vimothy

yurp
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

-- "The Solution", Brecht (1953)
 

vimothy

yurp
I didn't, actually. I'm afraid I'm one of those awful fence-sitters, who couldn't decide which outcome was worse.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
An opinion poll does not equate to a democratic mandate.

Of course it doesn't, but a shift in public opinion offers opportunities for a new mandate.

If parliament reflects the wishes of the public (as it's supposed to), then that may actually mean going against the referendum results if the public changes its mind.

Just noticed I left out the ‘m’ in ‘may have just…’, which might explain the confusion.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Not sure if that poem was in response to what I said. If it was, I would like to point out that I was saying that the government should respond to the wishes of the public. That’s the complete opposite attitude to the one the poem was satirising.
 

vimothy

yurp
The democratic mandate is provided by the referendum, which you want to disregard - making the whole notion of "democratic mandate" meaningless.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The democratic mandate is provided by the referendum, which you want to disregard - making the whole notion of "democratic mandate" meaningless.

Don't you think the public have the right to change their minds? If they do, do you not think that policy should reflect that?

I feel that if the majority of the public turn out to be in favour of remaining before article 50 is invoked, then it shouldn't be invoked. That's not anti-democratic.

On he other had if they majority of the public are still in favour of leaving, then I feel we should leave.
 

droid

Well-known member
Unfortunately we dont live in anarchy. Democracy in Western societies is entirely at the mercy of opportunity.
 

vimothy

yurp
When I was invited on to the BBC TV news channel on Friday afternoon, it quickly became clear that... the Corbyn matter, was what they really wanted to talk about . I boggled. Here we were, facing a huge constitutional, diplomatic and political crisis....

The Prime Minister had resigned that morning. His Party was exposed as utterly divided, cloven from the nave to the chaps by discord. It was and is seriously proposing to leave the country to drift till October before picking a new leader..

A majority of the electorate, in a high turnout had specifically endorse a policy rejected and indeed sneered at for decades by both major political parties, plus the BBC and most of the media, the civil service and the whole establishment. They had done so after a fair fight, in which the other side had flung millions of pounds and a great deal of frightening propaganda at them.

(...)

And in the midst of all this the BBC wanted to talk about Jeremy Corbyn...

This odd, faintly unhinged preoccupation is also noticeable among the battalion of establishment political commentators, who also seem to have little else to talk about. I say it is unhinged because it is a failure of proportion...

The reason for this obsession is that one of the main functions of modern political journalism is to act as a sort of thought police. Anyone who strays from the 'centre' (an apparently objective term for a subjective opinion) is mocked, belittled, subjected to scandal and exposure, pictured looking foolish or eating messily, accused of ‘gaffes’ and ceaselessly the subject of stories about how he or she is being plotted against and is weak.

This supposed ‘centre’ can loosely be described as Blairism...

Mr Corbyn offends against this because he still openly defines himself as a socialist... He is also... a foolish throwback, as he has not cured himself of the 19th century socialist interest in state ownership and trade union power. And he has the usual embarrassing baggage of sympathies with various unappealing Latin American leftists. Deep down, this package makes him hugely suspicious of the Blairites, because he can see that supranational bodies such as the EU will favour the big corporations he despises against the attempts of left-wing governments (such as he dreams of heading), and that the destruction of national sovereignty means the extinction of his dreams. Only a proud and independent Britain could ever implement his desired programme. So... he is like a paraded hostage, frantically signalling to those who watch him on TV, through demeanour and body language, that the things that come out of his mouth about the EU are not in fact his real sentiments.

The Blairites return the favour. They can’t stand him. But as we know they can’t easily get rid of him either, and if they do, they can't replace him with one of their own. Mr Corbyn doesn’t owe his election to them but to the Party members, who are also Europhiles but love Mr Corbyn’s old-fashioned positions so much, and reasonably enjoy his principled and unflinching political style... that they don’t care.

The mystery is this - what are the Blairites still doing in Jeremy Corbyn’s party anyway? They were elected on the wrong ticket. They have fulfilled the great 1990s dream of forcing the Tories to agree with them, and have belatedly discovered that the same Tories are better than they are at raising money, and at winning elections....

The whole lot of them, no more than professional career politicians, would be much happier in the Cameron Tory Party....

So, in yet another illustration of Kissinger’s Law, that the fighting is bitterest where the stakes are smallest, they occupy their long-honed political skills in undermining their own leader. This is a task in which they can probably never succeed, but they have come to enjoy it in the absence of any other purposeful activity...

