Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Johnson very much would be on an aircraft carrier with a banner I'd be could be.

Apparently internal polling only showed 10% of people approving the "freedom day" rhetoric - so they dialled it back a lot despite the Tory press and Tory backbenchers loving it. But it sort of stuck and will cost them if things go wrong.

Edit: And another poll with a similar closing of the gap like the Yougov one - still not a trend but my suspicion is we're moving into post-vaccine politics/end of the vaccine bump:

[Josquius]

Great news. I have noticed labour pushing the law and order side increasingly too.
It is a slight concern to see rich folks going over to the greens but I do think this is less of a concern than losing the working class. They should be a lot more reachable and amenable to tactical voting - plus more likely to be in seats where Labour can afford to lose a few percent.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - at the minute Labour's issue is their vote is incredibly inefficient. They absolutely pile on the votes in some bits of the country like inner London or some of the university towns. I am fine with them losing votes there to the Greens and picking them up among C2DE voters in the rest of the country - that is the path to winning.

Also striking is that Nicola Sturgeon now has a negative approval rating, I think for the first time since the pandemic (and possibly even longer) which may be one of the most important trends in British politics. It also makes me slightly wonder with Scotland (because the SNP have the best return on votes so are vulnerable). Part of the SNP's support in Scotland is anti-Toryism and I wonder if the polls moved so it looked like Labour could win if Scotland would still vote on strictly constitutional grounds, or if a chunk of current SNP voters would move to vote Labour to get rid of the Tories?

[Syt]

Die Zeit has an article this morning that argues that the "pingdemic" is exacerbating the situation in supermarkets but that the underlying reason is Brexit.
- fresh produce isn't reaching the supermarkets in time due to customs waiting times (something I expect to get sorted over time)
- due to additional required paperwork (e.g. invoice for every shipped item, in future also detailed documentation of origin), EU producers are less willing to sell to the UK
- lack of UK lorry drivers (60,000? That seems high )- apparently companies don't want to pay them for waiting time at the border (something EU companies generally do), and not enough Eastern Europeans any more to do the job for low pay

[Richard Hakluyt]

At the anecdotal level I have yet to see any shortage worse than the unavailability of halloumi at Lidl (solution : buy halloumi at Aldi for the time being). Mushrooms seem to be more and more likely to be produced in the UK rather than Ireland. There may be regional variations of course; how is it going for my fellow UK-residents?

[Agelastus]

Last week the Tesco that covers my town for online deliveries were out of Channel Island Milk and chicken thighs - seemingly (although I may just have had bad timing) for several days.

Both seem to be in stock this week.

Regarding the "pingdemic" two of the last three buses I've caught have been late due, it seems, to Stagecoach having to find drivers at short notice (the Saturday driver had been supposed to be supervising training that day, for example.)

[Tamas]

My trash food indulgence / reserve quick food to make are these tortellonis you chuck in boiling water for 3 minutes. Two weeks straight there has been none of them in the local Sainsburys, at least not when we placed our orders. Plus the week before last offerings were relatively sparse. That's all we could notice though.

[Josquius]

Back on brexit, a small thing I saw today.
Its been commonly observed that generally as the demographics get older they become more likely to be brexity. Its also known this switches slightly at 75+ with them being a little less brexity than the 65+ers. The numbers aren't big enough to say for certain but it is believed from what we do have that at 85+ it flips completely.

I saw this related thing today and found it quite interesting.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/07/31/the-referendums-of-1975-and-2016-illustrate-the-continuity-and-change-in-british-euroscepticism/
It really does highlight the boomers as the problem generation, being more likely to be brexity even in their youth.



Also interesting in this I notice a union/non-union split. It does add credence to my ongoing theory that the destruction of the working class is heavily to blame here.
Interesting Dunning-Kruger at work too. Another factor I've noted, that historically uneducated people had no shame in admitting they were uneducated and deferring to experts on matters outside their experience.

[Syt]

Wasn't one of the reasons of this that the generations who had experienced one or two world wars were more likely to be in favor of the European project?

[Sheilbh]

Die Zeit has an article this morning that argues that the "pingdemic" is exacerbating the situation in supermarkets but that the underlying reason is Brexit.
- fresh produce isn't reaching the supermarkets in time due to customs waiting times (something I expect to get sorted over time)
- due to additional required paperwork (e.g. invoice for every shipped item, in future also detailed documentation of origin), EU producers are less willing to sell to the UK
- lack of UK lorry drivers (60,000? That seems high )- apparently companies don't want to pay them for waiting time at the border (something EU companies generally do), and not enough Eastern Europeans any more to do the job for low pay

I'm not so sure on the first two points. I've not seen any reporting on those issues here and I feel like we'd see the impact of issues at the border more - also that UK has waived most checks for stuff coming in and honestly I'm not sure when they'll introduce those checks but I'd be surprised if they did during the pandemic.

I haven't seen any issues personally - but I know it is happening.

