Brexit, aka, the UK Becomes a Clown Car of the Highest Order

Politics and religion
3630

Here we go again with the laziest possible transaction in political conversation. Find a reason to call someone a racist / fascist / furry and enjoy that hit of sweet self-satisfaction.

ECs / EU membership has been a subject of political controversy for 45 years, ever since we joined. Britain has always had an uncomfortable experience of membership, and there’s always been a large constituency who just aren’t reconciled to the regular, ratcheting transfer of sovereignty. Made worse by the fact that British entry into the ECs was economically and financially painful (and some of that pain was deliberate), and that the British electorate has had an almost permanent misunderstanding of the purpose of the Treaty of Rome because British politicians who most wanted to join were (in general) too cowardly to talk honestly about why.

The 1975 referendum was called because a new Labour government couldn’t resolve its own internal divisions over Europe and a “people’s vote” was the political cover needed to stay in (how different things were then…) In the eighties and nineties Europe generated multiple political crises, sackings and resignations of cabinet ministers, a major financial crisis and the fall of Margaret Thatcher. Divisions over Europe then hamstrung the Major government and continued to rile the Conservative party in opposition.
UKIP (initially with a different name) was formed in 1991, and competed with a Referendum Party for anti-EU votes.

During all that time, Immigration and racism were a long-running background thread in British politics, but not a top-five issue for voters in polling. Immigration only became the top-two issue it is now, around the turn of the century, and the trigger event was the influx of white Christian Europeans. Islam was not on the political radar until 9/11 and the follow-on attacks.

A referendum on membership has been the subject of serious campaigning for 25+ years. IMO it’s been a political inevitability, because that constituency of Euro-sceptics has consistently grown over the decades, and because - as the paralysis in Parliament is demonstrating - it’s an issue that cuts across traditional party lines in a way that’s made it hard for either of the two major parties to build consensus or exercise leadership (the Blair / New Labour period being the exception).

But never mind all that. Let’s just throw in a few smug one-liners.

3631

Dude… the talking points I hear on tv about Brexit here in the U.S.? Whether it’s Fox or actual legitimate news, Brexit always comes to immigration. If you really don’t think that’s the biggest point driving it… maybe you should talk to everyone else on Earth cause they didn’t get the memo.

If you’re really in it for economics, then… well honestly that makes no sense. Unless you’re a fisherman angry about competition - you’re going to be out money with a net loss for the government to spend on its populace, infrastructure, hospitals, and pensions. It’s like 1+1 = 0

If Brexiters wanted Brexit because they wanted to build a better social safety net and better society because then EU was a right-wing fascist government like we have here in the U.S. on the executive level I could understand it. But YOU know and I know that this is not what those driving Brexit will do. The social safety net will be cut, the rich will get richer, they’ll take their business away from Britain while they laugh at the mess they left behind.

Since you’re not doing this for economics nor the populace well-being… what are you doing this for? This is an honest question because when you crunch the numbers it makes no sense.

3632

This sounds a great deal like the earnest explanations offered by revisionists in the American South to try to explain that the Civil War was about decades of state’s rights conflicts and mounting tension between agrarian economies vs industrial ones.

You know, so obvious.

Except it isn’t

It was about slavery. Period.

And whatever the tortured history of the the UK’s entrance into the EU and existence there was, the motive force for Brexit was racism and xenophobia. Period.

Apologize it away if you like. Maybe you’ll find someone out there who’ll buy that nonsense.

But no, not buying it here.

3633

So explain why it is the biggest movers and shakers in the Brexit climate are far-right racists and those looking to take a dump on the UK? If UK is so great and doesn’t need, and has never needed Europe - then why are the wealthy so vested in Brexit also ironically so heavily vested outside of the UK or in the process of securing their assets outside the UK as we speak?

Furthermore, why are you doing what someone like Trump and Putin want you to do? Has it ever crossed your mind you’re on the wrong team? Trump is super evil. Putin is super evil. Half the leads pushing Brexit are very bad people. I mean… doesn’t that kinda tell you something?

3634

Quoting Sartre again, since most of Anti-Semite and Jew applies well to right wing crap of all flavors.