I’d got used to this Corbyn-obsessive rubbish, but for this to be the dominant strand of political coverage, three days after the momentous vote, is simply absurd.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co...d-from-the-eu-and-we-may-not-ever-do-so-.html
 

luka

Well-known member
The reason for this obsession is that one of the main functions of modern political journalism is to act as a sort of thought police. Anyone who strays from the 'centre' (an apparently objective term for a subjective opinion) is mocked, belittled, subjected to scandal and exposure, pictured looking foolish or eating messily, accused of ‘gaffes’ and ceaselessly the subject of stories about how he or she is being plotted against and is weak.

has your hero been reading chomsky?
 

luka

Well-known member
not to say i disagree with him. its stating the obvious and its all been said before 10,000 times on 10,000 facebook pages and 10,000 dinner parties, but no less true for all that
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member

“A majority of the electorate, in a high turnout had specifically endorse a policy rejected and indeed sneered at for decades by… the BBC and most of the media”

This is an analysis of print media’s editorial positions on the referendum and Europe. It would suggests Hitchen’s claim is wrong:

https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-analysis-shows-extent-of-press-bias-towards-brexit-61106

I’d also add that it seems Leave greatly benefited from the BBC’s false equivalence. For example pro- remain and pro- leave economists would be featured in roughly equal number despite an overwhelming consensus amongst economists. Similarly, the conflicting positions of the RMT and TUC were portrayed as equivalent. The TUC has about 6 million members, whereas the RMT has about 80,000 (roughly 1.3%).

“They had done so after a fair fight, in which the other side had flung millions of pounds and a great deal of frightening propaganda at them.”

I’m not going to defend Remain’s false claims (the “emergency budget” being an example). However what was characterised as “Project Fear”, was actually expert opinion based on robust economic models (this is trade theory, so the “they didn’t predict the financial crisis” argument doesn’t wash).

Moreover Leave lied a great deal more than remain and evoked fear with talk of “breaking points” and Turkish accession.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
We have referendums here fairly regularly and the notion of 'balance' as adhered to on the public broadcaster has reached absurd levels. Months ahead of the vote on marriage last year it was decided you couldn't have anyone from the LGBT community on air talking about their life or book or whatever without having some fringe catholic on to offer a counter view. From current affairs to soft focus human interest stuff, the broadcaster was in the end literally going around with a stopwatch to ensure they weren't caught out. The same is still going on at the moment over abortion even though no referendum has been called and we're are likely two to three years away from any vote or formal campaign.

There is a tiny group of very commented conservative activists who monitor everything and have become adept at getting vexatious but ultimately successful complaints through the Broadcasting Authority. The public broadcaster in turn has taken their own ultra-cautious interpretation of these rulings and things are now at preposterous levels. Essentially, at best 10% of the electorate are now treated as a one side of a debate and every discussion of certain hot issues instantly becomes 'a debate'. Even by Irish referendum standards, there was absolutely scurrilous commentary broadcast ahead of the vote last May. Vile, inflammatory, utterly baseless homophobia was legitimised on the airwaves as a credible talking point.

In this scenario the audience comes away none the wiser about any issue and people are even reluctant to go on air across the table from people who can say any old bullshit. We've seen a repeat of that now in Britain were the leave sides claims melted away the minute they won but tbh, we will be a long time building a full and definite picture of the decades leading to the Brexit vote. A frightening amount of people are utter uninformed about the world they live in regardless of the bonkers stuff we saw during the campaign.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Seems Jonathan Portes' Condocert Paradox* is playing out as expected:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmYTy_2WcAA4yw2.jpg:large

The plurality of the public would rather have access to the single market than control of EU immigration. As would the vast majority of MP's.

One third (33%) of Leave voters said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”

lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/

How many of them would have not voted or even voted for Remain, had the options been remaining or a Norway-style deal that allows free movement of people? Would it have been enough for Remain to win?

* http://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/condorcet-paradox-work-rock-paper-scissors-eu-referendum#.V3joUpMrJfR
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This is an analysis of print media’s editorial positions on the referendum and Europe. It would suggests Hitchen’s claim is wrong.

A cursory glance at the headlines of five of the UK's eight major daily papers over the last couple of decades would have told you the same thing. And even the Guardian, a broadly Europhile paper, is by no means consistently pro-EU in the same way that, say, the Sun is consistently anti-EU.

From current affairs to soft focus human interest stuff, the broadcaster was in the end literally going around with a stopwatch to ensure they weren't caught out. The same is still going on at the moment over abortion even though no referendum has been called and we're are likely two to three years away from any vote or formal campaign.

Sounds like you guys have a particularly bad case but I think this is an increasingly universal phenomenon. In America it's customary for media sources to give the idea that "some" scientists think human activity is contributing to climate change while "some" scientists don't, despite the fact that the former "some" is well over 90% (a commonly quoted figure is 97%) and the latter "some" is a tiny minority, many of whom have turned out to have close financial ties to the petrochem industry.
 
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