Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Agree with all of this article - it's also sort of what I mean about Tory ruthlessness with their darlings/history v Labour nostalgia/sentimentalism, plus the other typical issues of the left in this country:

The problems with Labour mythology
With Labour again promising to talk in a language that the voters can understand, a new book asks whether the party's historical myths are the problem
By
Anthony Broxton
20 May, 2021

Ahead of his appearance at the 2019 Durham Miners Gala, Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that, although "the mines are gone", the "miners' spirit lives on". This spirit was the "spirit of solidarity and the working-class principle that says: united we are strong".

Over 35 years have passed since the end of the 1984/85 miners' strike, yet the dispute remains central to the politics of the Labour party. For Corbyn, the conflict encapsulated his belief that politics is inherently a battle between good and evil forces. It was he who had "stood by the miners while others walked by", as the forces of Murdoch, Thatcherism and neoliberalism brought a once-proud industry "to its knees".

Corbyn pinpointed the miners' strike as the moment that Old Britain died. He placed himself central to the struggle to keep it alive, admitting that the events at Orgreave are "seared into the memory" of the "hundreds of thousands of us" who "had supported the miners".

Corbyn revived memories of the strike and the Durham Miners Gala as leader of the party. It was something that Keir Starmer was acutely aware of when he launched his own bid for the leadership in 2019. He deployed a miner to narrate his social media video, reminding us that "in the struggles of the 1980s, the labour movement stood in solidarity against Thatcher". He had stood on picket lines at Wapping in 1986, and promised not to speak to The Sun due to their coverage of Hillsborough in 1989. He was praised on both left and right of the party for framing his politics against Thatcher.

Rebecca Long-Bailey also chose to define her politics against the 1980s. She had not been old enough to protest against Mrs Thatcher, but she could centre her campaign around the year she was born: 1979. It was, she argued, the year in which "a new conservative leader came to power who would shatter the foundations of our economy for decades to come". Boris Johnson was "intent on finishing Thatcher's work".

What are Labour politicians doing when they frame their politics through the prism of someone elected to power over 40 years ago? In the academic world, historians such as Jon Lawrence have argued that Labour's "shared stories" become a form of mythology, which can "take on a life of their own within the collective identity and historical consciousness of party activists".

Others, such as Richard Jobson, have examined how a form of nostalgia for traditional concepts of "community" and "solidarity" runs through the party's entire history. This nostalgia "has provided the emotional adhesive that has held the party together", but at the same time, has constrained its "ability to communicate effectively with the demands of modern voters". In the confines of a party leadership contest, mythology serves as a uniting force against a common enemy. But what happens when you try to apply it in the world in which the ordinary voter lives?

In 2019, Labour battled to keep hold of ex-mining towns by reminding voters about the politics of Mrs Thatcher. "THE NORTH REMEMBERS" was a campaign that focussed on the 1980s, with the conclusion that "You can never trust the Tories". In post-industrial towns like Wigan and Leigh, a leaflet was circulated with a picture of Thatcher's handbag on it. "Don't let them finish the job", it claimed.

The subsequent drubbing in those coal towns — in Leigh, Blyth Valley, Bishop Auckland, Bolsover, Ashfield, Bassetlaw — was a harsh reminder that memories of the miners' strike matter more to Labour people than the public at large. While Mrs Thatcher is still hugely important to the way Labour orientates itself in the world, the rest of the country moved on a long time ago.

The defeat in 2019 has not dampened the desire within Labour to roll back the clock to a "golden age" before Thatcherism — and by natural extension — New Labour. Jon Trickett is the latest to argue that Labour needs to rediscover its left radicalism to reverse the 1980s. "Tony Blair did not shift the overall character of Thatcherism. Nor did he want to", he argued last month.

This trend is the subject of Chris Clarke's book, The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master (Penguin, 2020), a highly original take on Labour mythology and how this impacts the party's ability to connect with the voters. Clarke roots his theories in the politics of the contemporary left and has identified three mythologies that need to be overcome if the party is to win power again. He terms these "the Dark Knight", "the Puppet Master" and "the Golden Age".

The first concept of the "Dark Knight" is the belief that politics is a battle between good and evil forces. Safe in the idea that your politics are on the "right side of history", activists can be lured into believing that anyone not voting for the Labour party is not just wrong but immoral. In the immediate aftermath of the Hartlepool by-election, we saw people take to social media to prove Clarke's point. For example, the UEA law professor Paul Bernal drew the conclusion that the voters "don't actually want a fairer society, they want a society that's unfair on other people, not them".