From what I've read the issues are around domestic production, packing and distribution - there are full packhouses of goods waiting to be packed for distribution and there are full warehouses waiting for distribution. I could be wrong and there may be bigger supply chain issues further down the line but from what I've read at least the challenge isn't getting the food or goods in - as RH mentioned I think part of this is supermarket planning on supply chains and Brexit. I think a lot more veg and fresh produce seems to be from the UK (including Northern Ireland - which despite the sausage nonsense is a food exporter).

But also maybe the supply chains out of Europe - I just checked my produce and it's from the UK, South Africa, Kenya, Turkey and New Zealand (largely fruit). That's always been a thing. There are regular stories about food miles around Kenyan oranges or New Zealand apples - but, ultimately, British supermarkets are very competitive and British consumers mainly care about price. I imagine supermarkets are relying more on non-European and domestic suppliers - but I don't know if that's factually the case or just my anecdata

Some of the issues are definitely from Brexit, some of it is covid and some of it is pingdemic. So on Brexit food production and packing were sectors that relied very heavily on European workers - largely on that (exploitative) model of "it's a horrible job, you'll do twelve hour shifts, but you can save up a decent wedge by just working and doing nothing else for three years." Those jobs are now classed as "unskilled" so generally need a visa (there are exemptions I think for seasonal work), obviously excluding people on the settlement scheme. So meat processors have apparently lost about 10% of their workforce. The figure I've seen on hauliers is 25,000 have left the UK since Brexit (though some of that will also be the covid impact). I don't know how many hauliers there are but I feel like any industry would struggle with losing 25,000 workers.

But then there's the covid impact where there's multiple things going on. My understanding is that across Europe, EU workers returned "home" during 2020 because of the pandemic in record numbers and this definitely happened in the UK - because if your industry is largely shut down and you've been furloughed it makes sense to go to family and friends (this happened within the UK too). In addition to that companies weren't necessarily smart about furlough so apparently there are loads of workers who were furloughed who now have five weeks of annual leave accrued and are taking it during the summer, as you would. In the industry it is normal to have a dip in workforce during summer - but it's offset by demand also dipping as people go on holiday which isn't happening because of covid. And unlike the last 18 months hospitality has re-opened in a pretty big way so instead of just servicing retail clients and a smaller sector of takeaway venues there's now demand from all cafes, restaurants, pubs plus retailers.

And there's the pingdemic with a lot of people being pinged to self-isolate (I was self-isolating last week after getting pinged). In part this is government incompetence that there's no separate rules for people who are pinged but have been double-vaxxed (like me ). I think there are now lists of priority sectors where there is daily testing instead of self-isolation including food production/packing, logistics but also things like public transport - TfL has been really badly hit.

I don't think we've hit the bottom yet - and it is shifting the industry so workers are agitating for higher wages and better working conditions, apparently hauliers are also starting to pick and choose their clients so demanding better terms and more money (I've read that Lidl is particularly unpopular as a client because they're refusing to move on their policy around late deliveries despite the wider issues in the sector). How permanent those changes will be probably reflects how much is Brexit and the longer term effects of covid v just the temporary things like pingdemics - but I've no idea what the balance is.

[Tamas]

One thing Guardian reader-commentators highlighted (many of them don't like the Guardian taking the pingdemic explanation at face value) was that Scotland has no pingdemic but does have shortages.

[Agelastus]

One thing Guardian reader-commentators highlighted (many of them don't like the Guardian taking the pingdemic explanation at face value) was that Scotland has no pingdemic but does have shortages.

I think the local buses are probably pingdemic issues - I had a talk with a driver a couple of months ago and during the lockdown when the buses could only run at half capacity they were running 2 buses (on some routes - 1 behind the other.) This changed when the buses were allowed to go back to full capacity but the timetable in use then has not changed as far as I am aware.

There's probably holiday issues as well (with people not taking it earlier in the year) but the short notice the two drivers in question had and the delays strongly suggests people receiving a "you have to isolate" message to me.

[Sheilbh]

Back on brexit, a small thing I saw today.
Its been commonly observed that generally as the demographics get older they become more likely to be brexity. Its also known this switches slightly at 75+ with them being a little less brexity than the 65+ers. The numbers aren't big enough to say for certain but it is believed from what we do have that at 85+ it flips completely.

I saw this related thing today and found it quite interesting.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/07/31/the-referendums-of-1975-and-2016-illustrate-the-continuity-and-change-in-british-euroscepticism/
It really does highlight the boomers as the problem generation, being more likely to be brexity even in their youth.

Also interesting in this I notice a union/non-union split. It does add credence to my ongoing theory that the destruction of the working class is heavily to blame here.
Interesting Dunning-Kruger at work too. Another factor I've noted, that historically uneducated people had no shame in admitting they were uneducated and deferring to experts on matters outside their experience.

But how much of that are these charts:



The big opposition to the EEC wasn't conservative as in 2016, but from the left. One of the big leaders of the "No" campaign was Tony Benn - and I wonder if there's an interesting link in the left groups organising and campagining against EEC membership then leading to the election of Michael Foot as leader and the Healey-Benn deputy leadership contest? (Possibly a Brexit-Corbyn parallel? ).

