Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I know others have made the comparison, but I can't think of any suggestion with stronger Cones Hotline energy than this:

Lucy Fisher
@LOS_Fisher
NEW

Cars could undergo an MOT every two years, rather than annually, under proposal to tackle 'cost of living' raised by Grant Shapps at Cabinet today, I'm told.

A caveat is the saving in MOT costs could be undercut by a car becoming more inefficient if serviced less regularly

Mid-term of a government with an 80 seat majority, the party's best result in 30 years and the policy cupboard is very, very bare when they're coming up with this type of idea.

Meanwhile apparently 22 of 33 bills in last year's Queen's speech are at risk of not being passed - government's abandoned a dozen or so and is apparently trying to save another ten. But party discipline has collapsed and Johnson's sole objective is his own survival which means keeping MPs happy and there's enough internal option to those laws to cause issues for Number 10. That won't necessarily be a bad thing - lots of those laws are not good, but again they have an 80 seat majority, and could be in office until December 2024 and can't actually govern.

I'm not sure basically governing by abstention for the next few years is a sustainable strategy - if it's what they're going to try then there will be an attempt to fill that vacuum with a lot of manufactured rows over nonsense.

Plus on many fronts it looks like Labour is a threat again. Add that to potential for new fines, the Sue Gray report and bad local elections and I still think they'll move against Johnson after the locals even if there's no obvious successor. If they don't, then my best guess is that the Tories have decided they'd like some time in opposition (and there's no worse sign for a party than if you start seeing articles or people talking about how a period of renewal in opposition might be good for them).

[Josquius]

Lest we forget the reason York is such a pretty city today is that modernity largely passed it by in the 18th and 19th century.

[Sheilbh]

I've mentioned before about the extraordinary shift in public attitudes on immigration over the last 10 years (mainly since 2016) - another example which is really striking:


I don't think this is having an impact on politics yet because of the papers (who aren't read by that many people - but really matter to politicians and the general discourse) and because most leading politicians came up at a time when immigration was always a top 3 concern for the public (it's now falling out of the top 10). But at some point I think that will shift.

Arguably it is reflected by the fact that we've basically gone back to New Labour's immigration policy: liberal for economic migrants, monstrous to asylum seekers. But I think at some point it will also shift in the political discourse level.

[Josquius]

I do hope/wonder if part of this is a reality slap. Recognising that losing all these minimum wage foreign workers doesn't suddenly mean they can waltz into their dream job.

[Tamas]

I was wondering if the UK paid ransom for her, it seems like quite a hefty one - don't travel to Iran if you are a UK citizen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/iran-not-received-400m-agreed-uk-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-anoosheh-ashoori-release

[garbon]

I was wondering if the UK paid ransom for her, it seems like quite a hefty one - don't travel to Iran if you are a UK citizen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/iran-not-received-400m-agreed-uk-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-anoosheh-ashoori-release

They had announced the money given to Iran when they were released, no?

[Tamas]

I was wondering if the UK paid ransom for her, it seems like quite a hefty one - don't travel to Iran if you are a UK citizen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/iran-not-received-400m-agreed-uk-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-anoosheh-ashoori-release

They had announced the money given to Iran when they were released, no?

I missed it, then.

[Sheilbh]

I do hope/wonder if part of this is a reality slap. Recognising that losing all these minimum wage foreign workers doesn't suddenly mean they can waltz into their dream job.

I thnk that's a big part of it. I think there's an element of catharsis - we never hear people say "you can't talk about immigration" any more because we really talked it out. I also think the control element post-Brexit really matters and that's what people cared about more than numbers.

But I think you're right. I like stats and numbers. They stick in my head - and I build highly specious almost certainly wrong thoughts linking them. But I think we are primarily creatures that are driven, motivated or understand the world by stories.

I think pre-Brexit the debate was always framed in statistics - x million people, x% of workers in core sectors etc. I think since Brexit it shifted to stories of individuals - and this was really strengthened during covid when I think it became clear to everyone how much the NHS and care sector rely on migrants and key workers too. I think those stories have helped shift attitudes (even Johnson when he came out of hospital specifically thanking two nurses from Portugal and New Zealand for caring for him when it was touch and go).

I think all of that made the debate around immigration more real than it was before Brexit. It stopped being numbers and statistics and increasingly became people with their stories. I think that's part of why there's that poll, there's the decline in immigration's salience as an issue, there's been a shift from most people thinking immigration is more negative to more positive and that poll of the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Denmark where the UK had the most positive attitude to immigration and were most likely to support more of it. I think there's been a real shift in public opinion over the last 5 years or so - it's not fed through yet to discourse and politics, but I think it will.

They had announced the money given to Iran when they were released, no?

Yeah and I think from what I've read everyone agrees the UK owed Iran that money. Iran's claim to it was really legitimate - it had been litigated at various courts around the world which always found that the UK should pay it.