Besides this, many anti‐Semites — the majority, perhaps — belong to the lower middle class of the towns; they are functionaries, office workers, small businessmen, who possess nothing. It is in opposing themselves to the Jew that they suddenly become conscious of being proprietors: in representing the Jew as a robber, they put themselves in the enviable position of people who could be robbed. Since the Jew wishes to take France from them, it follows that France must belong to them. Thus they have chosen anti‐Semitism as a means of establishing their status as possessors. The Jew has more money than they? So much the better: money is Jewish, and they can despise it as they despise intelligence. They own less than the gentleman‐farmer of Périgord or the large‐scale farmer of the Beauce? That doesn’t matter. All they have to do is nourish a vengeful anger against the robbers of Israel and they feel at once in possession of the entire country. True Frenchmen, good Frenchmen are all equal, for each of them possesses for himself alone France whole and indivisible.

Thus I would call anti‐Semitism a poor man’s snobbery. And in fact it would appear that the rich for the most part exploit this passion for their own uses rather than abandon themselves to it — they have better things to do. It is propagated mainly among the middle classes, because they possess neither land nor house nor castle, having only some ready cash and a few securities in the bank. It was not by chance that the petty bourgeoisie of Germany was anti‐Semitic in 1925. The principal concern of this “white‐collar proletariat” was to distinguish itself from the real proletariat. Ruined by big industry, bamboozled by the Junkers, it was nonetheless to the Junkers and the great industrialists that its whole heart went out. It went in for anti‐Semitism with the same enthusiasm that it went in for wearing bourgeois dress: because the workers were internationalists, because the Junkers possessed Germany and it wished to possess it also. Anti‐Semitism is not merely the joy of hating; it brings positive pleasures too. By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite. This elite, in contrast to those of modern times which are based on merit or labour, closely resembles an aristocracy of birth. There is nothing I have to do to merit my superiority, and neither can I lose it. It is given once and for all. It is a thing.

3635

I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve been watching this thread since the beginning, and I’ve yet to see “snopes” proof set of good reasons why Brexit should happen and how it will make Britain and all those who live within it better off and is worth the dramatic mess that was to be created. The one good argument I saw, “more money for healthcare” ended up being a lie. Citing fishing issues and fruit classifications is not worth the kind of pain that will be afflicted on the general populace.

3636

Right, you’d prefer to remain ignorant and self-righteous than consider the idea that 45 years of political history might be a bit complicated, possibly even nuanced. Facts or history don’t matter when you have a 100% reliable telepathy machine that tells you the motivations of 17 million individuals. Lazy and childish, D for effort.

3637

If that’s directed at me, I think you’ve misunderstood my posts on this thread, and my position on Brexit. What am I “doing” that Trump or Putin would care about?

That’s missing the point, I think. The core issues are about identity and/or national sovereignty and government accountability. When it comes down to it, pro-Brexit voters and politicians would like to tell each other stories about how they’ll be better off, but they’re not actually making an economic decision. And when it comes down to it, most of them will happily accept economic pain to get what they want.

That was the big failure of of the Remain campaign. They learnt the wrong lesson from the previous general election and hammered on about the economic and financial costs. But that’s not really what was motivating people.

3638

I realize this is a novel suggestion, but you might try reading his post where he

a) Explains this at length.
b) At no point indicates that he personally is convinced by those reasons.

It’s like you literally cannot comprehend someone simply trying to explain a perspective to you - you are so mentally damaged by American politics that you think people only say things for the purpose of advocacy.

3639

That may be true (although keep in mind “most” of the Brexit leave vote would only amount to about a third of the electorate), but it sure doesn’t seem like the Tory leadership is willing to accept that pain.

If May or a different PM had been willing to fully grasp the nettle of Leave (which means in the real world No-Deal) all along and make preparations to mitigate the harm, I would consider that deeply wrong and misguided but still conceptually coherent. However the actual plan has been to deny reality and that is just exacerbating the mess.

In addition to that, you have the reality that a chunk of Brexit voters believed the lies, that the election was heavily tainted by lies and by foreign interference, that the referendum itself would have been found unconstitutionally vague in a state like CA, that the referendum itself was poorly handled in pretty much all aspects, and you have a scenario that IMO should never have happened and has been made worse by feckless and reality-ignoring leadership.

What a mess.

3640

Oh, and let me explain a bit about the lie concept: I believe focusing narrowly on “sovereignty” is actually inherently deceptive b/c in reality, due to reciprocity, sovereignty is inextricably linked to the overall “grand bargain” of the EU. It is, inherently, unavoidably, a bargain formed based on states giving up some sovereignty to gain other benefits. You cannot assert total sovereignty without giving up most or all of the benefits; they are intertwined.

