sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The Lib Dems are running on a platform of not invoking article 50. Labour needs a leader to do the same and that should take precedence over anti-austerity positions (after all, the economic effects of Brexit will be worse than the effects of austerity).
 

Woebot

Well-known member
" that among the divides exposed in this referendum, the most dangerous one was within a Labour movement that cared more for the moral high ground of progressive liberalism than the lives of the working and non-working poor."

link
 

droid

Well-known member
" that among the divides exposed in this referendum, the most dangerous one was within a Labour movement that cared more for the moral high ground of progressive liberalism than the lives of the working and non-working poor."

link

lol. Yeah, thats clearly the most dangerous divide, not the divide between multicultural minorities and racist neo-fascist murdering thugs, who will edge closer and closer to power once Scotland dumps the UK and the remainder moves to an eternal little england Tory one party state.
 

droid

Well-known member
Cl3terVXIAE4rjT.jpg
 

vimothy

yurp
From Stephen Bush's article in the New Statesman:

At the start of the campaign, the question that most accurately predicted whether you would back Remain or Leave was consistently: “Are you a graduate?” (Those who answered yes were much more likely to vote in favour of staying in the EU.) Stronger In never found a way to change that and win over those who left education at 18 or earlier...

This fissure has been growing for the best part of a decade and a half, but Britain’s first-past-the-post system, which deters newcomers and maintains entrenched parties, has provided a degree of insulation to Labour that its European cousins have lacked...

In office, both Blair and Brown calculated, wrongly, that Labour’s core vote had “nowhere else to go”. In opposition under Ed Miliband, the party calculated, again wrongly, that discontent with immigration, and the rise of Ukip powered by that discontent, was a problem for the Conservative Party alone.

In a 2014 pamphlet for the Fabian Society, *Revolt on the Left, the activist Marcus Roberts, the academic Rob Ford and the analyst Ian Warren warned that Labour had “few reasons to cheer about the Ukip insurgency and plenty to worry about”. When the votes were cast in the general election the following year, that prediction turned out to be dispiritingly accurate...

For the most part, however, first-past-the-post papered over the cracks in Labour’s broad coalition: cracks that, in the harsh light of the EU referendum, have become obvious. The divide isn’t simply one of class, or income.... Inhospitality towards Brexit proved a stronger indication of city status than a mere cathedral: Vote Leave generally found Britain’s great cities more difficult terrain than the surrounding towns and countryside.

The problem of the fracturing vote is particularly acute for the Labour Party... Britain’s EU referendum placed Hampstead and Hull on opposing sides for the first time in modern British political history.

It was Tony Blair who... said that the new debate in politics was not left against right, but “open v closed” – openness to immigration, to diversity, to the idea of Europe...

At the 2015 election Labour’s coalition was drawn from the young, ethnic minorities and the well educated... The party was repudiated in the Midlands, went backwards in Wales and was all but wiped out in the east of England. (Scotland was another matter altogether.) Its best results came in Britain’s big cities and university towns.

The Remain campaign gave Labour a glimpse of how Miliband’s manifesto might have fared without the reassuring imprimatur of a red rosette. Britain Stronger In Europe has been rejected in the Midlands and struggled in the east of England. But it also failed to inspire passion in Sunderland, Oldham and Hull – all areas that, for now, return Labour MPs.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I can't remember who posted this in the previous thread, but thanks, whoever it was. It's bloody good.

I’ve long suspected that, on some unconscious level, things could be even stranger than this: the self-harm inflicted by Brexit could potentially be part of its appeal. It is now being reported that many Leave voters are aghast at what they’ve done, as if they never really intended for their actions to yield results.

This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise, that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US. Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that chimes more closely with people’s private experiences. The discovery of the ‘Case Deaton effect’ in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support for Trump. I don’t know of any direct equivalent to this in the UK, but it seems clear that – beyond the rhetoric of ‘Great Britain’ and ‘democracy’ – Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy, and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel guilty for giving way to.

Thatcher and Reagan rode to power by promising a brighter future, which never quite materialised other than for a minority with access to elite education and capital assets. The contemporary populist promise to make Britain or American ‘great again’ is not made in the same way. It is not a pledge or a policy platform; it’s not to be measured in terms of results. When made by the likes of Boris Johnson, it’s not even clear if it’s meant seriously or not. It’s more an offer of a collective real-time halucination, that can be indulged in like a video game.
 

vimothy

yurp
How much of that (alleged regret of leave voters, stupidly not knowing what the EU is or that their votes might have an effect) is a real phenomenon and how much an extension of the same derision from remain voters that clearly motivated many of them in the first place?
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
this was a vote from the *white* working classes (majority of BME voters, most of whom are still working class, did not vote the same, not cos they love how things are, or its any better, but because to vote leave would be tantamount to a vote for UKIP, if not in name, than in ideology) to the rest of the country. nothing to do with the EU. and i dont really blame them. the campaigns were dire and did little to really identify any of the actual EU related issues at stake. also seems to be a big vote from white, older pensioners, or those approaching pensionable age (there was some stat about how people who identified as british were less likely to vote leave than those who saw themselves as english) yearning for the days of post-empire enriched britain.

might as well not have had boxes for in or out, but just for 'the past' and 'the modern world'. most people in the interviews are angry, talk about how things cant get any worse. its a rejection of the bleakness of modern britain. (all those brexit regret videos seem like further condescension of anyone who opposed remain, a way to avoid accepting why they voted how they did. also, telling leave voters that they are thick and did not understand what they were doing is a fast track to further 'culture war', which looks like the latest rebranding of class war to my eyes, but n/m).

easy for cameron to just resign after being the one to get us into this situation in the first place, who made it easier for poorer people around the country to slip into dire straits. also really poor of labour to think now is the time for yet another leadership battle. all sinking ships. id expect boris to lead england. not because anyone really has hope in him. but because they just dont care anymore. and there is no one better. (and also because he is a duplicitous, soulless cunt, who will do anything to take power).
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member

ah who gives a shit. he might be sad that he has made his friend resign from being PM, but hes not that sad. he got what he wanted.

