Brexit implications

Vote leave supporters may not get what they bargained for. They have probably taken aim at the wrong people and blamed them for  the predicament of the country.

Unfortunately, the poor and disadvantaged will not see their lot improving. Since the 1970's there has been a redistribution of wealth. This has been from the poor to the rich. It started when council houses were sold to private individuals and the proceeds of the sales were not re-invested in more council and social housing to replace the properties which were divested. The private sector for housing has never been able to provide sufficient houses for the growing population.

Successive governments have sold valuable government assets such as the railways, the post office and the energy industries to shore up public finances. As Harold Macmillan put it: the nation has sold off the family silver - he was an ex-Conservative Prime Minister. Some industries such as the car industry or telecommunications benefit from privatisation and these sell offs have benefited the economy in general. But the sale of the housing stock and other key industries has only exacerbated transfer of wealth and power from the people to corporate organisations.

The de-industrialisation of the economy has contributed to a loss of real earnings so that wages have hardly risen in 30 years. The transfer of the means of production to other nation states has also resulted in a loss of earning power. Trade union power has been emasculated so that workers rights and living standards have been cut without challenge. Millions of  people have been forced into low paid self-employment or zero-hours contracts and they are struggling to just feed their families let alone pay bills. Hundreds of thousands are relying on food-banks to make ends meet.

All in all the re-distribution of wealth and reduced earning power has meant that large sections of our society are living without hope of improvement in their living standards. Millions of our citizens have simply been left behind and they have been failed by both major political parties. Millions of people have been forced to turn to obtaining credit from "loan sharks" to make their lives just about bearable.

They are victims of a lack of social housing so that many have to pay almost un-affordable rents to private landlords to find a place to rest their heads. Millions of working people just want to be able to hold their heads up high. They want decent jobs that pay decent wages so that they can have a half decent life and pay their way without hand outs. It is no wonder that they want to kick out against the establishment.

The EU commission is responsible for none of this - all of our wounds are self inflicted.

The British economy, in general, has prospered in recent years after it came out of the financial crisis of 2007/08.

The British economy in the main, however, is a low productivity one which depends on  a source of low paid labour which is flexible and which can survive the economic tribulations of zero hours contracts and lay offs. These low paid workers are young and do not have families. And, like all young people without children they are prepared to move house and live in multiple occupation flats. Only young immigrants can tolerate these working conditions.

There is another British economy which requires high skilled workers in information technology, finance,telecommunications, medicine and aerospace etc. There is a shortage of these skills coming from the indigenous population and the only source of these skills is immigrants.

Oh yes, immigration, half of the voters in the referendum were frightened of it, Some of those voters were just xenophobes and many were racists. The poor and disadvantaged voted leave out of protest. Some of the voters were just interested in sovereignty but they all made common cause believing that reducing immigration would solve all our or their problems. It won't as will be seen over the next five to ten years.

The trouble is Britain's economy sucks in immigrants and it cannot grow without them. The economic model relies on either low paid workers or pinching skilled and well educated people from other nations. The Vote Leave leaders have promised economic sunshine but if their model economy is to grow it has to suck in even more immigrants.

If the Vote Leave project fails then the economy will go into recession and then hurrah most of the immigrants will go home. But then many many British people will lose their jobs and the economy will not be able to afford more hospitals, creches and doctors. The housing market will collapse and there will still be a shortage of social housing. Unemployment will bring down wages and the economy will not be able to afford child benefit. We shall be out of the single market and freedom of movement restrictions will mean that young people will have nowhere to go to find work.

There is only one way to help the poor and disadvantaged and bring down the need to import cheap labour. We need a new economic model which re-distributes the wealth and earnings of the nation in favour of the poor and disadvantaged. This will not be achieved by some sort of dangerous ultra-left wing or ultra right wing revolution. We need one nation type politicians such as Clement Attlee or Harold Macmillan to do something for the poor and the struggling middle classes. We need to build houses, hospitals and doctors surgeries. We need an education system that produces well rounded students. We need creches and good health care for our children.We need a workforce that can afford to move location with their  families to fill well paid jobs. We need a more productive society. However, to achieve peaceful and sustainable  change it will take years. Some people may not have the patience so we could be in for a rough ride. Some politicians are completely opposed to changing the economic model so the situation could become even worse.

Unfortunately the "efficient markets" philosophy which has monopolised economic policy since the 1970's cannot provide an economy which provides for the poor and the struggling middle classes as well as for the rich.  Our country has enough resources to provide a decent standard of living for all our poor and disadvantaged people and our immigrants who have contributed enormous sums of wealth to our economy; but our country chooses not to distribute the wealth and income anywhere near equitably.

Vote Leave politicians are going to provide us with more of the same old economic story. We need strong leaders with a completely different vision - come back Attlee and Supermac.

If we cut ourselves off from the European single market to spite our economic faces, in the vain hope of reducing immigration, then we could suffer and the poor will suffer most. There are many Europeans who think the same way as me . It would be better to unite with them to find a better economic solution for all Europeans rather than just carry on with business as usual but without the Bulgarian strawberry pickers. Do you want to see the fruits of an economic recovery left rotting in the field?