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News > World

Varoufakis Blames Neoliberals Like Hillary Clinton for Brexit

  • Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis speaks during a news conference to present the ministry's new general secretaries at the ministry building in Athens March 4, 2015.

    Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis speaks during a news conference to present the ministry's new general secretaries at the ministry building in Athens March 4, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 25 June 2016
Opinion

The former leftist Greek finance minister said in a statement that the EU is sliding into a “xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss” after the Brexit.

The former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis issued a statement Friday blaming Brussels and some the world's most powerful neoliberal leaders such as David Cameron, Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton for the defeat of the “remain” campaign in the United Kingdom.

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While Syriza's former minister of finance had described the EU as being in a “disgraceful state” and a “disintegrating mess,” he and his organization DiEM25 had “campaigned vigorously in favour of a radical IN vote” in the Brexit referendum.

Read the full statement from Varoufakis below:

“DiEM25 campaigned vigorously in favour of a radical IN vote. OUT won because the EU establishment have made it impossible, through their anti-democratic reign (not to mention the asphyxiation of weaker countries like Greece), for the people of Britain to imagine a democratic EU.

Our radical IN campaign was thus defeated.

We can proudly look at the powers-that-be in Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris etc. in the eye and tell them: “We tried to save the EU from you. But you have poisoned the EU so badly by silencing the voices of democrats that, though we tried, we could not convince to people of Britain to stay.”

We, at DiEM25, are in no mood for being downcast now that Leave won, against our better efforts. As of today, a new exciting challenge begins for our pan-European democratic movement.

At DiEM25 we rejected the logic of EU disintegration implicit in the Leave campaign. But we also rejected the logic of business-as-usual for the EU peddled by David Cameron, Tony Blair, Wolfgang Schäuble, Francois Holland, Jean-Claude Jüncker, Hillary Clinton and all the other contributors to the loss of EU’s legitimacy, integrity and soul.

DiEM25 regrets that the British people chose to leave in the EU. But at the same time, DiEM25 welcomes the British people’s determination to tackle the diminution of democratic sovereignty caused by the gross de-politicisation of political decisions and the consequent democratic deficit in the EU.

As of today, DiEM25 will seize upon the OUT vote to promote its radical agenda of confronting the EU establishment more powerfully than before.

The EU’s disintegration is now running at full speed. The DiEM25 campaign of building bridges across Europe, bringing democrats together across borders and political parties, is what Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss. In this endeavour, British progressives will be at the heart of DiEM25’s campaigns.”

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