If it is the result, then what was the cause?
As in the cause behind the cause.
What caused a resurgence in the hard right, in anti immigrant sentiment etc?
I mean, I worked with a chef in 2004-2005 who was very pro British anti immigrant and didn’t like me when we first met. You could see it in his eyes.
Fast forward 4 months later when I was leaving and he was really really friendly to me, bought me a full set of chef’s whites etc.
Turns out he had bought heavily into the “immigrants come, take jobs and/or scrounge benefits” line.
This was very interesting to me because I was/am an immigrant and I’ve never claimed a benefit in welfare (does reduced council tax rates for living alone count?)
That was back in 2005, when the economy was boooooooooming! It was also just before I went to France for my Erasmus, which was the year all the Poles came to England. So his attitude predates the mass immigration and the austerity, but I doubt either of those made him feel any better (the place we were working was closed in 2007)
So I wonder where the idea originally came from?
I understand that, and thanks for informing me, yet that is the narrative that is peddled constantly.
And the voices to counter that are few and far between.
So it is a very easy story to tell to say one or more of the following:
- we’re suffering
- how can we help others while we are suffering
- Germany, and therefore the EU, are bringing in extra people
- We didn’t ask for this
- They are all ISIS agents
and for sure that, logically, must have played a big part in the Brexit thinking.