Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

I try to be sympathetic but no. That woman sounds as though she needs tossing back in the sea.

I have my vasseline ready for the census data.

[garbon]

Interesting how English only as national identity collapsed since 2011.

[Admiral Yi]

I have my vasseline ready for the census data.

 

[Sheilbh]

Interesting how English only as national identity collapsed since 2011.

There's no comparable data because they changed the order of nationalities from English (and the other "national" options) coming first to British coming first followed by the "national" options (including English).

So there might be a shift, but it might just be people responding to the first/"default" option. The ONS website is plastered with warning signs about the nationality question because of the change. You can tick multiple boxes but 70% only tick one.


I think the census result that seems most strking to me is religion because Christianity now falls below 50% for the first time:


On ethnicity it looks like visible minorities are around 18%, and the other white (fastest growing group - with Romanians and Poles leading the way). But it is basically a picture of increasingly diverse diversity. I suspect by the next census there will be even more options:


Interestingly the three biggest responses to "any other" group were Sikhs (although most identified as Sikh under the "Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh" section), Hispanic or Latin American and Kurdish. I live in the most Latin American borough of London so it's not a surprise that it's a growing community (or that any other ethnic identity is the second fastest growing).

Now plans by the ONS to look at all the various intersections of this data set - plus others as they're released (https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/aboutcensus/censusproducts/analysis/ethnicgroupnationalitylanguageandreligionanalysisplans).

[HVC]

Surprised Hindu is so low.

[Sheilbh]

I try to be sympathetic but no. That woman sounds as though she needs tossing back in the sea.

Yeah my area currently has a loud campaign against a new housing development that would build over an incredibly moribund 1980s shopping centre and a massive carpark

Edit: And obviously I'm in a leftie area so it's all about it being for "shareholders" and not local people. It's too dense, not enough social housing, environmentally unsustainable to be building, totally out of character, gentrifying etc.

[Josquius]

I had heard talk of a push to put European on your census. I remember at the time it didnt really get much attention and spluttered out but I did it anyway. I wonder how many others did.

Surprised Hindu is so low.

I think there's a thing there where traditionally (YMMV with today's cunts) hindu is a very "soft" religion, only lightly tied into identity.
This means where 3rd generation Muslims who are about as Muslim as the Pope will still tick the Muslim box as its core to their identity whilst 3rd generation Hindus are just generic no religioners, being Asian is enough to sum up their difference.

[HVC]

Is the nimbyism to keep out brown people, or are they nuts for other reasons?

[HVC]

Surprised Hindu is so low.

I think there's a thing there where traditionally (YMMV with today's cunts) hindu is a very "soft" religion, only lightly tied into identity.
This means where 3rd generation Muslims who are about as Muslim as the Pope will still tick the Muslim box as its core to their identity whilst 3rd generation Hindus are just generic no religioners, being Asian is enough to sum up their difference.

I see. Guess that makes sense.

[Tamas]

Is the nimbyism to keep out brown people, or are they nuts for other reasons?

Its largely money. They have their wealth in their property/properties. I think a lot of people are (planning to) depending on their buy to rents and future equity release to supplement their pensions. Even more have two-year fixed mortgages, probably jacked to the very limit of their income levels, and would be royally buggered if value of their property would mildly go down because a few extra flats became available in the area.

The very fabric of this society is the neo-feudal rentier system.

[Sheilbh]

Is the nimbyism to keep out brown people, or are they nuts for other reasons?

I don't think it is. And I don't even think it's money - at least not consciously. And I can guarantee you with the new proposed development in my area, renters will be signing petitions against it too for being too dense, being "luxury" apartments, gentrification, being for the benefit of developer shareholders not the local community, not being environmentally sustainable etc. Lots of people disassociate their not being able to get on the housing ladder/housing costs from opposing every development in their community.

There's something universal about NIMBYism here - it's llike the Great British Bake-off of politics - that I really struggle with. The reasons I hear most are about density, lack of affordable housing/social rent and it all being for the profit of private developers. To the extent there's a complaint about the wrong type of people buying flats it's normally in reference to adverts in Singapore or Hong Kong about x development in London and UK housing as a good asset class for the global super-rich.

A lot of the points might be fair on their own, or in individual cases but collectively it just means that everything is very sclerotic and we're not building enough housing to keep pace with our population (especially in the areas where people want to live). Plus I think there is a fairly large growth of planning documents/impact assessments required in order for planners and applicants to dot every i. But housing costs was a London problem, then it was a problem in the South-East and Edinburgh too, it's now a problem in the South-West, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds etc as well.

