Of course reasonable people can differ on the merits or not of Brexit. It’s just that this reason being given by Polly Toynbee seems to us to be most odd:
As Downing Street asserts through a source to Robert Peston: “Britain is out of all EU laws. We will be able to change our laws in a huge number of areas from product standards to fishing rules and farming subsidies where we are currently bound by EU rules.” Just so. That is precisely what the Europhobes always wanted, the deregulated purpose of the whole Brexit fandango. Food safety and working conditions, traditionally well ahead of UK standards, will now be at the mercy of this Brexit government. Very few in Labour could tolerate that.
The government of the UK is the one elected by the people of the UK. It seems reasonable enough that it should be those people of the UK who get to decide the rules that they’ll live under. This is rather the point of democracy we think.
But to be specific here. With both food safety and working conditions the insistence that “these are the rules” is an agreement, a priori, that people would prefer lower standards. To take that bete noire de nos jours, chlorinated chicken. If British people really don’t want it then if available no one will buy it. It’ll sit on the shelves until it rots and no more will be placed upon the market.
The only justification of a ban on its availability is that some people would in fact like to purchase and consume it. At which point of course what’s the justification for banning what people desire?
So it is with all such bans and standards and insistences. The only justification for “higher standards” however derived - note that this is not exclusively about the EU, or Brexit - is that some useful portion of the people don’t want them. That’s why they must be imposed.
Which leaves us somewhat confused. For that means Polly’s point is she supports any system - EU, Labour, whatever - which ensures that the plebs are controlled into doing what they damn well should be doing. Which can’t, obviously, be right at all. So we’re rather at sea as to what the point is.
[Image credit: Carnivore Style]