That was a good watch, thanks.
He makes a lot of good points and articulates some of the reasons I considered voting leave myself.
I do not think he actually makes "The Left Wing case for Brexit" though. He makes very broad generic statements without backing them up. The few times he does get specific, he tends to be wrong.
For instance, he does mention that the EU forces austerity on the UK and forbids Keynesian anti-recession investments. That is not exactly true. First of all, the UK is not part of the Eurozone so it is
not subject to any fines if it breaks the 3% of GDP new budget deficit rule. Put differently, the UK's commitment to not exceed the EU's budget deficit rules is
purely symbolic. If the UK wanted to spur economic activity by making major debt-financed investments in, say, infrastructure, it could do so without fearing serious retribution from the EU. The truth is that the UK government simply does not want to do this and that has nothing to do with the EU.
Also, during the "Great Recession", most (all?) Eurozone member states broke the deficit rules and the EU did not do much about it because they would have been mad to do so. So, it is not like there is no common sense at play and the EU is this draconian institution that will punish even the slightest deficit rule violation. Traditionally., the EU has been fairly lax about budget issues because even economic powerhouses like Germany have struggled to meet the goals on many occasions.
In addition, he states that the EU restricts state aid for private businesses. Technically, that is correct but, once again, this is not the full picture. Like most countries, the UK is a member of the World Trade Organization which has its own extremely comprehensive set of restrictions regarding state aid and subsidies. Furthermore, international trade agreements often include additional regulations on acceptable state aid and subsidies as well. So, it is not like leaving the EU will suddenly open up the UK to freely hand out billions of taxpayer money to whatever private businesses happen to be struggling at the moment.
Moreover, it is worth pointing out that, historically, other EU member states such as France and Germany have
far exceeded the state-aid per capita rate of the United Kingdom. Clearly, being in the EU does not prevent you from investing a lot more in state aid than UK governments chose to spend.
In general, most of the vague arguments against the EU also apply to international trade in general. All the pro-Brexit leaders have stated from the very beginning that they want to leave the EU so the UK can then freely sign new far more comprehensive trade agreements with countries all over the world. So, Brexit is not at all aimed to deliver new limits regardling any ill effects of globalization, which would be worthy of extensive debate. Rather, the pro-Brexit leaders view the future UK as a country that does more international trade than ever before. Instead of adhering to rules and regulations that the UK helped to define in Brussels, it would adhere to the rules and regulations that were set up in Washington and in other capitals in order to gain access to large markets. That is hardly progress and will not deliver back the level of "control" that was promised to the people in the UK.