Such arguments have permeated thinking on the left for a while. In the aftermath of the 2015 election, one Ed Miliband supporter argued on The Daily Politics that Ed had clearly been "too fucking good for this country". Clarke's central premise is that the parties and organisations that the Left opposes are no more selfish or inferior to the Left. Labour must therefore resist the urge to conflate opposition to the Conservative party into a hatred for all Tory voters. Labour's post-war election winners — Attlee, Wilson and Blair — all made open appeals to Conservative voters by framing their values as Labour values.

The second myth that Clarke has identified relates to the "Puppet Master". This is the idea that if what the Left wants to do is beneficial to the working class and broader society (free broadband, scrapping tuition fees etc.), then the only explanation for electoral rejection is some powerful forces "rigging" the electorate to vote against their own interests.

Post-Hartlepool, many people believed that they had found the "silver bullet" to explain why Labour had lost. It was footage of an "ill-informed" voter who blamed Labour for the closure of his local court and police station. The video was viewed over two million times after politicians and journalists jumped on it as evidence of a political culture that has corrupted the voters' minds.

This can veer into a view that Labour only loses because the electorate is stupid. Take the "comedian" James Felton, who accused Hartlepool voters of failing "the idiot test" for voting for the "LET THE CORPSE PILE GROW LARGE" party. Or the former Coronation Street actor Reece Dinsdale, who wrote that the voters could "revel in your Tory election victories all you like, but know that you're revelling in your ignorance."

Clarke's third and final myth is that of the "Golden Age" and the belief that a return to a "spirit of 1945" should be the Left's goal. This takes as its central premise the view that Thatcherism destroyed everything good and noble about British society. Only its reversal can see Britain prosper. Clarke questions why "left-wingers hanker for the years of the Black and White Minstrels, the lunatic asylum, the all-female typing pool and the secondary modern — when abortion was illegal and only a privileged 3 per cent went to university?".

Because Brexit is seen as an extension of the Thatcherite project, any optimism that Britain can now get better is readily dismissed. This feeds into a fatalism for the future of society. One only has to look at the criticism that Keir Starmer received earlier this year when he claimed that the "UK's best years lie ahead" to see how this impacts the Labour mindset. Miliband and Corbyn, whether they intended to or not, were seen as people who wanted to turn Britain back to the 1970s. It was always a crude observation but an easy one to make when you talk about reversing the progress of the past 40 years.

The biggest takeaway from The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master is that the three myths have created a safe environment for losing, preventing Labour from taking its defeats too seriously. Post-Hartlepool, Labour is finally embarking on a rare mid-term period of introspection on how it ended up in the electoral wilderness again. The latest argument, put forward by Angela Rayner, is that Labour has "given off an air of talking down to people and telling people what they need or even what they should want or what they should think."

The idea that the Labour party does not "speak the language" of "the people" is rooted in the party's history. It was an accusation Herbert Morrison made in the 1930s, as did Douglas Jay in the 1950s when he claimed that "the slogans of 1926 and 1931 do not mean a great deal to the younger people today." In Labour's last equivalent electoral crisis — 1983 — Michael Foot clung to the belief that communication was his only problem: "We could have still won against the Thatcher Government, if we had had more time to state our case." When campaigning to be leader, it is often forgotten that Neil Kinnock argued that the manifesto that delivered the party's worst defeat since the 1930s "was not extreme", but that Labour simply lacked the "self-discipline to win".

But what if Labour's problems are more significant than how it "talks down" to the voters? What if its own interpretation of history is part of the problem? Labour mythology runs deep, and there is a tendency to align electoral rejection to forces beyond its control. From the Zinoviev letter in the 1920s to the Falklands War in the 1980s to the Sheffield Rally in the 1990s and up to the present with the Financial Crash and Brexit, the party comforts itself that electoral victory was closer than it really was.

As the self-proclaimed party of the "traditional" working class, it cannot yet fully comprehend what appeal the Conservative party have in its former heartlands. Brexit and Tony Blair are the easy answers for the party's demise, but The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master offers one of the most innovative explanations of how Labour has lost its way over the past decade.

