BREXIT has dominated British politics for the past two years, and that looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future. With this prospect in mind, the Scottish Socialist Voice newspaper has organised a forum for Saturday, April 28 with speakers from home and abroad to consider how the left can have an influence in the ongoing Brexit negotiations (see The National Calendar for details).

For amid the fog, uncertainty and bogus claims, one thing is clear: neither set of negotiators intends to advance the interests of working people.

On the contrary, the Tories and EU Commissioners aim to sign a deal which further undermines the economic, social and political conditions facing working people in Britain and the remainder of this continent.

Both David Davis and Michel Barnier are set to create conditions for Europe’s multinational corporations that maximise their profits. That means continuing with the neo-liberal “feeding frenzy” of the past 25 years with further deregulation, more casualisation and falling wages in real terms for the masses.

Since its inception the EU has promoted the class interests of Europe’s corporate elite above all. That political project began in the 1940s when the profits of coal and steel conglomerates were put front and centre in the Treaty of Rome.

Those fundamentals have been enhanced by subsequent treaties until today, where the vested interests of bankers and multinational industrialists remain sacrosanct. Those bankers and industrialists may have preferred a Remain vote in 2016, it’s true, but they will adapt and carry on with their exploitation and profiteering.

Brexit was a victory for the Tory right, for Farage’s Ukip and the reactionary Little Englanders who wanted to “take back control”. It was they who obsessed over Europe for decades. It was they who demanded the referendum. It was they who ludicrously refer to the centralising “EUSSR”. And June 2016 was their victory.

That spectre hangs over these negotiations and the left must act to combat it.

Unlike the SNP and the Greens, however, the Scottish Socialist Party sees no knight in shining armour in the EU. Although we voted to Remain we saw it as the lesser of two evils.

It is now vital for the left to get organised and to appreciate the full implications of the fact that working people have “no team on the park” in these negotiations. They are at the mercy of two sets of capitalists who plan further attacks. Socialists need to fight for demands that benefit working people, and that means for example putting issues such as public ownership back on the table in the Brexit negotiations.

In recent years Labour and SNP politicians have used the EU to mask their own opposition to public ownership, insisting that Brussels prohibited re-nationalisation under its regulations. That was nonsense.

But now that Britain is leaving the EU, returning our railways, energy industry, oil and telecommunications sectors etc. to public ownership can be put back atop the political agenda.

Gordon Martin from the RMT union will lead that particular discussion at our Forum in Edinburgh on April 28.

Equally, introducing a £10/hour living wage as a “Brexit Premium” would be hugely popular for Scotland’s 500,000 casualised and poorly paid workers.

The Norwegian trade union leader and author Asbjorn Wahl, who has published many a critique on the failures of European social democracy in this regard, will fly over to join our panel on the day and speak to these demands.

We will have one of Scotland’s most eminent economists Margaret Cuthbert and a speaker from Janis Varoufakis’s Diem 25 with us to enlighten the debate.

Colin Fox

National spokesman, Scottish Socialist Party