For decades, neoliberal globalisation has been one of the left’s foremost targets. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation are regularly denounced as enthusiastic proponents of the “Washington Consensus”, which champions free trade, financial liberalisation, tax cuts and privatisation around the world.
Historically, many socialists have viewed the European Union as an ally of such institutions. The Canadian economists Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, for instance, regard the EU project as part of the “continuing integration of European and American capitalism”. In the 1975 referendum on UK membership of the European Economic Community, Jeremy Corbyn and his mentor Tony Benn opposed the EEC as an obstacle to the socialist transformation of the UK.
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