So, before the inevitable policy review, the change in advisors and the adoption of a new language, perhaps the most significant task Starmer could undertake is to revisit some of the stories the party tells itself about Thatcher and her importance to the electorate in 2021. By stripping away some of the mythology around a lost "Golden Age", and addressing the electorate as it is today, rather than what it was in 1979 or 1997, he may finally find the language to connect the party to "the people" again.

[The Larch]

It seems that also EU nationals with settled status, work permits and even in the process of getting British citizenship are at the mercy of the border guards at the moment.

UK like an 'enemy state' to EU nationals detained by Border Force
Confused over regulations, Home Office border staff meet legitimate visitors and workers with suspicion

EU citizens living and working in the UK have revealed how they are being met with suspicion and threats that they will be refused entry at the UK border for the first time in their lives, fuelling fresh fears that Border Force officials have not been trained in the new Brexit rules.

Wolfgang, a German national who runs an IT business, was detained at Heathrow airport despite having proof of settled status, indefinite leave to remain and a British passport on the way.

He is furious that his rights were suspended on the whim of a Border Force official.

"I have settled status," he said. "I have indefinite leave to remain. I am about to become a British citizen. How is it that a border official with one tick can suspend those rights?"

"To be blunt, I am avoiding coming back to the UK now until I get my British passport," Wolfgang said from Germany. "I pay a large amount of tax there, I have never used the health service, I contribute to the economy, I own property there. London is my favourite city in the world, but I have no documents to show I can stay there," he said, referring to the fact that the government has voted against giving EU citizens a residency card to show employers, landlords or border officials.

"They need to provide a document that guarantees that this is an irrevocable status unless you have some sort of major criminal offence," said Wolfgang.

Hilary Benn, a Labour MP and the former chair of the now-disbanded Commons Brexit select committee, said cases such as Wolfgang's raise concerns about what is in store for the 4.9 million EU citizens who have already been granted settled or pre-settled status, especially as they start to return from visits to their countries of birth when Covid restrictions are lifted.

"It's worrying to hear of these incidents happening. The Home Office needs to make sure that all Border Force staff are fully trained in applying the new rules."

Referring to a new Brexit body set up in January to protect EU citizens' rights, Benn added: "This is something that the Independent Monitoring Authority needs to look at."

Among the other cases is that of Antonio, a Spanish airline worker who was made to wait for 45 minutes at Gatwick while border officials tried to decide if he was lying when he told them he had pre-settled status.

He said: "My passport was not associated with the settled status. When I told them that is because I applied using my ID card which was perfectly acceptable to the Home Office, they told me that ID cards are no longer acceptable at the border."

He was only let through after he produced his airline ID and his flight-attendant schedule to prove he was not an illegal migrant.

"Because of my job I have flown to many destinations and I have been through border controls in different countries. I felt I had landed in some random enemy state.

"This is the first time I felt intimidated by a police officer asking me questions just for being a foreigner living in the UK," he added.

For new arrivals with work visas, it is not plain sailing either.

One Italian man, arriving for a new job at a top British bank, was confronted with officials unsure of the rules when he landed at London City airport.

Marco was detained for hours while border officials, who had refused his request to stamp the arrival date on his passport, pondered over a letter from his lawyer telling him he needed the official marking on his passport in order to take up his new job.

"I was escorted to a waiting room. After almost three hours I was called by an officer who explained to me that it was 'a bit of a grey area' as my visa had been issued in electronic form and no guidance had been given by the government on how this would be formally recognised/recorded on one's passport," said Marco.

When he arrived at his new job, the first thing the HR department required was the stamp on his passport for their 'right to work' check.

Marco's case is one of half a dozen brought to the attention of the Guardian, which has reported how another cohort of EU citizens – those arriving to visit or to look for work – have been handcuffed, locked up and had personal belongings removed from them before being deported.

Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister and author of the Free Movement blog, said: "This is just how borders work and this has been happening to everyone else from outside the EU and is now just being applied to EU citizens.

"The whole point of free movement was to remove friction at the border. To deliberately reintroduce it was bound to have consequences.

"How Border Force is going to cope with this is hard to see. It is a huge job reimposing full controls between Britain and the EU," he said.

The Home Office said it was unable to investigate the reports as it had not been "provided details of the alleged persons involved".

A spokeswoman added: "EU citizens are our friends and neighbours and we want them to stay in the UK, which is why we launched our ground-breaking EU Settlement Scheme.

