Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tonitrus]

I think some of the appeal of podcasts like TRiH is perhaps more of a feeling of "talked with" (even if not really the case), vs the standard, old-school documentary style of being "talked at".

Podcasts also lend more to being "background" listening, whereas TV-docs almost insist on one being a passive/zombie viewer...even if one can, and do, mostly background them.

[Sheilbh]

I wonder if some of the appeal of podcasts like TRiH is perhaps more of a feeling of "talked with" (even if not really the case), vs the standard, old-school documentary style of being "talked at".

I was thinking exactly that. Mike Duncan fits the bill of an old school personal narrative through a subject (Civilisation, The Shock of the New, Ways of Seeing and even a multi-narrative Civilisations).

But I think you're right the thing that was missing was being talked with - maybe TV simply can't do that but I'm not sure of that. Even In Our Time is a (terrifying) form of dialogue

[Josquius]

Maybe give them The Ricky Gervais show treatment?

[Valmy]

The other option/possibility is that Taiwan instantly (or almost instantly) surrenders, WW2-Denmark style.  Then we get lots of potential freedom-seeking refugees (if they're able to leave), a PRC-stranglehold on the superconductor industry and a diplomatic fait accompli. 

Seems like Biden is taking major steps to attempt to avoid that issue. I guess it depends upon how long it is until this invasion takes place.

China probably at least has to wait until it has its final reckoning with Covid.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I personally think the United States will use active military force to kill PRC soldiers and invaders during an attempted invasion. Including sinking of ships and shooting down of planes, and I don't believe warning will be given once an invasion's certainty is clear. Where that leads, I don't know, but there is a reason the U.S. has never explicitly said we won't use military force to protect Taiwan, but have instead pursued "strategic ambiguity." If we really intended to never use force we'd probably make that clear, frankly--like we did with Ukraine years ago.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Not a purely British article, but written from a British perspective in a British paper so figured I'd post here:

https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4

Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics

Western conservatives are at risk from generations of voters who are no longer moving to the right as they age

JOHN BURN-MURDOCH


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   "If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain." So said Winston Churchill. Or US president John Adams. Or perhaps King Oscar II of Sweden. Variations of this aphorism have circulated since the 18th century, underscoring the well-established rule that as people grow older, they tend to become more conservative.

The pattern has held remarkably firm. By my calculations, members of Britain's "silent generation", born between 1928 and 1945, were five percentage points less conservative than the national average at age 35, but around five points more conservative by age 70. The "baby boomer" generation traced the same path, and "Gen X", born between 1965 and 1980, are now following suit.

Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — started out on the same trajectory, but then something changed. The shift has striking implications for the UK's Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass.


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   It's not every day that concepts from public health analytics find a use in politics, but if you're a strategist on the right, then now might be a good time for a primer on untangling age, period and cohort effects. Age effects are changes that happen over someone's life regardless of when they are born, period effects result from events that affect all ages simultaneously, and cohort effects stem from differences that emerge among people who experience a common event at the same time.

This framework is used to understand differences in a population and whether they are likely to be lasting. This makes it perfectly suited to interrogating why support for conservative parties is so low among millennials and whether it will stay there.

Let's start with age effects, and the oldest rule in politics: people become more conservative with age. If millennials' liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less conservative than the national average, and can be relied upon to gradually become more conservative. In fact, they're more like 15 points less conservative, and in both Britain and the US are by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.

On to period effects. Could some force be pushing voters of all ages away from the right? In the UK there has certainly been an event. Support for the Tories plummeted across all ages during Liz Truss's brief tenure, and has only partially rebounded. But a population-wide effect cannot completely explain millennials' liberal exceptionalism, nor why we see the same pattern in the US without the same shock.

So the most likely explanation is a cohort effect — that millennials have developed different values to previous generations, shaped by experiences unique to them, and they do not feel conservatives share these.

This is borne out by US survey data showing that, having reached political maturity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, millennials are tacking much further to the left on economics than previous generations did, favouring greater redistribution from rich to poor.

