Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

The reason you did Brexit is that with FPTP the Tories could not accept a party to their right or worse yet splitting the Brexiteers off from their party. So Cameron gambled it all for party management and to damage UKIP. That backfired and there was no plan. The extremists seized the day and went for the hardest possible Brexit.

That's it. There is no more it. Pretending it was not just due to domestic or Tory internal factors is ahistorical. No one in power in the EU, least of all Merkel, wanted this.

The reason 52% voted for it is your cancerous right-wing billionaire press that manages to convince the population at large, maybe by moving the Overton window over decades. See yourself when you bought the line about the UK not being sovereign as demonstrated in this thread recently.

Neither of your two big parties was (and even after Brexit and the problems it brought is!) able to make a narrative that cooperation with your neighbours on your home continent is beneficial. It all seen as transactional, as a threat and as something foreign. Because England is this exceptional country that in the words of an active minister of her majesty's government is just a better country than all others.

[Zanza]

I think this is because immigration has become political again - it's something you can meaningfully vote on. So people feel they have control and, in part, because of that they view immigration more positively.

Let's see, this would be truly exceptional. In virtually every other country in the world, there is some level of xenophobia against immigration.  Would be surprising if the strong right wing press, Reform party, Tory xenophobes like Priti Patel,  etc. will not make it a topic again...

By the way, pretending that the UK had no agency on immigration before Brexit is another example of buying into rightist talking points.

[Tamas]

If there is an economic downturn the population will turn against minorities, if there's prosperity they will tolerate them. That's it. In the UK East Europeans will be a prime target if things don't work out so well.

BTW EU citizens have been added to the assisted relocation (or similarly named) scheme: you get a plane ticket and 2000 pounds if you agree to GTFO.

[Sheilbh]

The reason you did Brexit is that with FPTP the Tories could not accept a party to their right or worse yet splitting the Brexiteers off from their party. So Cameron gambled it all for party management and to damage UKIP. That backfired and there was no plan. The extremists seized the day and went for the hardest possible Brexit.

That's it. There is no more it. Pretending it was not just due to domestic or Tory internal factors is ahistorical. No one in power in the EU, least of all Merkel, wanted this.

I'm not saying that anyone in the EU wanted it.

There are definitely uniquely Cameron factors and UK factors, but that's just another form of exceptionalism - that the only reasons the only issues that drove Brexit are unique and sui generis to Britain. That's ahistorical and comforting. But I just don't think that's true when you look at Poland or Hungary, or Lega occasionally in power in Italy, France being one big election time scandal in Le Canard Enchaine away from a Le Pen presidency.

The reason 52% voted for it is your cancerous right-wing billionaire press that manages to convince the population at large, maybe by moving the Overton window over decades. See yourself when you bought the line about the UK not being sovereign as demonstrated in this thread recently.

I still think I'm right about that. I don't understand the controversy.

I agree the press is a huge a part of it we can see that in the analysis of the vote in Liverpool where they boycott the Sun. But I don't think Leave wins every referendum - there are reasons they win in 2016.

Neither if your two big parties was (and even after Brexit and the problems it brought is!) able to make a narrative that cooperation with your neighbours on your home continent is beneficial. It all seen as transactional, as a threat and as something foreign.

I agree that it was always transactional (but again - is this uniquely British - looking at Poland and Hungary for example?). And I think that is why it's possible that this agreement is actually the peak of EU-UK relations now. I don't think we'll be in constant negotiations to improve things because Remainers have failed (even after Brexit and people now perceiving it negatively) to institutionalise in UK politics. The only way that changes is if they in effect take over the Labour Party.

Because England is this exceptional country that in the words of an active minister of her majesty's government is just a better country than all others.

Gavin Williamson is a disgrace and as he said of Russia when he was Her Majesty's Secretary of Defence he should go away and shut up.

But I disagree with this. I think the people who voted Leave aren't imperial or wartime nostalgists - they were people who came up in the 60s and 70s when the UK was, briefly, a normal nation and I think that's what they want to go back to or try to do again. That's why I think they're largely driven by nationalism rather than some imperial nostalgia in that sense. Now how that fits with Leave leaders who want the UK to become Singapore on Thames is beyond me because I think them and their voters want very, very different things.

[Sheilbh]

Let's see, this would be truly exceptional. In virtually every other country in the world, there is some level of xenophobia against immigration.  Would be surprising if the strong right wing press, Reform party, Tory xenophobes like Priti Patel,  etc. will not make it a topic again...

Absolutely - there's no doubt it'll rise again but as I say there's a trend here that pre-dates Brexit and means that in comparative polling the UK is now one of the most pro-immigration countries in Europe (those trendlines have continued - and another example of why 2016 was the perfect storm for a Leave vote):


I think it's been two years since immigration was a top 10 voter concern which is astonishing given it was top 3 for the previous 20 years. There's not coincidentally been fewer media splashes about immigration - I think someone did the analysis and the main paper splashing was the Guardian which was neutral or positive. But there's a bit of chicken egg about it now - if it's not salient than the Tory right, papers, the Rerform party won't run with it and the less they run with it the less salient it becomes.

It's a bit like anti-Muslim frontpages which were really common in the 2000s but you very rarely see now even in the Daily Express. And in the 2000s Farage says Britain should consider a burqa ban; in the 2010s he warns his successors in UKIP that if they support a burqa ban they'll be a far-right fringe party.

