UK EU Referendum Aftermath

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
sufi said:
The model train nerds i know must not be average then :cool: (you're assuming they'd be outers?)
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Ha, yes that was my assumption! Based on a hunch rather than on actually knowing any model train nerds, I must admit. My apologies to any proudly Europhile M.T.N.s out there.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Europe today is a mess. The strongest countries face lackluster economic growth, while the weakest, like Greece, are struggling to recover from depression-like downturns. Politically, things are even worse, as disillusionment with European and domestic institutions and elites is at record levels, and support for far-left and far-right parties is growing, creating political instability....

One key cause for Europe’s current crisis is the decline of the center-left.... From World War II onward, the center-left either ran the government or provided the loyal opposition in nearly every European democracy. No longer. Center-left parties have dwindled into shadows of their former might.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-if-you-dont-like-the-left-this-is-a-problem/
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Fantastic article by John Gray, that could go an any number of currently active threads here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/11/closing-liberal-mind

All that seemed solid in liberalism is melting into air. In Europe the EU struggled for over seven years to reach a trade deal with Canada, one of the most “European” countries in the world; at the same time, banking crises are festering in Italy and Germany and the continuing migrant crisis continues to strengthen far-right parties. In Britain Jeremy Corbyn’s strengthened hold over Labour following an ill-considered attempt to unseat him has reinforced a transformation in the party that reaches well beyond his position as leader. At a global level, Vladimir Putin is redrawing the geopolitical map with his escalating intervention in Syria, while the chief threat to the repressive regime Xi Jinping is building in China appears to be a neo-Maoist movement that harks back to one of the worst tyrannies in history. A liberal order that seemed to be spreading across the globe after the end of the Cold War is fading from memory.

Faced with this shift, liberal opinion-formers have oscillated between insistent denial and apocalyptic foreboding. Though the EU is barely capable of any action, raddled remnants of the old regime – Ed Miliband, Clegg, Mandelson, “the master” himself – have surfaced to demand that Brexit be fudged and, in effect, reversed. Even as the US election hangs in the balance, many are clinging to the belief that a liberal status quo can be restored. But Trump’s presidential campaign has already demolished a bipartisan consensus on free trade, and if he wins, a party system to which his Republican opponents and Hillary Clinton both belonged will be history. Dreading this outcome and suspecting it may yet come to pass, liberals rail against voters who reject their enlightened leadership. Suddenly, the folly of the masses has replaced the wisdom of crowds as the dominant theme in polite discourse. Few ask what in the ruling liberalism could produce such a debacle...
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firefinga

firefinga

Well-known member
vimothy said:
Fantastic article by John Gray, that could go an any number of currently active threads here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/11/closing-liberal-mind
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Hardly fantastic, especially this quote isn't :

A post-liberal society is one in which freedom and toleration are protected under the shelter of a strong state. In economic terms, this entails discarding the notion that the primary purpose of government is to advance globalisation. In future, governments will succeed or fail by how well they can deliver prosperity while managing the social disruption that globalisation produces.

A post liberal society will be authoritarian (at best) and likely proto-fascist. A strong state will indeed be there, and only protect the "freedom" of the most powerful economic circles. Such governments will "succeed" (meaning stay in power) as long as it's able to maintain the support of a group big enough perceived as the "silent majority" (the middle class, mainly). to get there, the pressure and scapegoating of minority groups will be intensified and wielded directly - even further welfare cuts, workfare and so on. You have such a state already in Hungary today.
 
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Beast of Burden
Ugh. Gray is awful, so glib and vague and...pugnacious in the most vain manner. If you want to understand what he's saying in a thorough and profound sense I'm afraid you're going to have to start reading Leo Strauss. Gray is straining for that post-liberal schema without the weight of classical learning. He's a nihilistic Thomas Friedman, no more, no less.
 
D

droid

Well-known member
craner said:
Ugh. Gray is awful, so glib and vague and...pugnacious in the most vain manner. If you want to understand what he's saying in a thorough and profound sense I'm afraid you're going to have to start reading Leo Strauss. Gray is straining for that post-liberal schema without the weight of classical learning. He's a nihilistic Thomas Friedman, no more, no less.
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❌ Got it in one.
 
D

droid

Well-known member
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Craner, Just re-read that essay and I'm a bit baffled by your animus, to be honest (and more so by the comparison with Friedman). Aside from whatever aesthetic differences you might have, isn't Gray substantively correct in that the "liberal moment" is coming to an end and that liberals (from all ends of the spectrum) don't want to accept it?
 
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S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
Attitudes to immigration and hard brexit change when assimilation is emphasised rather than diversity

http://www.fabians.org.uk/assimilation-and-the-immigration-debate/
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"It signifies the beginning of the assimilation of the most recent wave of Poles who came here ten years ago. They now have bilingual children of school age, and as a consequence, have just as much contact with English parents of their children’s friends as with their countrymen. Just as the Irish ‘community’ has dissolved (even though Irish people still migrate to Britain) – so the Polish community has reached the point of dispersal. In a week in which we’ve heard much about this country becoming more ethnically divided, it’s worth keeping in mind that here in east Kent the trend is the opposite."

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/mystery-kents-disappearing-polish-shops/
 
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