But there were technical issues around how to do it in a way that doesn't breach sanctions and doesn't end up being spent on the nuclear program. I think the eventual solution was to pay it to this Swiss bank which is unsanctioned but really closely monitored by the US etc that basically allows the Iranian state to make purchases/interact with the global economy but basically only in areas like humanitarian supplies, non-dual use stuff etc.

The problem is that there are Iranian-Europeans who are also jailed by Iran (from France, Germany, Austria etc) - they have generally had less successful campaigns than Zaghari-Ratcliffe because they're older, less photogenic, their kids are adults etc. But those countries don't have this outstanding debt issue. It just feels like Iran will kidnap and hold hostage citizens or residents of other countries just in case they need them for leverage at some point on some issue. Which is not surprising but really depressing - just going on holiday to visit your family and your whole life is turned upside down for years because some regime wants a bargaining chip

[Josquius]

Fucking hell. Culture warriors are usually just dumb but sometimes they actually cause real harm.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-61246941.amp

They've been whinging about this new council  headquarters for a while - in the city centre it promised to be far more accessible than the current 1960s tower beside a dual carriageway some way north of the city. But of course that means slightly harder to get to for automotive reactionaries. And we couldn't be having that.

They've already been pulling this shit with recent nonsense about the Durham Light Infantry museum.
In local elections you can get a Councillor elected with just a few hundred votes, and there's zero factual reporting or fact checking, the Facebook mob rules, so this kind of small minded pettiness is really painfully effective.

Fingers crossed for the coming local election. Durham is lost to the paint drinkers, hopefully other places won't be.

[Sheilbh]

Pleased its not just Britain but something on these isles - response to a plan for 300 new homes (and Ireland has even more shortage/crisis than us):

Fears south Dublin suburb 'would end up like communist Europe' in wake of planned development

[Sheilbh]

Today in British politics slowly becoming The Day Today


Everything just has that 90s sense of Tory decadence right now.

[Sheilbh]

Latest of the New Statesman pieces on attitudes in the UK - this time on "culture war" issues. Basically the UK isn't wildly divided on cultural issues - there's a broad middle opinion. Basically the centre holds regardless of politics - for example on the importance of social justice and perceptions of unconscious bias (there's very little partisan difference - over 60% of Tories and Leavers think a fair amount or more of white people have unconscious bias ):



There's also evidence that we're basically not as politically polarised as the US, so voters don't respond differently to news based on their politics - for example Conservative and Leave voters' opinion of Johnson shifted as much as Labour and Remain voters, just from a higher base. So instead of partisans reacting differently everyone reacts more or less the same to news stories.

This is probably a worry for the Tories. They can open up a big campaign on culture issues and "wokeness" (though a third of people have no idea what "woke" means or haven't heard of it) - but it's not clear it resonates in the same way and it opens up space for Labour to talk about the economy and cost of living which are voters' top priorities. Also interesting - the public basically don't worry about the risk of being "cancelled":

The public is also less preoccupied with being "cancelled" than some politicians and commentators would have us think. Over three quarters (76 per cent) are comfortable discussing race and identity – and a significant majority (67 per cent) feel comfortable discussing identity at work.

This is part of a series the New Statesman has done. The previous one on class also really striking. Most interesting is young people perceive class absolutely differently than old people. For the young it's about wealth, for the old it's culture and background - so 56% of young people see Marcus Rashford as "upper class". I wonder if it'll shift as younger people's earning power increases but they don't perceive themselves as changing class?


I basically agree with the young and would just go for crude materialism on this now. The British understanding is utterly unhinged. If you have a high salary, you own capital or you're in management your middle class plus:

A quarter of Britons paid £100,000 or more identify as "working class"
Exclusive polling reveals the British public hugely overestimates how working class it is.
By Anoosh Chakelian and Michael Goodier

What does it mean to be working class in Britain today? A concept as ingrained as it is slippery among the British, class can be judged as much on what you call dinner (tea, or supper?) as your salary and educational background.

As part of the New Statesman's exclusive polling project on attitudes towards class in the UK today we discovered that the British public believes social class is based chiefly on earnings. When asked what most indicates someone's class, the top answer among a weighted sample of adult Britons was income level (chosen by a third of respondents), followed by 23 per cent who chose inherited wealth, 13 per cent education, and 12 per cent profession (19 per cent didn't know).

In a follow-up poll, carried out exclusively for the New Statesman by Redfield & Wilton Strategies*, 47 per cent of the British public said that an individual's class was inherited from their parents, and 41 per cent said it was not.

Of course, the idea that money equals class is a controversial one, in England in particular. Known worldwide for its mysterious social codes, England is a country where Kate Middleton was deemed "nouveau riche" because she had her school PE kit nametags sewn in (instead of hastily written in felt-tip pen as, of course, is the true posh way), and Boris Johnson and Michael Gove's contrasting mug collections were said to reveal their Old Etonian/scholarship boy credentials (a random assortment including a cheap Cadbury Mini Egg one versus matching Emma Bridgewaters).