Similar patterns are evident in Britain, where millennials are more economically leftwing than Gen-Xers and boomers were at the same age, and Brexit has alienated a higher share of former Tory backers among this generation than any other. Even before Truss, two-thirds of millennials who had backed the Conservatives before the EU referendum were no longer planning to vote for the party again, and one in four said they now strongly disliked the Tories.

The data is clear that millennials are not simply going to age into conservatism. To reverse a cohort effect, you have to do something for that cohort. Home ownership continues to prove more elusive for millennials than for earlier generations at the same age in both countries. With houses increasingly difficult to afford, a good place to start would be to help more millennials get on to the housing ladder. Serious proposals for reforming two of the world's most expensive childcare systems would be another.

UK millennials and their "Gen Z" younger cousins will probably cast more votes than boomers in the next general election. After years of being considered an electoral afterthought, their vote will soon be pivotal. Without drastic changes to both policy and messaging, that could consign conservative parties to an increasingly distant second place.

[email protected], @jburnmurdoch

As an ex-Republican that still does believe in a lot of conservatism's core principles, I think this is frankly a problem of the two parties (Tory and GOP) campaigning in one way, but frankly delivering almost nothing meaningful to the non-wealthy. I think it is becoming increasingly hard to easily win with that behavior. The short term answered appeared to stoke angst about immigrants and things of that nature, but as more older people die off it seems this strategy is going to run into increasing headwinds.

[Sheilbh]

I think the charts are interesting - it seems more pronounced in the UK:


And broken down by home ownership as I think that is normally the solution (and certainly mine) for the Tories. Basically because in my view you don't get conservatives if people don't have assets to conserve, but it looks a little different:


I think by his estimates if Millenials had home ownership at a similar rate as previous generations they'd still only be a couple of points more Tory.

I'm generally dubious about the theory that you just need to wait for generational replacement for the left to win - but it looks like there is something different going on with this generation. My suspicion is he's right that part of it is they have far more left-wing economic ideas than older generations and, as he says, it seems likely that's because they (we) came of age in the late 2000s/2010s. So the defining Millenial event was the financial crisis - Gen Z is also living in (in the UK) an economy that has failed to recover from it, which has had a long term effect on their views on economic policy.

On culture war issues, they basically split by education and Millenials and Gen Z are the most highly educated generation ever. In the UK there was a huge shift in the 90s from 15-20% of kids going to university to about 50% (Blair's target then - he now says we should aim for 2/3s university educated) which means there's a real, sharp generational split in educational attainment.

In my opinion part of the challenge for the Tories now is that the lack of investment in the NHS is having consequences and showing which impacts the elderly more than most; and the age of cheap credit is (perhaps temporarily) over which sustained the lifestyle of a big part of their coalition. The core Tory vote - elderly and middle-aged homeowners are starting to feel the pain. Add that to already anti-Tory Millenials and Gen Z, and there's a huge challenge for them.

The Tories have campaigned in different ways in all of the last 4 elections. Under Cameron, it was about "all in it together" austerity plus Cameron's de-toxification ("vote blue, go green", Big Society, "hug a hoodie" etc). With May it was "strong and stable government" (Brexit, industrial strategy, low immigration targets, social care reform - which blew up massively). Then under Johnson it was "get Brexit done" and an end to austerity.  I think there is probably an argument that Cameron and Johnson delivered the policies they promised, it just didnt' work or lead to the results they promised.

I know it annoys Tamas but in 1997 there was a real sense of 18 years of Tory rule in the public because it was one, long project. Major completed and consolidated the Thatcher revolution. I think there's starting to be a sense of 12 years of Tory government (possibly because Sunak is basically reverting to Cameronism in lots of ways), but I think the reason there isn't is that people view Cameron, May and Johnson as quite distinct and I think they are. There is no single strand running from 2010 to now in the way that there was from 1979 to 1997 - airports, power companies, bus networks, British Rail, the final tranches of BT and British Coal were all being privatised under Major.

