Are you having a bubble?

by Pseud O'Nym

Hang on! You mean to say that the failure or inability of the British government to offer a financial rescue package to British Steel is somehow linked to the European election results? You might have to explain that one to me, before I even begin to considider your preposterous proposition that the EU themselves might be in some way culpable for the 2016 EU referendum result.

This is how. As ‘The Guardian’ noted,

The government clings to its do-nothing approach, justifying its rejection of financial support, a bailout or public ownership of British Steel because these options would be illegal under the EU state-aid laws.

Yet the UK government conjured up billions of pounds to bail out banks through loans, guarantees and an extensive quantitative-easing programme. It brought the East Coast rail service and other lines back into public ownership. None of this was opposed by the EU.

If large parts of this country feel that the EU isn’t helping them, then why, they might reasonably ask, should they help it? I mean, it’s all well and good for the EU to enhance workers rights but that only matters if you have a job to work in. Equally, it’s great that we can live and work abroad, but if your poor and feel dispossessed, then are you going to try and find work abroad when you can’t find it here?  And the flip of that only compounds the problem. An poor and disposed person in Europe might be willing to work for a shockingly low hourly rate, and live in appallingly crowded conditions, because they might reason they’re better off here than there.

And an inevitable consequence of this is the strain it places on health, housing and education of communities whose councils are already suffering 40% funding cut. Another problem of free movement is that it reduces the responsibility of employers to train their employee’s. Why would they, when they can simply get a EU national to do the job and save themselves time and money?

And therein lays the problem why so many in Europe are disillusioned with the EU. The problem is the EU itself, and the perception that it only benefits the already well off, and if the EU isn’t aggressively challenging that perception, well whose fault is that?