Redwood just being honest

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Some commentators have been more than a little unkind to John Redwood, for telling people in his capacity as an investment advisor that they should “look further afield as the UK hits the brakes” after telling us in his capacity a an MP that the “economic gains of leaving the EU will be considerable”.  Now I don’t really object to people being unkind to Redwood; it’s not as if he hasn’t done anything to deserve it.  His ‘rendition’ of our national anthem alone is a debt worthy of repeated repayment for decades to come, and that was but a small part of his performance as Secretary of State for Wales.

But are the two statements really as inconsistent as they appear?  As far as I’m aware, he didn’t tell us that the economic gains of leaving the UK would occur within the UK itself nor that they would accrue to all of us.  And rich people benefiting from the undermining of the UK economy is hardly a new phenomenon.

I suspect that people are confusing Brexit and British patriotism here.  For sure, ‘patriotism’ was one of the means used to persuade people to vote in a particular way, but that doesn’t mean that they ever intended it to apply to themselves.  Capital is never patriotic because it knows no boundaries; it only ever pursues its own interests.  The problem with the response to what Redwood said is that it’s political froth dealing solely with the apparent inconsistency of one politician.  It leaves untouched the wider question of who owns wealth and where real power lies.