So to the degree the Brexiteers were focusing on an abstract concept of sovereignity without talking about economic disruption, travel disruption, loss of export markets, loss of import markets, and so forth, they were being deceptive.

It’s kind of like the crazed mega-libertarians who want no government restrictions at all that don’t realize that if they gain the “freedom” to commit murder, they lose a great deal of the stability and opportunity of a civilized peaceful society. Some things are inextricably intertwined and narrowly focusing on part can be very deceptive.

Principals are great but you cannot ignore reality.

3641

The actual plan is a pretty bad deal, but as our European friends here have pointed out, it is not a punitive deal (I think it is deeply strategically misguided on Northern Ireland, but that’s a separate question and I can very much see why the desire for a clear EU win has lead things down that route).

Given that the Leaver plan inasmuch as one was articulated was to secure as good a deal as possible while having as few obligations as possible (which is not really how the EU works) it’s a credible effort to square that circle.

I’m curious what you believe the leadership should have done, given the political constraints it has been operating under (which I’m not sure you understand). “Run a better 2017 election campaign” is certainly a cogent critique of May but isn’t really germane to the realism (or otherwise) of her Brexit policy. An EFTA-based deal might have been just about possible, but it would still have had the backstop, and would still have been unlikely to win Labour support. She certainly should have been much quicker, more agile, and more decisive, but at the end of the day that would have only helped us discover the mess more quickly (which may have been part of why things moved so slowly).

There’s no shortage of guilt to go around for this mess. I guess the leadership is in the end responsible because it’s the leadership, even if everyone is being equally feckless.

3642

Sure. I completely agree that the Leave campaign lied about this and I really struggle with this issue. On the one hand, from an accountability perspective, the EU is a mess, and there is no realistic prospect of reform, so as a democrat I think we should get out. On the other hand if we leave, there is still no prospect of reform, we have even less say, we lose the benefits of membership, and we are still heavily influenced by EU decisions. During the referendum I went backwards and forwards on this, before being eventually persuaded by the insularity of the leave campaign to vote for remain.

Post referendum the utter lack of self-examination within the EU pushes me more towards leave. The utter lack of capability to make leave work pushes me back to Remain.

At least on the plus side there’s a chance of a second referendum so what I think about this may matter (marginally)!

I guess, to me the EU is so self-evidently deeply flawed in some ways and fantastic in others and I would hope there were sensible, serious people making genuine efforts to fix those problems. But the incentives within EU politics against doing so are so great that the only people who even want to talk about the problems in a meaningful way are the far-right and the far-left crazies (whose solutions will inevitably be worse than the problems). This strengthens the incentives to not address flaws in the EU because noone wants to associate with those people (look at the stick Cameron got for founding the ECR) so I don’t see how that changes.

Anyway I’ve rambled a bit.

3643

“Economic anxiety.”

Feels like I know that framing from somewhere.

3644

But not, apparently, this thread?

1 result for economic anxiety topic:78214

Brexit, aka, the UK Shoots Itself

Politics and religion

12m - “Economic anxiety.” Feels like I know that framing from somewhere.

3645

When you say this is about identity, how is that different from people saying this is about immigrants? Not to mention the absurdity of the notion that the EU has anything to do with this; national identities haven’t been erased in the many years since the EU have been founded and they’re unlikely to be so any time soon. Quite the contrary, in fact.

As for the sovereignty issue, there’s no question that many people use it as a shield for racism. That’s always been the case; nationalism and racism have been constant bed-fellows pretty much since the former movement started. But I won’t discount that there are people who see this as a serious problem, disassociated from other concerns. I’m just not particularly impressed with it, because it’s a stupid argument, born from a fundamental lack of understanding of the complex balancing act that the EU performs.between being a federation and an international organization.

Unfortunately, it’s also always going to be an easy argument for Brexiters, because it’s always going to be easier to cry “Oh, they’re taking away our freedom” than to explain the ways in which a highly complicated system like the EU has been constructed in order to balance national sovereignty with cooperation. Cooperation requires give and take. Unfortunately, people no longer seem to understand this, it feels like (also exemplified by people’s attraction to Trump’s simplistic and utterly stupid zero-sum deal-making).

