Varoufakis offers hope for fairer EU

Former Greek finance minister, economist and author Yanis Varoufakis has to my mind been one of the most sage voices on the issue of Brexit.
Author and economist Yanis VaroufakisAuthor and economist Yanis Varoufakis
Author and economist Yanis Varoufakis

He calls for the UK to remain within the EU so as to work towards reform of its unjust financial policies which Varoufakis sees as having enshrined a system of exploitation facilitating the richest territories and elite interests while the poorest are made to suffer what they must.

Varoufakis, along with many, has most accurately described the EU as being both in a disgraceful state and a disintegrating mess but argues that tearing it up would not be the solution - Britain should remain within the EU to ward off any disintegration of the 28-nation bloc and work towards change from within.

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Anything resembling a federation of territories seems worth fighting to maintain, even if one acknowledges the very real problems and iniquities of its structure and financial policies.

Varoufakis has championed a pan-European umbrella group called DiEM25 that aims to bring together leftwing parties and protest movements across the continent. His argument is that progressives across Europe need to come together to help stem the worrying rise of far-right parties in Greece, France, Germany and beyond.

Many lefties have become ardently pro-Brexit because they are rightly dismayed with Brussels retaining sovereignty over financial regulations affecting Britain, castigating the EU as simply a machine for neoliberal capitalism - an ideology that suppported deregulated financial markets and the litany of profit-mongering excesses that led to the global financial collapse of 2008.

Brussels is currently disastrously in league with the interests of the financial elite, disseminating fiscal policies that mean the rich get richer while the poorest face ever more dire circumstances.

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Varoufakis and others argue that reform can best be achieved by building agreement between parties and grass-roots movements committed to a more egalitarian EU, streamlining its Byzantine bureaucracy and working towards fairer fiscal policy that would offer a pragmatic alternative to austerity.

The very idea of draconian cuts at times of economic difficulty has been shown to augment the pain suffered by the least well off countries to help balance the books and cover the backs of an increasingly errant elite - yet still European leaders back harsh austerity measures. This must stop.

Varoufakis is described as the ‘rock-star of Europe’s anti-austerity uprising’, a key spokesman for a return to Keynesian economics as opposed to cuts that will only stall economic recovery further for the benefit of the richest few.

In his new book he recounts how the Eurozone emerged not as a route to shared prosperity but as a pyramid scheme of debt with countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain at the bottom. The flawed design meant economic collapse was inevitable. This principle of the greatest austerity for those suffering the greatest recessions has led to a resurgence of racist extremism and far-right support across Europe.

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Voting for Britain to remain within the EU and battling ardently for radical changes in policy seems the best way to work towards restraining the worst excesses of Europe’s financial powermongers, with widespread support for restrictions on bankers’ bonuses and higher taxes offering some hope for a new dispensation.