"Class in England has nothing to do with money, and very little to do with occupation," writes the Oxford University anthropologist and author Kate Fox in her bestselling 2004 book Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour.

"A person with an upper-class accent, using upper-class terminology, will be recognised as upper class even if he or she is earning poverty-line wages, doing grubby menial work and living in a run-down council flat... Equally, a person with working-class pronunciation, who calls his sofa a 'settee', and his midday meal 'dinner', will be identified as working class even if he is a multi-millionaire living in a grand country house."

Nearly two decades on, some of this holds true in our polling. When asked if someone who has a low-paying job can be upper class, more people responded yes (41 per cent) than no (36 per cent), while 23 per cent didn't know. When asked if someone with a high-paying job can be working class, 60 per cent said yes, while 21 per cent said no.

This appears to be changing, however. Younger people link the idea of being upper class more to being rich or demonstrations of wealth than their older counterparts. Generation Z and millennials are more likely to see income as indicative of class than Generation X, baby boomers and beyond. For example, footballers are viewed as "upper class" by 57 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds, compared with just 6 per cent of those aged 65 and over. (Alternatively, this could mean our perception of class simply changes with age.)

Many of Britain's wealthiest people and homeowners still consider themselves working class. More than one in five of those earning between £75,000 and £100,000 identify as working class.

For context, a salary of £75,000 would have put you in the top 6 per cent of taxpayers in 2019-20, according to HMRC figures published last month.



As Fox does in Watching the English, these results suggest the public does not link class neatly to income.

They could also indicate that people are not particularly aware of how much the average person earns. In our previous poll in this project we discovered that while the top guess for the average salary -- chosen by a third of respondents -- was not far off (they chose £20,001-£30,000, when it's actually £31,285), still 8 per cent thought it was £40,001-£50,000, 2 per cent £50,001-£60,000 and 1 per cent £60,001-£70,000.

Our latest results also show that half of those who own their house outright consider themselves working class, as do 48 per cent of those with a mortgage. This is partly a legacy of Right to Buy, the Thatcher-era policy that allowed people living in social housing to purchase their homes at below market rates. Outright owners are pretty evenly spread across the income scale, and the average person (plus partner) who owns a house outright earns £29,168 a year (the greater proportion of pensioners in this category drags the average down).



Yet 8.3 million people in England own their homes outright, and only two million homes have been sold through Right to Buy since the scheme began (not all of which will be owned outright). So the majority of outright homeowners will have earned or inherited that money and won't have got a discount -- indeed, outright homeowners are far more likely than any other group to fit the "comfortable communities" and "affluent achievers" demographic categories.

These results, then, suggest that class is not linked to one's housing situation in the minds of Britons despite inheritance (which half the British public sees as key to class) playing a greater role than ever before in the ability of millennials to own property.

Again, these results could also indicate a misconception among the public about the average level of household income. Recent figures on earnings show that people who own houses are more likely to have higher incomes.



The median average income for someone (and their partner) who socially rents in England was £16,195 in 2019-20, rising to £29,133 for those who rent privately. For those still paying off their mortgage, the figure was £50,827 a year. And yet nearly half of those who own their homes with a mortgage still consider themselves working class.

If your level of income or housing circumstances indicate your social class, this polling suggests the British public vastly over-estimates how working-class it is. But, as our class attitudes project is revealing with each new set of results, class is still about so much more than money in Britain today.

*Polling conducted on 2 March 2022 of a weighted sample of 1,500 eligible voters in Great Britain.

[Josquius]

In much of the country you're more likely to be "cancelled" for not agreeing with racist bollocks than the opposite.

And no. I disagree vehemently with those who say class is a simple question of income.
If the privately educated son of top doctors loses his 100k a year job he doesn't suddenly become non-working class.

Income is a factor but not the primary one. Type of job factors in too. Its definitely inherited by your parents (what are kids otherwise? They're all working class?) and it's very slow to change-I'm still firmly working class. Maybe by the time I'm 50+ and have had more of my life with money than not this will be different.
Which is fairly depressing and I do worry greatly for my son on this.

[Josquius]

And brexit related, this made me laugh. So many choice "well fucking duh" quotes. Mogg saying it'd be an act of self harm to introduce the checks.... Well yeah. You didn't think we opposed brexit just because of the flags did you?

BBC News - Brexit import checks delayed for fourth time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61259832

[Tamas]

And brexit related, this made me laugh. So many choice "well fucking duh" quotes. Mogg saying it'd be an act of self harm to introduce the checks.... Well yeah. You didn't think we opposed brexit just because of the flags did you?

BBC News - Brexit import checks delayed for fourth time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61259832

I don't like how Labour continues to pretend Brexit effects don't exist. Surely they could highlight how British farmers are getting violated in their behinds without lubrication with all this - their exports to the EU made exponentially more difficult while EU imports into the UK remaining seamless, without saying the *rexit word.