Having said all that, the Tories are one of the most successful political parties in the democratic world for a reason. They're not a particularly ideological party in the way Labour are. So they are really good at adapting and changing to form a majority. I think they're very likely to lose the next election really badly - although Sunak polls far better than the Tories which is a concern. But - assuming we don't change the electoral system - I wouldn't be surprised if they work out a new coalition that works/can get them to a majority within a term or two. Possibly it might take a few leaders - although I still suspect Kemi Badenoch will be the Tory leader and I think she's pretty interesting, so are the MPs who backed her campaign and I think they maybe have the germ of what that future coalition looks like in mind.

[Zanza]

The common policy of the last twelve years of Tory governments is Brexit. Cameron started it, the rest executed it.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think that works. A referendum on EU membership only became Tory policy on 2013 (it was Lib Dem policy in 2010 ) and part of Cameron's modernisation project was to stop the Tories "banging on about Europe". Cameron opposed Brexit and resigned as PM and MP when he lost, his closest ally in politics was sacked from the cabinet "to get to know the party better" and has also stepped down.

If there's a common policy of the last twelve years which Cameron and Osborne started - I think if there's any defining figure of that period, it's Osborne - is austerity.

And personally I suspect that Brexit is, in part, a product of austerity (in part both British and European). Although I'm not sure if it wasn't inevitable anyway - whenever I do a Miliband wins in 2015 or Remain narrowly wins in 2016, I always end up back at another referendum/eventually leaving.

[Josquius]

2016 was really the perfect storm for brexit. A few years earlier or later and it wouldn't have happened.
Which again is one of the most painful things about brexit. Europe getting the blame for the work of the brexiters.

Though certainly interesting to think quite how horrid the brexiters would be after a remain victory in 2016. Quite a few terrorist incidents are almost certain I'd say.

[Sheilbh]

2016 was really the perfect storm for brexit. A few years earlier or later and it wouldn't have happened.
Which again is one of the most painful things about brexit. Europe getting the blame for the work of the brexiters.

It was. But also maybe not?

Basically I think there is something to the argument that the EU is a state in formation. I don't think there is public support - even with Bregret - for that side of the European project (and I don't think there ever has been). 2016 might have been the perfect storm for leavers.

But on the other hand I think as the EU advances more (covid recovery fund, vaccine procurement, response to Ukraine) I think it would run up against British opposition. I think that might lead to more and more situations where there are crises within the EU, leading to EU members exasperatedly operating outside the treaties with separate legal instruments to circumvent British vetoes/blocking - basically like Cameron's veto of the fiscal compact but repeated across multiple policy areas.

Or it results in a political crisis in Britain over, for example, common debt for covid etc which results in another referendum.

Basically I think that 2016 was a perfect storm, but there was an outer limit to the British people's consent on how far European policy/integration could go - and I think we probably, in retrospect, reached it with Lisbon without refreshing that consent or significantly shifting public opinion. I'm not sure if that outer limit has actually changed since. But similarly I think the EU has advanced a lot in the last couple of years (I've said before but I really rate VDL on this). So I'm not sure if now the EU's outer limit of what a member state must commit to/direction of travel hasn't also shifted significantly.

Though certainly interesting to think quite how horrid the brexiters would be after a remain victory in 2016. Quite a few terrorist incidents are almost certain I'd say.

I'm not sure Leavers would have radicalised into violence.

Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right terrorist and there have been other far-right attacks since, plus Prevent report fairly often that an increasing share of referrals to them are from the far-right. But I don't think the extremes are ever really that contingent on what's going on within democratic politics - by definition they normally hold it (and all participants) in contempt.

I don't think a Remain vote would have radicalised people out of democratic politics. I think it would have energised/invigorated the populist right even more as an insurgent force within a governing party a bit like the SNP since the Indy Ref - although not sure how who knows how that would play out.

[Zanza]

Euroscepticism has been a core conservative policy since Maastricht in 1992. They just shifted from the realist wing to the lunatic wing eventually due to mismanagement by Cameron.

How open the British public would have been to the post 2016 development of the EU is all conjecture as most of the big development came from crisis like Covid or Ukraine, where Britain was fairly well aligned with the EU, so these topics might not have been controversial in Britain either.

