Allister Heath:

Europhiles who vote for Labour’s neo-marxist agenda can no longer claim to hold liberal values

Until a few weeks ago, I generally took the uber-remainers at their word. I believed them when they told me that they objected to Brexit because they feared economic damage. I assumed they were telling the truth when they insisted with great passion that they thought the EU was a force for peace, tolerance and harmonious coexistence, and that this was a central reason for their Europhilia. Such arguments are, in my view, entirely wrong-headed, but they are certainly eminently respectable.

With the general election just seven days away, some of these Remainers, to their great credit, have stayed true to these liberal principles. A fair few have decided to vote Lib Dem, despite Jo Swinson’s uselessness. Others are even supporting the Tories because Labour is so obviously inimical to the free market and so tolerant of prejudice. The New Statesman, the Left-wing weekly, is refusing to back the Labour Party, probably for the first time ever (it still wishes to deprive the Tories of a majority, however).

But for many others, especially the most vocal, holier-than-thou variety of unreconstructed Remain activist that dominates social media, the election has exposed a fundamental, jawdropping hypocrisy. Everything they had been arguing was a lie, and they should never be taken seriously again.

The main reason to oppose Brexit, these people kept saying, is to ensure that UK GDP growth isn’t cut by a couple of tenths of a percentage point a year, or some other such minor economic loss. We should stay in the EU, these “Left-liberals” would claim until they were blue in the face, to make sure that Britain doesn’t lose out on investment projects, and so the City doesn’t relinquish bankers (and tax receipts) to Frankfurt, Dublin or Luxembourg.

So what is their proposed solution? To vote for an economic programme that will shut down the banks, collapse the City and tax wealth creators into oblivion. The inconsistency beggars belief. Having spent the past few years accusing Brexiteers of being antibusiness, they are supporting Jeremy Corbyn, the most anti-business leader since Michael Foot. Why? Because they believe him to be the last chance of stopping Brexit, and they don’t care how this is achieved. Their proenterprise rhetoric, all the worrying about the extra red tape that leaving the single market and customs union might burden firms with, the entire Project Fear agenda, it turns out, were just for show, a way of trying to fool moderate voters into rejecting Brexit.

Having claimed that they believe in attracting the best and brightest from the continent, they are now supporting a party whose catastrophic policies would lead to massive brain drain from the UK. Forget about free movement, nobody would want to relocate here anymore anyway.

And for all their nonsense about believing in the liberal international economic order, the reality is that, as PM, Corbyn would be deeply protectionist: confiscating 10 per cent of the shares of listed companies, combined with the nationalisation of swathes of industry, would be an extraordinary act of economic nationalism. Foreign shareholders would flee. The capital controls that would be bound to accompany the full imposition of Corbyn’s agenda would be the greatest setback to free trade since the Smoot-hawley tariffs.

For anybody genuinely worried about the supposed economic cost of Brexit, backing Corbyn in the hope of staying in the EU is the equivalent of chopping off both one’s legs to “cure” indigestion.

But most of these people aren’t stupid. They are merely demonstrating that they didn’t really believe in any of the liberal principles they cited when opposing Brexit, and that in fact they hate Tories and Brexiteers far more than they love the Remain status quo. They don’t really care about the EU per se – they just have a demented loathing for Eurosceptics and Rightleaning or patriotic people in general. They have little real interest in peace and cooperation, or they wouldn’t be voting for people who have associated with and defended terrorists.

It’s all incredibly depressing, and the final proof that identity politics is the new tribalism. Arguments are merely a tool with which to attack the enemy. In true postmodernist fashion, words are weapons and one shouldn’t assume that those who utter them believe in them. It’s no longer about the policies, the people or the ideas – it’s about belonging to a gang that sees itself as morally superior, and thus entitled to annihilate the other side. The ends always justify the means. It is also snobbery of the most extreme kind dressed up as progressivism.

A recent ICM poll shows that Labour leads 67/17 per cent among 18-24 yearolds and 50/23 per cent among 25-34 year-olds. Double-standards, much? If university students are so committed to fighting hate, why are they supporting the first party since the BNP to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission? How can one be anti-racist but not care about Jews? How can millennials who identify so closely with the “rights” culture support a movement that wants to confiscate wealth without compensation and deprive parents of the freedom to educate their children as they see fit, both clear violations of mainstream human rights rules? Don’t they also see that the hard-left is riddled with sexism and misogyny?

And what about Londoners? If they are so liberal, so open-minded, why are 47 per cent of them going to back Labour, according to the latest Yougov poll? There are still plenty of genuine Left-liberals among the super-woke metropolitan elite, but a worrying number have now mutated into authoritarians, cultural warriors rather than believers in freedom.

As to those who defend their support for Labour by claiming they are gaming the election to engineer a hung parliament, or who argue that Corbyn will never implement his mad agenda, or will be removed in time, my message is simple: grow up. Politics always catches out those who are too clever by half.

If you vote for Corbyn, you are endorsing his policies and his message. You are being soft on antisemitism and supporting neo-marxist economic, social and international policies. That is your right, but don’t lie to yourself: you can no longer claim to be a true liberal.