrated working masses eager for scapegoats for their economic misery.
In a capitalist society, only capitalism can be blamed for the failures of capitalism. Illusions are of only limited political value, as the people of Britain will soon discover. Whilst the world can brace itself for a few years of hyper-conservative, rigid nationalist muscle flexing and the hardening of anti-socialist discourse, the deepening of capitalist crises in the long run will soon open up spaces for a rethinking of new social democratic options that insist on organising human relations in ways other than those defined by individual greed and profit maximisation.
In the meantime, we gird our loins for an era of the rule by the misguided. As one Internet slogan has put it: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence”.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email: tjoe2008@live.com
