Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Barrister]

Incidentally, I think this is clearly right

We should build the Queen Elizabeth Nuclear Power Station, the Queen Elizabeth Northern Powerhouse Rail, and a million Queen Elizabeth-class homes on the Queen Elizabeth Productivity Belt (née Green Belt) around our major cities. Anything less would be an insult.

Amateurs. 

You don't built stuff named after the Queen.  You name existing stuff after the Queen when she visits!  Much cheaper that way, and helps class up the place.

Just in Alberta we have a QE Park, QE Hospital, QE Highway, QE Pool, QE High School, QE Mountain Range...

[Sheilbh]

This is better than the brands doing their mourning posts
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxngy9/queen-elizabeth-ii-drug-discounts

Dealers Are Giving Discounts on Cocaine and Ketamine in Honour of the Queen

It's what she would have wanted.

[HVC]

This is better than the brands doing their mourning posts
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxngy9/queen-elizabeth-ii-drug-discounts

Dealers Are Giving Discounts on Cocaine and Ketamine in Honour of the Queen

It's what she would have wanted.

She didn't strike me as much of a partier. Seems better suited to memorialize Andrews passing.

[Valmy]

There should be a party when Andrew dies. He brings shame to the Duchy of York.

[HVC]

There should be a party when Andrew dies. He brings shame to the Duchy of York.

He's probably the saddest of the bunch. Now there's no chance he gets back into the royal life.

[Jacob]

Incidentally, I think this is clearly right

We should build the Queen Elizabeth Nuclear Power Station, the Queen Elizabeth Northern Powerhouse Rail, and a million Queen Elizabeth-class homes on the Queen Elizabeth Productivity Belt (née Green Belt) around our major cities. Anything less would be an insult.

Amateurs. 

You don't built stuff named after the Queen.  You name existing stuff after the Queen when she visits!  Much cheaper that way, and helps class up the place.

Just in Alberta we have a QE Park, QE Hospital, QE Highway, QE Pool, QE High School, QE Mountain Range...

I understood Sheilbh's point to be to use QE's legacy to push through useful infrastructure that otherwise would die in NIMBY hell -because opposing stuff named after her would be difficult. Renaming existing stuff would not accomplish much in that case.

[Syt]

This is better than the brands doing their mourning posts
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxngy9/queen-elizabeth-ii-drug-discounts

Dealers Are Giving Discounts on Cocaine and Ketamine in Honour of the Queen

It's what she would have wanted.

The juxtaposition on the GW site is interesting.

[Tamas]

Subtle 

[Sheilbh]

Deeply worried we're now in for a decade of Trussism:

Facile, empty and cliched – Liz Truss's first week has been a disaster
Simon Jenkins

Also I can't help but feel that it's difficult to really make a judgement of Truss' first week because it's been a little overshadowed.

It's not his main point but this paragraph struck me as particular nonsense - or maybe deliberately ambiguous

The shrewd ex-oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky suggested to an Intelligence Squared audience in London on Thursday that if the west had spent on weapons for Ukraine a fraction of what it must spend on energy subsidies, the war might now be over.

Edit: Separately pointed out by Marie Le Conte but something deeply surreal about simultaneously following a new king being proclaimed, while an invading army in another bit of Europe collapses/retreats. Like accidentally waking up in another century.

[Sheilbh]

Although maybe Simon Jenkins is right after all - I think if Truss messes up in this period that will be a very bad first impression for most voters who don't really know anything about her.

Over the next few days Charles will travel to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the ceremonial in those countries. Number 10 briefed tonight that Truss would accompany him and Camilla on their tour "to support the King" at a "significant moment of national mourning". The Palace have no briefed that Truss will attend the church services during Charles' tour "so her role won't be unduly prominent" which is a bit of a slapdown

I think if there's any sense she's trying to milk this for political benefit people will turn against her quickly. Similarly I think Charles cannot allow himself to be used by a party. I imagine the focus in each country will be with him being proclaimed and meeting the respective First Ministers (and designate FM and DFM in Northern Ireland) and parliaments with Truss just popping up at the service afterwards.

[Sheilbh]

As ever, John Harris is worth a read:

Travelling the country after the Queen's death, I've caught a glimpse of the post-Elizabethan age
John Harris

New voices are emerging, altogether more irreverent and questioning of Britain's institutions


'For the most part, younger people seem to see the Queen and the rituals that have followed her death much more dispassionately.' Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Sun 11 Sep 2022 14.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 11 Sep 2022 18.30 BST

"It's very sad, how she's passed away," said Tina. "She did so much. She was the longest-reigning person who ever had the crown. And now she's not here, there's a big loss in the world. She brought us together, I think."

We were in Milton Keynes, the new town that was granted city status to mark the Queen's recent platinum jubilee. We chatted outside the council house Tina has lived in for more than a decade: the kind of modernist home, looking out on green space, that once brought droves of people to a place conceived in the last big burst of postwar optimism. But the Netherfield estate now looks noticeably rundown and unloved, and the details of people's lives are often of a piece.