The referendum was a spotlight at a certain point of time and there were plenty of polls before and after that showed different outcomes would have been possible. Pretending Brexit was inevitable is just Tory-Apologism for their shitty politics that led to this historic mistake.

[Zanza]

But on the other hand I think as the EU advances more (covid recovery fund, vaccine procurement, response to Ukraine) I think it would run up against British opposition.

How so? Britain has more or less enacted the same policies as the EU in these areas...?

[Josquius]

As I've said before it's fascinating if you look at who voted which way in the 2 EU referendums - it's basically the same people forming the core of the leave vote in 75 and 16.

16 really was the peak time for them. The migrant crisis had just happened, the eueozone crisis wasn't that long ago, the Eastern nations are still working off their pre entry backlog in terms of emigration and a decade or two off catching up with the west...

Go back to the 90s and 2000s and a key reason for the tories failures, something that has been actively written out of history, was their obsession with EU stuff that few people in the UK really cared about.

Even in the run up to 2016 not many people really cared all that much. We could have done without the referendum and there'd only be a small chunk of the population who would care.

I do think if we could have just had milibands chaos then brexit would remain a fringe pipe dream. By now the tide would be solidly turning, assuming Ukraine happened the way it did (brexit was a small factor in encouraging Putin but hardly the decision maker alone) the need for a united Europe is more clear then ever.

As the posted article says, millenials onwards are different. We are European.

[Sheilbh]

Euroscepticism has been a core conservative policy since Maastricht in 1992. They just shifted from the realist wing to the lunatic wing eventually due to mismanagement by Cameron.

I agree but Euroscepticism doens't equal Brexit or even a referendum as the 10 years of Major and Cameron government since 1992 (but pre-referendum) show.

How open the British public would have been to the post 2016 development of the EU is all conjecture as most of the big development came from crisis like Covid or Ukraine, where Britain was fairly well aligned with the EU, so these topics might not have been controversial in Britain either.

That's possible and it is conjecture. But I think it is very unlikely the UK under any government would be willing to commit to common debt at a European level - or that the public would support it.

I think British governments would have been very comfortable working in a European context on Ukraine on most points, as long as NATO always took the lead and up to the point of any common debt to support countries having to deal with the economic fallout.

The policies might be aligned but I'm not sure the principle of doing it at a European level is - I think common debt issuance or any more European involvement in health would probably cause a crisis either at a European level or in domestic politics.

The referendum was a spotlight at a certain point of time and there were plenty of polls before and after that showed different outcomes would have been possible. Pretending Brexit was inevitable is just Tory-Apologism for their shitty politics that led to this historic mistake.

I think the opposite to be honest

I agree on polls but I think polls before the question is asked in a democratic event are a guide but that's about it. Since Brexit there's definite Bregret and has been fairly consistently since the referendum. What I'm less sure on is whether there's actually support for EU membership - which would now probably be full-fat and not have lots of opt outs. And only a minority (under a third) want the debate and politics of trying to re-join. Similarly Brits went from one of the least to one of the most positive about the EU on either side of the referendum - that's not because opinions changed just they strengthened and polarised as Brexit became an issue in domestic politics.

My view is basically Helen Thompson's argument about consent that there's been a slow burn of a referendum in Europe in domestic politics for the last 25 years, especially after the constitutional convention. I think there was an issue of consent of the governed around EU membership and the direction of travel of the EU. I don't think that would just disappear at some point. If anything, I think it would likely have intensified as the EU moves forward with things like common debt (which I think are good things). Public opinion might have backed it but I think it's very unlikely.

Similarly I think there's a lot of reasons to think consent to the UK union is fraying - I'm less sure that's inevitable but I think another referendum at some point probably is. Public opinion might shift, and I hope it does, but I'm not sure it will.

Again a lot is conjecture. I don't think the way the Tories handled it was inevitable, or that the result in 2016 was. But I think a referendum was. I think there's a possibility Brexit was in general - my view is that, at best, the UK wanted to stand still and Europe is moving ahead. And I think hard Brexit - following the 2016 referendum - was inevitable because it was about immigration which means freedom of movement is the central issue, which means no single market.