He specifically mentioned Ukranians and Russians. Reading between the lines, he seems to object to the migrant workers having too many rights/too much bargaining power under the EU scheme. From a self-interest perspective, that makes more sense to me then a full out cut-off-your-noise-to-spite-your-face type of position. He is, perhaps, banking on being in a better place after the dust settles.
Timex
4449
Ya know what? Fuck these people.
Or rather, let them finish fucking themselves and get it over with so we can move on.
spiffy
4450
How does he expect to Russians to come over without visas? I know they can come illegally and overstay vacations, or come on boats or whatever, but it’s not as likely/‘easy’ for an impoverished Siberian to make their way over to the UK as for Latin Americans to make it the USA.
He expects the UK government to create some sort of work visa. The key, presumably, is that those would be on the UK’s terms, not the EU’s.
Timex
4452
Wasn’t the UK one of the primary, dominant voices in the EU? And had a major amount of influence in all of the EU rules?
But aren’t Russians Eastern-Europeans? Weren’t they part of the problem, according to the Brexit assholes?
spiffy
4454
Russians follow a strong authoritarian leader who flouts the rules. Brexiteers are pining for one of those.
They can have ours. Free.
The “ruled over by unelected officials” position is psychologically fascinating. Some folks are fine with having parlimentary decisions made primarily by officials they didn’t elect (e.g., all the other PMs from other areas that they didn’t directly vote for) because, presumably some other UK citizen did have a right to elect them. But extend that same logic to someone a French citizen voted for and all of a sudden it’s a violation.
It’s all about how far people are willing to extend the logic bounds of self. Alternatively, it’s just a bunch of rascist assholes using the unelected thing as an excuse. Probably a mix of both.
Menzo
4457
So he wants white people, specifically.
I expect that racist c*** is too fucking stupid to be aware of Russia’s central and eastern Asian parts, or know of Belarus, but yes, if he wants non-EU workers to exploit and can only name those two countries, we know why he really voted for Brexit.
Timex
4459
Most of the EU workers, if not all of them, were white too, weren’t they?
I always heard complaints about the Polish. Hard to get whiter than Poland.
Hard to get whiter than Ireland, too, but Irish were frequently portrayed in grossly racist terms in the 19th century, with distorted ape-like features, etc.
Racism is weird.
Racism = bias or prejudice against a different colour, culture, community, religion, tribe, people etc
Its 2019, this is what “racism” means now.
I stayed at a hotel next to Marble Arch, and all the hotel maids were (lovely) Polish blondes.
Not sure what the problem is.
If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.
Aceris
4464
Yes and no. The UK is a long way away from the centre of gravity of the EU in terms of economic structure, political and social attitudes. The UK also was considerably less influential than France and Germany (even before recent events). Add in the UK being outside the Euro and a lot of key decisions are taken with comparatively little concern for UK interests.
The thing about the “Franco-German axis” is that it’s not just France and Germany - it’s France and Germany and all the states closely aligned with them by history and political tradition. (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Denmark, Czech Republic). I’m not saying France and Germany control these states or they always agree, but they very often have similar interests, and have much more aligned political traditions, which is reflected in a more harmonious attitude to the European institutions.
Neither of the main “Spitzenkandidaten” in the 2014 EP election (Schultz and Juncker) enjoyed the support of a UK party - and they did not see this as a problem. (The whole affair was a stitchup by the EP arch-federalists to ensure it was impossible for anyone other than an arch-federalist to be chosen.)
The big turning point was 2008 and the subsequent crisis, which severly weakened several states that lay outside the Franco-German axis (principally Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy), and moved Germany to an unprecedented position of pre-eminence. German federalist thought rapidly came to dominate the EU institutions, culminating in the 2014 EP election and the choice between two Germanic arch-federalists as commission head.
The general impression I (and probably a lot of moderate UK eurosceptics) was left with was that an EU that was determined to move forwards in a direction most of the UK was opposed to, unwilling to even entertain the kind of reform that was needed (into some kind of meaningful two speed structure that didn’t give too much control of common concerns to the core), or indeed make any real concessions to states that didn’t like the direction of travel.
I voted remain, but I very much sympathise with the “Take back control” message and it did not speak to me of racism or even much of immigration. (Although some of the rhetoric in the campaign very much did).
Really, that’s just the story of a guy who felt that his concerns with Britain’s EU membership were more important than the survival of his / other people’s livelihood. Expect to see a lot more of these stories as Brexiters struggle to accept the consequences of their vote.