By the way, pretending that the UK had no agency on immigration before Brexit is another example of buying into rightist talking points.

I didn't say it had no agency - but if you think there's too much immigration, or (which I think was a bigger deal) that it was out of control there's not much you can meaningfully do about it within the EU. You can really only restrict non-EU immigration - which was more than halved by successive government (through an "Australia style" points sytem ). But that's only part of it.

If there is an economic downturn the population will turn against minorities, if there's prosperity they will tolerate them. That's it. In the UK East Europeans will be a prime target if things don't work out so well.

I think people's views were always pretty nuanced and balanced and in the middle on immigration. Brexit then heightened the divisiveness and polarised both sides, but most people were never that extreme. And it's now settling again as pretty nuanced and balanced and in the middle but on the upside.

BTW EU citizens have been added to the assisted relocation (or similarly named) scheme: you get a plane ticket and 2000 pounds if you agree to GTFO.

Yeah it's incredibly nasty and I'm certain that the settled status program which may be fine now will eventually turn into another Windrush scandal.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think the UK is aware enough of how Steve Hilton has become one of the most extreme, conspiracy-peddler hosts and guests on Fox News:
https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1354234931656974339?s=20

Steve Hilton was David Cameron's Dominic Cummings and parodied in the Thick of It. I think his tech hero was Steve Jobs and he famously used to wander round Number 10 barefoot. He was very keen on the "Big Society" and Cameron's "Vote Blue to Go Green" style.

Then he quite because he was very difficult to work with. Moved to California to work for Google for a while and then ended up as a Fox News host ("The Next Revolution") where he's been very keen on various populist movements round the world, obviously a big Trump fan and he likes spreading conspiracy theories.

It feels like that's almost a career path now

I doubt Cummings will end up on Fox because he's even less personable but there really is a weird type here.

[chipwich]

What is the Northern Ireland Brexit agreement circa now?

[Sheilbh]

It's only one poll - and lots of health warnings. But this is why I think we need to start looking beyond British exceptionalism (imperial nostalgia may still apply):

French presidential election poll, second round scenario

Macron vs Le Pen

Macron: 52%
Le Pen: 48%

Harris / Jan 19-20th

[Josquius]

I do remember last French election amongst left wing French people I know it was seen as quite a devils choice with le pen tempting them for give the system a kicking reasons. In the end I think most went with macron but.... Yep.

[Jacob]

Yeah if France goes nationalist-populist that has the potential to seriously undermine the EU.

[Sheilbh]

Mirror Politics
@MirrorPolitics
Free school meals extended to March 8 but will NOT include February half-term

Does Boris Johnson have a kink for u-turns because I am running out of explanations

We know exactly how this will go.

[Tamas]

Mirror Politics
@MirrorPolitics
Free school meals extended to March 8 but will NOT include February half-term

Does Boris Johnson have a kink for u-turns because I am running out of explanations

We know exactly how this will go.

Yeah wtf

[Richard Hakluyt]

I guess there must be some Bourbons in Johnson's ancestry 

[Sheilbh]

British Election Study 2019 is out - these are big academic studies/polls done by Oxford and Manchester Universities. They've done them after every election since 1964 and normally they involve multiple surveys of tens of thousands of people. Because they've been running so long they're quite helpful/interesting. I imagine doing this in 2020 has been a lot more challenging than normal

People are starting to digest now and spit out the interesting bits. A few points that struck me.

The Tories (almost) recovered among BAME voters from the damage of Theresa May. David Cameron made big in-roads into BAME voters (who are traditionally Labour) - I think he got up to 1/3 of the BAME vote in 2015. This collapsed under Theresa May to 17%, but increased in 2019 to 25%. Not quite fully recovered but a very big difference from 2017. This broadly matches what was found in specific, focused BAME polling but it's another confirmation. I suspect it might continue to increase - especially among British-Indian voters and I wonder if the same might happen with British-African voters. It'd be really interesting to see how ethnicity interacts with other factors, because the demographics Labour v Tories do well in do overlap a lot - so Labour do well with BAME, young and renting voters (of which there's a lot of overlap) while Tories do well with white, older and home-owning voters (lots of overlap). But I don't think anyone's got to that level of detail yet because polling of BAME voters has only really taken off in the last 10 years.

Interesting long-term trend on immigration:

"Do you think that too many immigrants have been let into this country, or not?"

% Yes-No by year (using wt_demog):

1964 83-12
1979 82-13
2015 72-22
2017 63-31
2019 52-38

They also try (and only get a small sample) to get results based on sexual orientiation (so lesbian, gay or bisexual voters) for the first time - and they are very Labour. Only 28% voted Tory with around 50% going for Labour. As I say it's a small sample but it'll be interesting to see how that evolves.

Age and education are still strong predictors (now probably better than class) of how people vote. What's interesting is that volatility of individual voter choices was increasing - there was lots of churn and change in 2015 and 2017. That's now evaporated and volatility was basically at the level of 2001 - which, along with the geographic shifts, may indicate a more settled re-alignment. In 2015 and 2017 some traditional Labour voting areas (the red wall) moved to the Tories while some traditional Tory areas (typically cities like Canterbury) moved to Labour. In 2019 we didn't see a big increase of that trend it actually just sort of settled - maybe as that re-alignment stopped and reached its final point.

I'm sure more will come out - and there's nothing massively surprising but interesting anyway.

[The Brain]

Don't the Tories traditionally have the highest number of gay MPs?