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Ain’t this a bio?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jon Bloomfield is an Honorary Research Fellow at
the University of Birmingham and a policy
specialist on Europe. For ten years he was Head of
Birmingham City Council’s European Division;
then responsible for European affairs at the West
Midlands Regional Development Agency.
Currently, he advises Europe’s largest climate
change programme. Previously he was on the
Editorial board of Marxism Today and a supporter
of Charter 77.

Having done nothing useful all his life he’d like to pontificate……

Basically, four broad options are available to
the country: the hard Right’s favourite of the
UK as a lightly-regulated, offshore tax haven
to Europe with a renewed, subordinate
relationship with the United States; reversing
the referendum decision now, as argued by
some; a go-it-alone ‘Keynesianism/socialism
in one country’, favoured by the nationalist
Left; or a new cooperation arrangement
between the UK and the European Union,
colloquially referred to as ‘soft Brexit’. This
article examines those options and argues from
a Left-wing perspective the case for the latter.

Rilly? I’ve spent my life having meetings about the EU. Lord forbid that spending a life having meetings about the EU should stop being a well paid profession.

14 thoughts on “Ain’t this a bio?”

  1. An illustration of the long march through the institutions, and he isn’t done yet.

    In the old days they’d have left out the Marxist bit; not any more.

  2. “Birmingham City Council’s European Division”

    That would be the Birmingham City Council that’s notoriously strapped for cash. Some say it’s because of “Tory Cuts”. Others say it’s because the (Labour-held) Council piss it away on useless crap they don’t need.

    I wonder which theory is true.

  3. Strangely he doesn’t seem to be aware of the EU’s position : pay 100m euro forever more and agree to a free border with Ireland, otherwise sod off. They have ruled out Soft Brexit, and rejoining on the old terms. It is too late to reverse the referendum result. The EU want us in the Euro

  4. “the hard Right’s favourite of the UK as a lightly-regulated, offshore tax haven”

    I detest lefty idiots ragging on non-lefties for not respecting their extremely narrow and ever-changing definitions of “socialism”, particularly with the way they call both statist, collectivist, planned-economy Nazis and laissez-faire classical liberals “hard right”.

  5. They don’t really help themselves by calling the current government far right and neoliberal. Not very convincing.

  6. @Tomsmith

    Indeed, if the left are to be believed, the current UK government is the most far right extremist government in the history of the world.

  7. abacab/ Andrew C

    one particularly entertaining collaborator of Murphy with whom I am acquainted suggested elements of the Green Party were on ‘the hard Right’ – it’s a form of delusion which I think will only be ended when such a person is on the plane to Caracas looking forward to seeing real socialism with all its attendant shortages and violence….

  8. Honorary research fellow does mean unpaid – it gives access to library facilities to help with research, and means your research is included in the University’s output.

    And I have worked with the guy (when he had a job) – total waste of space, who couldn’t even arrange drinks for a visiting delegation, which indicates how good he was at his actual job as opposed to playing politics. Ex-colleagues of his (there are a lot of those, as Birmingham sheds staff) tend to really dislike him. Delighted to learn that he is somehow worthy of attention.

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