"Those who do not have status under the EUSS can enter the UK for up to six months as visitors, visa free. However, now freedom of movement has ended, those coming to work or study must prove they meet our entry requirements. We urge people to check the requirements before travelling.

"We expect Border Force to treat all arrivals with respect and consider each passenger's situation on an individual basis. The British public expect us to check that everyone entering the UK has the right to do so, and passengers may be asked questions to establish the basis on which they are seeking to enter the UK."

[garbon]

Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister and author of the Free Movement blog, said: "This is just how borders work and this has been happening to everyone else from outside the EU and is now just being applied to EU citizens.

"The whole point of free movement was to remove friction at the border. To deliberately reintroduce it was bound to have consequences.

"How Border Force is going to cope with this is hard to see. It is a huge job reimposing full controls between Britain and the EU," he said.

There was a reason I used to pay the registered traveller fee to be able to go through automated kiosk (back in normal times) before US was approved to go through automated lanes as standard.

[The Larch]

It surprised me to read that there's not a specific card or document that one can produce to show that you have settled status.

[Tamas]

Yeah but I think it was not unreasonable to expect some initial leniency toward clueless Europeans arriving like it was still 2019. If Brits were manhandled like some third worlders into detention centers in France I am sure the Mail would be up in arms about it.

[Tamas]

It surprised me to read that there's not a specific card or document that one can produce to show that you have settled status.

Yeah it's a mobile app essentially. I'll be pushing my wife to get citizenship once she is vaccinated because bloody Windrush happened in this country after all.

[garbon]

Yeah but I think it was not unreasonable to expect some initial leniency toward clueless Europeans arriving like it was still 2019. If Brits were manhandled like some third worlders into detention centers in France I am sure the Mail would be up in arms about it.

I guess if no one has ever heard anything about the Home Office. I recall being pulled over when I came to the country with a legitimate visa.

I have sympathy but again feel like it is mostly Europe getting to feel what the rest of us feel.

[Tamas]

Yeah but I think it was not unreasonable to expect some initial leniency toward clueless Europeans arriving like it was still 2019. If Brits were manhandled like some third worlders into detention centers in France I am sure the Mail would be up in arms about it.

I guess if no one has ever heard anything about the Home Office. I recall being pulled over when I came to the country with a legitimate visa.

I have sympathy but again feel like it is mostly Europe getting to feel what the rest of us feel.

Fair enough.

[Sheilbh]

Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister and author of the Free Movement blog, said: "This is just how borders work and this has been happening to everyone else from outside the EU and is now just being applied to EU citizens.

"The whole point of free movement was to remove friction at the border. To deliberately reintroduce it was bound to have consequences.

"How Border Force is going to cope with this is hard to see. It is a huge job reimposing full controls between Britain and the EU," he said.

There was a reason I used to pay the registered traveller fee to be able to go through automated kiosk (back in normal times) before US was approved to go through automated lanes as standard.

I really hope the attention this is attracting because it's European travellers and it's new and there's a lot of travel between the UK and EU draws attention to the whole "hostile environment" and makes it change. Because some of this is just the result of those policies which make our borders unpleasant.

But some of this should be very easy to fix - there's no excuse for not making border control staff aware of the new rules/how to verify settled status etc. I get there's a lot. There's about a 100 page guidance document for border staff on various scenarios and I imagine there's probably been quite a lot about various covid measures recently - but they should be aware of this because it's a big recent change and there's lots of people travelling from the EU to the UK.

This also makes me think of Tamas's point around an ID card/database as again something that could help - which I was probably very wrong about.

[Josquius]

Agree with all of this article - it's also sort of what I mean about Tory ruthlessness with their darlings/history v Labour nostalgia/sentimentalism, plus the other typical issues of the left in this country:

Ehh, I'm torn, there are some valid points there but it misses others.
Definitely true that a problem with Corbyn is that he was stuck in the past and seems to think that Thatcher's time in power can just be undone. Even in the 90s that would have been hard enough let alone now.
Its not a question of whether that is desirable or not; its just not practical.

But at the same time a big point of how the Tories are able to succeed was that they are the ones promising to turn back the clock to a far vaguer good old days with Corbyn being the crazy radical who wants to make things even more nasty and modern.

Corbyn's failure in northern towns was largely down to his lack of competence rather than his views. The image was built up that he was this crazy radical of the 21st century when in fact he was the one who wanted to deliver what people were crying out for, a turning back of the clock.