Tina's is no exception. She and her husband, both grandparents, depend on disability benefits. With bills and prices rocketing, she is getting ready for a grim winter. "I feel the cold," she said. "My bones ache. So when it gets cold, do I wrap up with a few layers or just go to bed?" But within a few moments, we were back to talking about the Queen. "There was a real connection there," she said. "It'll be a few more months till people can get their heads together."

Not for the first time, I was reminded of monarchy's remarkable power: the way it somehow defies vast social gaps, and smooths over the most glaring inequalities. To some people – like me – those things ultimately amount to an awful kind of con trick. Royalist voices, by contrast, would presumably emphasise the institution's central place in ideas of the United Kingdom as a national community, and the late monarch's undeniable talent for words, actions and gestures that sustained millions of people's deep sense of belonging to it. You can take your pick, but in either case, what we are really talking about is an institution whose hegemonic magic was probably never greater than when Elizabeth II was on the throne.

In three days on the road talking to people about the Queen's passing and what it might mean (a Guardian film of our travels will appear later this week), that basic point has hit me time and again, mostly in conversations with people aged over 40. In both the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral and inner-city Birmingham, passersby talked in the same terms about duty, public service and the loss of such a long-serving monarch being almost unthinkable. In a takeaway food shop in Milton Keynes, I had a long conversation with a man from Ghana who bashfully showed me the WhatsApp message he had sent his friends and family: "I have lost my Grandmother." Occasionally, there was a sense of people reciting a script written by someone else, but at plenty of other occasions, they conveyed their feelings with an authentic sense of loss.

But at the lower end of the age range, something rather different happened. For the most part, younger people seem to see the Queen and the rituals that have followed her death much more dispassionately. From people in their late teens and 20s, I have heard acknowledgments of her family's loss and her life of public service, but also things that have underlined a yawning sense of distance between royalty and everyday reality.

In the Birmingham neighbourhood Handsworth, for example, I met Aleisha and Kay, two 18-year-olds who put their feelings about the past week's news in the context of an area that has long been neglected. "I care, and I don't care," said Kay. The Queen's death was sad, she said, but she felt no real sense of connection with her. "She ain't done nothing for us," she said. The conversation then turned to the lack of local job opportunities, the fact that there is precious little for young people to do, and her and her friends' anxieties about the future.

These were opinions I also heard elsewhere, highlighting a sharp generational difference borne out by opinion polling: last year, for example, a YouGov poll found that only 31% of people aged 18 to 24 agreed that the monarchy should carry on, contrasted with 81% of people over 65. Some of this, clearly, is about the royal family's recent contortions over the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Andrew. But it also seems to reflect no end of deep social shifts, and the huge differences between the kingdom we used to be, and the much more divided, uncertain country we have been evolving into for at least three decades.

In all the coverage of the Queen's passing, one simple historical point has been noticeably missing, perhaps because it is deemed too awkward to talk about. At the time of her coronation, the idea of a tightly bound national community with the monarch at its apex made an appealing kind of sense. The left's social democracy had fused with the right's patrician instincts to produce the postwar consensus. In 1953, a Conservative government built nearly 250,000 council houses, the largest number ever constructed in a single year. By modern standards, most employment was relatively secure. Even if lots of people were excluded from this dream, and many lives would subsequently take a turn into insecurity and uncertainty, the postwar era inculcated enough faith in the UK's institutions to keep the monarchy safely beyond criticism.

And now? The social attitudes that defined that period, and lingered into the 1990s – a strange mixture of solidarity and deference, and a widely shared optimism about the future – seem very quaint. If you are in your late teens, just about all of your memories will be of the endless turbulence that followed the financial crash of 2008. Your most visceral experience of politics will have been the opposite of consensus and harmony: the seething polarisation triggered by Brexit. For many of those aged under 40, homeownership is a distant dream, and hopes of job security seem slim. Meanwhile, perhaps because society and the economy have been in such a state of flux, space has at last been opened to talk about things that 20th-century Britain stubbornly kept under wraps: empire, systemic racism, the plain fact that so many of the institutions we are still encouraged to revere are rooted in some of the most appalling aspects of this country's history.

The result of that change is a kingdom with two distinct sets of voices: one that reflects Britain's tendency to conservatism and tradition, and another that sounds altogether more irreverent and questioning. In all the coverage of the Queen's passing, the first has been dominant: how could it be otherwise? But as the period of mourning recedes, and a new monarch tries to adapt fantastically challenging realities, that may not hold for long. The post-Elizabethan age, in other words, is going to be very interesting indeed.

    John Harris is a Guardian columnist

It matches my sense that there's fairly deep changes underway, and that Britain - perhap, England, in particular - is in a process of becoming and I'm not sure quite what the country'll look like at the end of it. Although I'm fairly optimistic about those deep shifts and trends.

With all the tributes and repeating refrain about a "sense of duty", I'm reminded of Paul Keating's tribute - notable because he presided over a referendum on Australia becoming a republic and campaigned for it. But I think the way he opens it captures something true and important about where we are socially across the west (and why "duty" keeps being mentioned):

In the 20th century, the self became privatised, while the public realm, the realm of the public good, was broadly neglected.