Again I think it's like the unions in the 70s where individually they might be making fair points and individual strikes might be justified, but taken collectively their impact is big. And, I think, like then it will eventually shift and when it does it'll be pretty decisive

I see. Guess that makes sense.

I'm not so sure about that with Hinduism. There's complaints today about the lack of Jewish option in the ethnicity section of the census because there are many non-religious Jews who don't feel they are counted. It's been called out by the Board of Deputies too. My understanding is this is also something that's always an issue/point of consideration for Sikhs as well.

But the ONS does a lot of focus groups in designing the census including lots with Jewish groups in 2019 and the feedback they received then was that Jewish communities didn't want a Jewish option in the ethnicity section and thought it was best represented in religion. Given the complaints today, but also, I think, the shift in the discourse with David Baddiel's book I suspect it might be included as an ethnicity option in the next census - possibly with Sikh.

[Gups]

I think there's a thing there where traditionally (YMMV with today's cunts) hindu is a very "soft" religion, only lightly tied into identity.
This means where 3rd generation Muslims who are about as Muslim as the Pope will still tick the Muslim box as its core to their identity whilst 3rd generation Hindus are just generic no religioners, being Asian is enough to sum up their difference.

Comijng from a Hindu background I can confirm tha this is complete nonsense. 3rd gen Hindus, whether religious or not, identify culturally as Hindu just as much as Muslims do.

[HVC]

Well, I should have known better

[Zanza]

[...]There was, and is, a sound nationalist or traditionalist case for Brexit. Formal sovereignty allows Britain to subsidise domestic industries and make steep cuts in immigration. Those things have not happened, of course, in large part because they are awful ideas. But the conceptual possibility was there. The Shire reactionary, the nativist in the deindustrialised town: I regret their Leave vote, but I can't fault the internal logic of it.

What never existed was a sound liberal or free-market case for Brexit. There were not enough opportunities elsewhere in the world to make up for lost European trade. There were not enough growth-sapping EU regulations to throw aside. Politicians of a pro-market bent who voted Leave should be pressed until the end of their careers to say what on earth they thought they were doing. The prime minister is a good place to start. As mitigation for his tax rises, he is entitled to cite the cost of fiscal relief during the pandemic and the secondary effects of the war in Ukraine. At all turns, however, the question comes back: does Brexit make the problem better or worse?

Even there, with the higher taxes, the Anglo-European convergence doesn't end. For generations, one thing Britain had over much of the continent was civic order. How amusing were the many prime ministers of Italy, the many republics of France. It was not for the salons that Voltaire came to England. What the nation lacked in painting or classical music, it redressed in the higher art of politics.

Now? Britain has had five premiers in six years. (The previous five were spread across 31 years.) MPs who would have been quarantined on the backbenches a decade ago get to be home secretary. Before it is anything else, Brexit is a human resources problem. It turfed out a generation of plodding but conscientious politicians and elevated some feral ones. The result has been a hardening of the soft corruption that was always a part of the British system. Yes, sections of the media have long carried water for the Tory party. But the sycophancy under Boris Johnson would, were it to happen in a continental country, convince the same Tories that Europe is alien and irredeemable. [...]

https://www.ft.com/content/69d07f30-9a24-4740-9da7-b8b6f6ecbfbf

Maybe the worst long term damage of Brexit?

[Sheilbh]

Can always tell a Janan Ganesh column.

I think his core argument is right - it's why I've also always thought the likely outcome of Brexit is a more left-wing Britain. His point is around the argument but I just don't think it's possible to obtain democratic consent for the kind of extreme deregulating model. So if you don't have that but need to make up the gap from leaving the EU, you're left with higher spending, more investment, more dirigisme.

For similar reasons I think it's likely to result in higher immigration. Because I also don't think the nationalist, traditionalist vision has enough support to implement their agenda. And of course the irony is that I think it will, in the long-run, politically benefit people who are very fundamentally remain-y, but probably only as long as they don't talk about Brexit and accidentally reignite the sovereignist-free market buccaneer alliance

Not sure on the HR problem point in this context though or as something that'll necessarily be long-term. I just struggle to worry about feral politicians when we're likely to have Prime Minister Sunak followed by Starmer who both fall very much into the plodding but conscientious category. I think there are reasons why the quality of politician has fallen but I'm not sure it's Brexit-related.