Solidarity 407, 1 June 2016

The "Vote Leave" campaign has become an ugly spate of migrant-bating. "Twelve million Turks say they'll come to the UK", screamed the Daily Express on 22 May. Around the same time Vote Leave launched a poster saying simply "Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU". Not 12 million now, but 76 million! Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove was more restrained: he predicted 5.2 million extra immigrants. The Express and Vote Leave were keen to nudge all prejudices. The murder rate in Turkey is higher than in Britain, they said. They'd didn't say that Turkey's rate is lower than the USA's...

88% of six hundred economists surveyed for the Observer newspaper (29 May) reckon that Brexit would reduce economic growth in Britain. Economists often get things wrong, and the gist of the economists' opinion is that Brexit would disrupt the regular flows of the global capitalist economy, thus pushing down trade and investment into Britain. Most enlightening is what the pro-Brexit minority of economists say. The "Economists for Brexit" group led by veteran Thatcherite Patrick Minford has produced a report. As ardent free-market ideologues, they argue that a capitalist Britain outside the EU...

Nearly 200 delegates from dozens of trade unions gathered in London on 19 and 20 May to discuss issues affecting disabled workers and plan the fightback against discrimination and austerity cuts. TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference debated and agreed over twenty policy resolutions, on subjects including the disability pay gap, disability hate crime, and disabled people in the arts. A resolution highlighting suicides linked to Work Capability Assessments provided a platform for delegates’ anger and determination, and was selected to go forward to TUC Congress in the Autumn. Pretty much all...