Whatever, without 5 million votes from 14 word-white-supremacists there wouldn’t be a Brexit. Its an ethno-nationalist xenophobic hard right project. That people turn a blind eye to this and wilfully ally with millions of hardcore racists doesn’t absolve them of responsibility. They are prepared to sell minorities down the river and empower the ethno-nationalist supremacists to achieve their goals.(ie “all we voted for was to make the trains run on time”) Fuck them all.
Errmmm…
I don’t want to argue against you, because you have a different perspective and no doubt your experiences render it a valid one, experiences I lack.
But, on the face of it, what you are saying is a bit…well…extreme!
I know at least 2 people who voted Brexit, and strongly suspect quite a few other associates did so too.
One is a very reasonable, lovely guy who is in training to join the church. He said trade deals.
The other quoted EU diktats (I alluded to him earlier, several posts ago.)
Now, the first guy is most assuredly not a racist, and the 2nd guy had 2 kids with an Indian lady, so I wouldn’t call him a racist either.
Now, I am not saying you are wrong, only saying that my limited exposure to specific brexiteers doesn’t quite fit the picture you paint.
If they aren’t racists they are racist enablers and/or apologists.
5 million people voted due to insane fears of loss of white culture, of loss of white supremacy, due to fear of foreigners, due to hatred of immigrants. 7 million people stood with them and enabled the 5 million to achieve their goals. None of these people can achieve their goals without an alliance and joint venture with racists. If they were too niaive or too stupid or wilfully blind that’s not an excuse, because two years on, with a MASSIVE rise in the far right they STILL stand with the racists, despite knowing what damage it will cause, despite knowing what it has done to racism in this country, they STILL want Brexit.
Fuck them all. They are people who watch what has gone on for the last few years in the White House and still vote for Trump anyway. They enable and empower the worst political movements in our life time.
Like i mentioned, perhaps 90% of Germany’s voters didnt want to liquidate half of Europe, but they listened to the campaign rhetoric of hate, scapegoating and blame and voted for the Man Who Will Make The Trains Run On Time And Give Me A Job anyway. No one is blameless, no one can dodge this, they are responsible for their actions, they made a wilful, conscious decision to tick that box in the privacy of the booth.
vyshka
3627
Not really. It is a representative democracy. They are not required to vote the way you want them to. They do the job as they see fit, and if you dont agree with the results vote someone else in.
Quaro
3628
Jesus only 10 days away and still a mess.
The UK might be worse than even me at waiting till the last minute. WTF.
Miramon
3629
Currently predicting the Tories somehow get their 3-month extension from the EU, and then utterly fail to accomplish anything during that time except possibly, just possibly they might ditch May for someone who turns out to be even worse.
Meanwhile Corbyn will be doing whatever it is he does instead of coming up with meaningful opposition policy. No doubt most of his time will be spent not-so-subtly undermining every effort to cancel Brexit entirely.
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.
jpinard
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.
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.
jpinard
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?
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.
jpinard
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.
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.
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.
Aceris
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.
Sharpe
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.
Sharpe
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.
Aceris
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.
Aceris
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.
“Economic anxiety.”
Feels like I know that framing from somewhere.