[Tamas]

Yeah I read two of those voices got arrested at two separate occasions yesterday for voicing those voices in public.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm not really in agreement with Harris here, everything changes but everything also stays the same imo.

Take this bit as an example "In the Birmingham neighbourhood Handsworth, for example, I met Aleisha and Kay, two 18-year-olds who put their feelings about the past week's news in the context of an area that has long been neglected. "I care, and I don't care," said Kay. The Queen's death was sad, she said, but she felt no real sense of connection with her. "She ain't done nothing for us," she said. The conversation then turned to the lack of local job opportunities, the fact that there is precious little for young people to do, and her and her friends' anxieties about the future."

Substitute something else for the Queen's death and I have been reading that sort of thing for 50 years.

I also take issue with the idea that young people are less reverent and deferential than previous generations. They look pretty supine to me, jaded old git that I am. There are strong tones of demographic destiny in the article; but I think that by the time they are my age they will be even bigger tories than my generation became.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not really in agreement with Harris here, everything changes but everything also stays the same imo.

Take this bit as an example "In the Birmingham neighbourhood Handsworth, for example, I met Aleisha and Kay, two 18-year-olds who put their feelings about the past week's news in the context of an area that has long been neglected. "I care, and I don't care," said Kay. The Queen's death was sad, she said, but she felt no real sense of connection with her. "She ain't done nothing for us," she said. The conversation then turned to the lack of local job opportunities, the fact that there is precious little for young people to do, and her and her friends' anxieties about the future."

Substitute something else for the Queen's death and I have been reading that sort of thing for 50 years.

You could be right and this goes to the possibility that this generation ends up as even bigger Tories than now. That isn't because nothing changes. The Tories of Thatcher's era were vastly different from those of MacMillan's and the Tories of now are very differnt from Thatcher's. If they were sort of Carlist ultras in their inflexibility they'd have died out as a political force.

They adapt - I've no doubt they will again and monarchy will try too. But it always needs to be making itself relevant. I suspect for Charles and William it will be environment and I also suspect Charles will want to do some form of apology for slavery in particular but possibly imperialism more broadly (though he might need to wait for another government).

And that is linked perhaps to the survival of the UK more broadly. I think there is a lot to Linda Colley's argument that the union was tied together by Protestantism, opposition to France on the continent and empire. All of those have fallen away. WW2 and, perhaps, the Queen as a last link to that generation perhaps extended those ties - I personally suspect the post-war welfare state did too. I think we're entering another phase of the union - but also monarchy - needing to provide a reason why it should continue and I've not seen a convincing idea about that from the right. Again I actually suspect climate and energy transition may be part of that in the way that building the post-war welfare state was.

I also take issue with the idea that young people are less reverent and deferential than previous generations. They look pretty supine to me, jaded old git that I am. There are strong tones of demographic destiny in the article; but I think that by the time they are my age they will be even bigger tories than my generation became.

Yeah I never buy demographic destiny about politics or particular issues, but I think it is relevant in relation to values/attitudes. And it may be an everything changes but everything stays the same but in the same way.

On the Tories while I'd never doubt their ability to reboot themselves as much as necessary, their figures with young people are catastrophically bad. My view is that's material - if you don't create the material conditions for people to form households and families, to get on the property ladder, to build up there own capital you won't have Conservative voters.

Also worth noting while I don't think demography is destiny, so this might not mean much - younger voters want lower taxes and less public spending. As I say my suspicion is that's because they pay higher taxes (especially graduates) and don't get much in the way of public support. It's unpredictable but I think there's similar sentiments bubbling as they did in the 60s and 70s. The desire to break out of constrained, controlled post-war settlement didn't necessarily have to lead to Thactherite individualism - I think there's similar shifts going on now and it could just as in 1979 be the Tories who give that political expression.

Yeah I read two of those voices got arrested at two separate occasions yesterday for voicing those voices in public.

Madness - and to turn incredibly right-wing - it is really enraging to see police forces care so much about "speech crimes" for want of a better word, when lots of crimes basically don't seem to be really treated that way. I think of the police investigating a joke Joe Lycett made in a gig in Belfast (I think the joke was a video of him running around naked as a kid but they'd done the blurring to make it look like, in his words, he has "a massive donkey dick" - call 999).

That you see that sort of behaviour while prosecution rates of sexual crimes have collapsed and I won't post it again but basically unless there is CCTV of a crime the police basically don't investigate (even if it's got a "track my device" thing enabled).

[Josquius]

Meh. I know its a common thing to whinge about the police wasting time on people being mean on twitter rather than catching burglars or whatever but the two are hardly comparable. Pretty easy win to tackle a crime when you've the evidence easily available.
The problem there I guess lies in the police being forced to put an emphasis on prosecution numbers - a very right wing thing.


Demographics are destiny and all that - I can't help but think in terms of socialist "new man" stuff only in reverse. We live in a country ravaged by neo liberalism where such ideals are baked deep which naturally breeds this kind of thinking.
However we also live in a world which tends to trend more progressive. The Internet stands against the right wingening of the youth... And also for creating eight wing extremists.