Yep - is there a chance he won't even stand for PM? He knows there's a big chance that he'll end up being hated by absolutely everyone, which might be unbearable for such an attention-seeker.

only in london. or some of the other cities perhaps. elsewhere, i doubt he inspires that kind of hate.

" that among the divides exposed in this referendum, the most dangerous one was within a Labour movement that cared more for the moral high ground of progressive liberalism than the lives of the working and non-working poor."

Yeah, thats clearly the most dangerous divide, not the divide between multicultural minorities and racist neo-fascist murdering thugs, who will edge closer and closer to power once Scotland dumps the UK and the remainder moves to an eternal little england Tory one party state.

it is. but on street level, it will be the usual scapegoats (migrants, anyone who looks like a migrant, etc etc).

eg - https://www.facebook.com/sarah.leblanc.718/media_set?set=a.10101369198638985&type=3
 
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vimothy

yurp
Mostly anecdotal, but still a note making the intuitively correct point that more settled and lower income migrants are more likely to have voted leave:

In the aftermath of yesterday’s vote for Brexit, I had several conversations that surprised me. The first, with a Romanian who had recently arrived in the UK, who claimed that all the Indians and Pakistanis he knew had voted for Brexit. The second, with Pakistani friends, was that an overwhelming majority of their friends had voted for Brexit, even though they did not normally vote. The reasons given were economic: they expected lower taxes and lower competition from Eastern European migrants in low-wage jobs.

Slough, Luton and Dagenham, all areas with large South Asian populations voted leave, and Leicester, Newham and Harrow were very close to 50%. This may mirror a quixotic pattern that we saw in the last general election, where older Irish voters supported UKIP over Labour. Migrants, especially settled migrants in a precarious economic situation, can see other migrants as a threat, especially where they are not linked to them by ties of family or culture. Paul Collier argues that recent migrants are much more likely to lose out from further migration than other people.

http://www.integrationhub.net/britains-ethnic-minorities-and-the-brexit-vote/
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
no one is saying all BME people voted remain. its something like 60% asian brits voted remain, and 70% black brits voted remain. what can you do? migrants are as competitive as anyone else. and often people just give the new arrivals the same treatment they got. hard hearts, poor memories.
 
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vimothy

yurp
Sure, and how that vote is distributed is likely to vary along different lines, like income, age, location, etc, etc. Be nice to see some statistics showing how it all breaks down.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
How much of that (alleged regret of leave voters, stupidly not knowing what the EU is or that their votes might have an effect) is a real phenomenon and how much an extension of the same derision from remain voters that clearly motivated many of them in the first place?

Given that it is all anecdotal evidence, it'd be hard to say. I'm hoping polling will give us a more accurate answer.

After seeing the immediate economic shock, the potential break up of the Union and the back peddling on pledges such as funding the NHS and reducing immigration, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a fair bit of voter regret.

Polls showed that the majority of people weren't willing to lose a single pound of their annual income to reduce immigration. At the same time the areas that are the most economically dependant on the EU voted to leave. This would suggest voters were fairly ignorant on how the EU benefited them.

There's been a shift in editorial tone from the Daily Mail (1.5 million circulation) and the Sunday Times. That might make a difference.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't think the derision is entirely underserved. Many people in this country are genuinely ignorant of nearly every aspect of politics.

I mean, I admit that I'm ignorant compared to some people who post a lot about politics here, but at least I know that.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
After seeing the immediate economic shock, the potential break up of the Union and the back peddling on pledges such as funding the NHS and reducing immigration, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a fair bit of voter regret.

some. but most are probably still angry for the same things. now they might also just angry at lying politicians. but they probably still just want a change, any change. this sort of self flattery from remainers, 'cant they just see the error of their ways?!', makes me laugh a bit. do british people care that much about being lied to? im not sure. i think we are inured to it. i dont think most remainers really knew what they were voting for either. all it seemed to come down to was what 'idea' of england we wanted, rather than any material issues at play. which is important. i think this has changed britain psychologically. but most people seemed in the dark i think.

TBH, and i know google exists, but one of this countrys main failings in education i think is not teaching politics early enough to students. though obv that depends what kind of school you went to.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
jeremy corbyn is a bourgeois fantasist. socialism does not appeal to the working classes - frankly they are too sensible.

Can you explain exactly what you mean by 'bourgeois fantasist' here - I'm interested, as just throwing around vague insults that sound nice is no use to anyone. Especially at the moment.

And I think you might be romanticising wildly there. It is abundantly clear this week that, as in the middle class and the upper class and every damn class, there are some staggeringly thick people in the working classes. There are also some incredibly bright people and some people of medium intelligence and.... jeez. Is this really a sponsored week for ridiculous blanket statements (and yes, I'm sure I'm guilty of it too)?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale just to be lazy and take the most bleedingly obvious example
 
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