Of course, it also doesn’t help that many Remain politicians spent most of their career blaming the EU for all their own failures at every opportunity (while taking credit for themselves for all benefits the EU brought). This is unfortunately a common failing of national politicians throughout Europe, and fuels a huge amount of anti-EU sentiment.

But as I’ve said a couple of times, I’m interested in seeing the reaction in the UK once they’re out, and the EU no longer has to coddle British sensibilities. Because the fact is that the UK government will end up spending even more time implementing directives from the EU after Brexit than before. Industry and services still needs to follow EU regulations to export to the EU. Government agencies still need to cooperate with their colleagues in the EU. The only difference post-Brexit, is that no one is going to really care what the UK thinks about those regulations once they’re out.

As many political scientists have pointed out, standing outside the EU while being a part of Europe gives you less sovereignty - not more. The UK government will inevitably find itself in the same unenviable situation as Norway is in - unable to exert real influence, but equally unable (due to domestic politics) to actually do the sensible thing and (re)join.

But at least anti-EU politicians will have a handy scapegoat to blame for all domestic ills for decades to come.

3646

May or May’s government believed the hype. That the EU truly needs the UK more than the other way around. Or that the EU would concede a deal based on the economic arguments.

Someone didn’t realize that the EU cannot give a former member a better deal than current members get. That even if the EU could, not right now it can’t, with the EU in serious trouble from all the nationalistic politics. That for some people the EU is not just an economic thing, and much like Brexit, it’s worth some economic pain. That the EU is willing to bend the rules to help politicians in member states, but not so much for politicians in former member states.

3647

You make some good points, but this is just not true. Like - at all.

There is literally constant dialogue, both within the EU organizations and by political scientists, about how to address the perceived problems of the EU. And changes are being implemented - often. I’d go so far as to say that the frequent changes are part of the current problem people have in understanding the democratic consequences of their EU votes. It’s really, really hard for an average EU citizen to understand how his vote for EU MP actually counts, when the system is constantly changing (the wiki page on Council voting gives a good overview of just how frequently voting systems get changed and modified. There’s literally not been a decade since the 1970s without changes to the council voting system. And that’s just one small part of what makes the EU tick).

3648

Not directed at you, just anyone that is still remain having full knowledge of what the true cost is.

From everything I’ve read, people thought when they voted remain (outside of all the racist stuff) that it was about economic opportunity, making the British economy better, and that the EU was holding them back. EVERY single interview I ever saw with a brexiter hit on this and never once did they say it had to do with sovereignty. It was always"We’re wasting our money throwing it at the EU" - something Draxen mentioned which led to my posts.

Here’s a personal example. I have a friend who is pro-brexit, but I didn’t know it until last week. He’s developmentally challenged and a gamer. Met him through Steam. He’s 23 as is his wife. She’s extremely disabled from being beaten regularly (and viciously) as a child. Their finances have been awful and they’ve been broke in part due to “austerity”. I found out they voted for Brexit thinking it was going to strengthen the safety social net. I had no idea he was a Brexiter until he mentioned wanting to join the yellow vest movement last week. When I told him the truth… that things were going to get worse for them economically if Brexit happened he was shocked. He was totally besides himself.

This is the prime example where people who voted for Brexit had no idea what they were doing because they were swept up in hysteria. A lot of people who voted for it will say they don’t mind some economic hardship now because they’re too proud to admit they screwed up and were tricked. Heck, look at union members here in the U.S. who voted for trump - the whole face-eating leopard thing. They still will say they believe in him because they still can’t grasp how badly they were tricked and taken advantage of.

I’ve got to mention the whole “sovereignty” thing sure feels a whole lot like Southern states saying they wanted sovereign rights ie. the Civil War split was over “States rights” and not slavery. I’m sure you can agree when you add in the racist components of Brexit you can draw a few parallels there. I’ve lived with the bullshit from Southern people my whole life and when I see people totally discount outward racism or Islamophobia - it’s being intellectually dishonest. Once again, Trump is on that side along with all the white nationalists.

Pretty much any time white nationalists represent a side, that is the wrong side.

3649

When you say the deal is “strategically misguided” with regard to Northern Ireland, do you have a specific conception of what a sound post-Brexit EU policy for NI would include?

From my American perspective–so doubtless missing a lot of stuff-- EU integration made the Troubles go away, and that should serve as a model for meeting the concerns of other sub-national groups within the EU.