The Tories are going to take a bonfire to rights and standards.

Ignore the doublespeak, this is really serious.

Kwasi Kwarteng, after denying any such thing a matter of days ago, has now all but confirmed is government is going to take a torch to worker’s rights and standards in this country. This means dire consequences for working people in Britain, a race to the bottom pitting worker against worker, another assault on living standards, and Britain essentially functioning as a fractured tax haven off the coast of mainland Europe, with low standards, and low wages.

It’s easy to slip into complacency by hearing the words and taking them literally, because if you do, it seems Kwarteng is saying he wants to look at the regulations but not lower anything. But simultaneously we hear talking of “streamlining things for businesses”. All of this sounds benign and nothing to get worked up about, but don’t fall for it, this is a classic example of doublespeak.

Time and time again the British establishment has got away wit wildly unpopular things, by passing them off as something else, all with the complete complicity of the British media.

Privatising huge swathes of the NHS was “giving GPs more agency”, drastic cuts attacking the most vulnerable was “living within our means”, and now a race to the bottom is “streamlining for businesses” or “cutting red tape”.

The government is planning Thatcherism on steroids, and we have to push against it, while building a media landscape that calls these things what they are, rather than towing the establishment line.

We seem to be heading for the absolute doomsday worst case scenario of Brexit that Remain And Reform leftists feared; a toothless left, and the right shaping the settlement of the exit on the premise of xenophobia, a race to the bottom, and Thatcherism on steroids, in short, a political project pushing Britain yet further rightwards.

This is why, all along, all of the left should have accepted Brexit, and united behind shaping the exit settlement. There is no Lexit because much of the left united with the establishment with the misguided belief that Brexit is inherently rightwing. We now have a rightwing Brexit because of the anti-Brexit brigade bringing down the Corbyn project, when that project could have shaped a left exit from the EU.

Leftwing and progressive forces of all stripes must now unite in opposition to a race to the bottom. Be you Remain And Reform as so many admirable figures on the left are, or be you Lexit like me, we now have total lockstep and common cause in shaping the post-Brexit consensus in a leftward, not a rightward, direction.