Edit: Also interesting - the nationalists were very anti-EEC. Again it's been a big shift since the 70s.

My view is that demographics generally get more conservative as they get older, so this fits with that - it's just opposition to "Europe" shifted in the 90s from a left-wing position to a right-wing position. And the critique slightly shifted - though it is striking how much what Clem Attlee says in oppoistion to joining the Common Market in 1962 could have been said by anyone campaigning for Leave. And Tony Benn was obsessed with sovereignty and parliamentary democracy all through his life - but from a different place than Boris Johnson - because he was convinced in the late 70s that capitalism was on death's door and his vision of what Britain should do was basically an autarkic, centrally planned war economy (I always wonder if the war's most lingering political effect is nostalgia on the British left for the wartime spirit that led directly to Attlee's government and shaped his agenda - but also things like rationing and a planned economy).

It's a striking point that Attlee (been reading about him recently) made in opposition to joining the Common Market, that the Common Market would prevent good economic planning by London:

The fact is that if the designs behind the Common Market are carried out, we are bound to be affected in every phase of our national life. There would be no national planning, except under the guidance of Continental planning—we shall not be able to deal with our own problems; we shall not be able to build up the country in the way we want to do, so far as I can see. I think we shall be subject to overall control and planning by others. That is my objection.

And a key argument for joining Europe was - as Benn pointed - a boss's argument: UK industry was lazy, unproductive and uncompetitive. It needed the bracing reality of European competition to wake it up. I think there may well have been something to that - but of course we responded with de-industrialisation instead. Basically you can't have it both ways. You can't simultaneously say the Common Market/EEC is a great opportunity for British industry to sell to Europe and it is going to introduce the cold wind of competition which will force British industry to modernise and discipline British labour relations. It's striking that in this period the Labour government had Helmut Schmidt come over - as a representative of the German miracle - to address Labour conference on why Germany and the SPD were supportive of Labour government's efforts to reform industrial relations but also bringing in the IMF.

Wasn't one of the reasons of this that the generations who had experienced one or two world wars were more likely to be in favor of the European project?

I don't think that was ever relevant in the UK - if you look at the debates around joining in the 1960s or in the 75 referendum it is entirely about economics. I don't think anyone ever really made the argument of Europe as a peace project - that was very much seen as NATO. Attlee made a really interesting remark in the 60s that the cause of Franco-German cooperation was NATO - which I don't think would have met any agreement in Bonn or Paris British politicians never really talked about a European project - and frankly may not really have been aware that it was meant seriously, I think to the extent they were aware of it they thought it was just rhetoric. Europe was about the economy.

I think it does go to David Edgerton's point of Brexit being nationalist not imperialist. In the same way as I think it'd be extraordinary for people in 2016 to be more nostalgic for an empire that more or less ended about 50 years ago which most voters can't remember than they were in 1975. But also in 1975 I think it'd be very strange if young people born between 1950-57 who would basically be growing up in a post-imperial Britain (after the "winds of change") were more nostalgic for empire than older generations. It just doesn't strike me as likely.

I think it suggests he's right that it is nationalist in both the normal sense but also a "nation-building" sense that is yearning for the UK as a normal nation state - which is something that only occurred between, say, 1960 and 1979 (when boomers were young). That's the period between Britain being an empire and a metropole, and then Britain really leaning into a globalised, financialised world. I think part of the impulse for Brexit is a yearning for being a normal nation state - with national industry, national champions etc. In fact the issue stopping that wasn't Britain joining the EEC but the de-industrialisation, no picking favourites, everything should be competitive policies of the 80s and the policy choices made by successive UK governments. But I think the boomer nostalgia is for that 60s-70s nation state politics of Wilson and Benn and even emerging neo-liberals like Keith Joseph when , arguably or at least in their memory, when there was "control".

[Tamas]

It was nationalist in the sense that it was motivated by wanting to keep immigrants out.

[Josquius]

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the unity after the wars factor. The left was really weird on this point, though the leaders of the left were very much against Europe, seeing it as some neo liberal club to exploit the working man, there was a lot more sympathy from the bottom level. Kind of the opposite of todays situation really.
International solidarity was a popular idea with many. My mam reports my grandad, strongly Labour supporting union-man (and free mason), ex-RAF serviceman, was strongly in favour of staying in the EEC for this reason.

Fair points on many wanting to bring the 60s back. The days where if you wanted a job you could walk into one at the factory within minutes and a general air of positivity and progress. Though I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the imperialist nostalgia side as well.
I really don't get the impression that people want the UK to be a normal state. The idea of British exceptionalism is strong. There is this huge impression that we are a lot stronger than we are, that negotiations with the EU are of two equal sides.

It is known that it was the unions that flipped politics from the left=brexit right=remain state it had been pre 1988 though its curious to see quite how strongly this could be seen even in the 70s and it wasn't something the unions were new to. Rather than flipping their stance its more they started pushing it strongly.