There's definitely a huge perception being spread around about the arrogant liberal metropolitan elites that Labour is all about these days. In recent years we've had an awakening in people recognising the problem of London... albeit lashing out in completely the wrong direction to try and fix this.
Much of this is a purposful construction of the right that has sadly become a self fulfilling prophecy as stupid people from the left merrily dance into the slot that has been cut out for them.
The left has basically been outflanked by the narrative of the right.

The right love to play the victim. They've got a particular thing about being called stupid, where once this would be a put down that would tempt people away from voting right it has become almost a badge of pride with right wingers being eager for any kind of insult they can spin as being called stupid.
I theorise that a lot of this comes down to long held feelings of inadequacy held over from school days- my parents often tell me of how when they were at secondary school the teachers would outright call them thick and useless since they weren't at a grammar. I do get a huge sense they've been coping with this burden throughout their lives and its only really in seeing how shit I, the intelligent kid, am at basic DIY and don't have life handed to me on a plate just for having a degree, that they're coming around to there being different types of intelligence et al. I think many don't hit this point of realisation and this kind of populist down with the experts vibe really hits home with a lot of people.

[Sheilbh]

It surprised me to read that there's not a specific card or document that one can produce to show that you have settled status.

Yeah - I remember reading about polling on this that people overwhelmingly want it and that landlords have asked for it as well. On the upside apparently the app and online settled status portal is quite useful.

I feel like we either need some form of electronic ID or, in the absence of that, some document that people can have as proof. I can see the benefit of an electronic system that either has an electronic ID behind it or is linked to your other ID documents - but if it just sits in its own silo and doesn't talk to anything else then it's pointless and you should just issue a card of some sort.

Yeah but I think it was not unreasonable to expect some initial leniency toward clueless Europeans arriving like it was still 2019. If Brits were manhandled like some third worlders into detention centers in France I am sure the Mail would be up in arms about it.

Yeah - but I wouldn't expect European countries to treat Brits differently. I don't think there should be special treatment. It's not about third world but we are, to each other, third nations now. There's already articles about needing to prove your accommodation on holiday and your ability to fly out (I think both in relation to Spain and France as major destinations) - I think at the minute there's relatively few people going on holiday or travelling for work. Though I've seen one Telegraph article on the impact of Brexit on people planning to retire to France (TLDR: it's bad).

In a way covid is possibly creating space to fix systems because there are incidents, but the numbers travelling are significantly lower.

[Tamas]

It surprised me to read that there's not a specific card or document that one can produce to show that you have settled status.

Yeah - I remember reading about polling on this that people overwhelmingly want it and that landlords have asked for it as well. On the upside apparently the app and online settled status portal is quite useful.

Sure but is the plan to have the app maintained for the next 80 or so years?

[Sheilbh]

Sure but is the plan to have the app maintained for the next 80 or so years?

I think the general direction of travel in everything including government is more and more digital. In 80 years time my suspicion is it will be part of an app you use to interact with every aspect of government.

I think there's a few things at once from government which makes me think we'll see a digital ID scheme in the next few years or after the next election. They have plans for digital ID around anti-online fraud and ID theft, add in a free ID scheme for voter ID, plus all the talk about covid certifications/vaccine or testing passports (which are displayed on an app) and it feels like there's loads of policies running in parallel around some form of digital ID. At some point it feels like they'll converge.

I could be wrong - but I suspect either by 2024 or after the next election there'll be plans to start building something like Estonia has:
https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/

[The Brain]

In Sweden people use something called BankID to identify themselves remotely.

[Josquius]

I have to get the feeling the British border authorities being cunts is to blame here:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/brits-uk-france-travel-document-270447/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=sfeu&fbclid=IwAR24ihnR0pnt6DR2T3kGmOYtXCzjZ-7jV18u7Dova5nikeQxp8OmS721PmU

The British Embassy have confirmed that UK passport holders travelling to France will now have to waste time and money filling in Brexit-caused paperwork.

The measure applies to private visits to friends and family in France, where travellers do not have hotel or Airbnb accommodation booked.

An online user said: "Please note UK passport holders are now third-country nationals, as a direct consequence of Brexit.

"Therefore, please do not vent your anger at the French government for this law. Find a Brexiter instead."
The new measure has only recently been added to French law.

It requires Brits travelling to France to buy an attestation at least a month before their trip – and it costs 30 euros.