The new Eurosceptics

[Sheilbh]

It's hilarious/sad that the EU gets so much shit thrown at it over immigration. If you look at the statistics the eu really isn't a very big net contributer to migrants, particularly ones that stay a log time and take from the social welfare system.

The EU is a big contributor to net migration. Immigration to the UK is now roughly 50-50 EU and non-EU.

I think EU immigrants are also more visible because they're overwhelmingly coming to work (lots of non-EU migrants are here to study). As well as less students there's less family reunion (Britain's got one of the lowest rates in Europe) and fewer established communities, so unlike other migrants who are clumped around existing communities or universities EU migrants have been more likely to travel all over the country.

There are very few immigrants who are on the welfare system. It always strikes me as mad that people think it because by definition the people who are willing to move across continents/the world to improve their lives are entrepreneurial. They don't want to sit and do nothing.

Generally I think immigration's a great thing for the UK and it's a good sign that people want to live here (I often think the theory about the welfare sponging is because British people are so miserable we assume the only reason someone would travel to live here is because we'll give them free money). It's a shame there's no politician willing to stand up for immigration.

But there are costs and people who lose out, it has an impact on the wages of the low paid for example (though if we enforced the minimum wage that may help). My own problem with EU free movement is that a consequence of it is that we're making it more and more difficult for non-EU migrants to move to the UK. I'm not convinced that's worth it.

The EU in my humble opinion does more good than bad. Yes, there are Eurocrats that probably just walk around like zombies in Brussels, doing a workshop in how to write a good report about how reports should be written.

I don't know how I'd vote in a referendum at this point. At the minute I think the costs and benefits are sort of equal and I've not got much faith in the direction the EU's going in.

And frankly if the Eurozone is the vision of Europe's future then I think we should running not walking to the exit.

Anyway, another interesting article on Ukip:

White face, blue collar, grey hair: the 'left behind' voters only Ukip understands
Farage's core voters are not EU-obsessed Tories, but working-class men. Labour cannot afford to ignore their real concerns
Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 March 2014 18.51 GMT

For more than a century our politics has been dominated by three parties, thanks in no small part to a first-past-the-post system that stacks the deck against new challengers. Confronted with this almost insurmountable barrier, those who dream of remaking British politics often remain just that – dreamers. More than 400 challengers to the "big three" are registered with the electoral commission, and virtually all will sink without trace.

This is one reason why the rise of the UK Independence party is so remarkable. It is the most successful new party in a generation: the first since the Social Democratic party in the 1980s to attract double-digit support in national polling. In fact, Ukip's revolt is more impressive as the SDP's earlier challenge was orchestrated by people who already sat at the top table of British politics. Ukip has come from below; a genuine insurgency from outside the established party system. It might not yet have won a seat in Westminster, but it has attracted more than one voter in 10 and upended the agenda. This is an extraordinary achievement for a party that for much of its 20-year history has been comically disorganised, eccentric, and paralysed by infighting.

But Ukip is also remarkable because of the extent to which its support is misunderstood. Nigel Farage and his party, we are repeatedly told, are a byproduct of unresolved Conservative divisions over Europe; a second home for disgruntled Tories who are pushed into its arms by their anger at Brussels and hostility towards a Conservative prime minister who supports gay marriage and climate change. Ukip, in short, is a Tory problem.

This conventional wisdom is understandable given that the party began as a pressure group of anti-Maastricht rebels, but it is no longer accurate. In fact, Ukip raises as many questions for Labour as for the Tories.

"This is all Fleet Street," Farage said during one of our interviews at Ukip's headquarters near Bond Street. "This is their obsession and they can't get out of it. But the numbers are perfectly clear: there is now a huge class dimension to the Ukip vote." Farage was drawing on private polling and his experience on the doorstep. He might be regarded as a gadfly and bon vivant, but he has a keen understanding of his party's working-class appeal.

Farage's observations about Ukip's support closely match what we have found over the past year while probing the backgrounds, beliefs, concerns and motives of almost 6,000 of these rebel voters. Much of this directly challenges everything we thought we knew about the roots of this revolt. Forget David Cameron's unpopularity among grassroots Tories; forget the furore over EU migrants; forget single-issue concerns over the EU or the charisma of Farage.

To truly understand Ukip's appeal you need to go much deeper. The roots of this revolt can be traced back over decades. Divides in the social and economic experiences of voters have appeared, their values and priorities have been widening, and a new electorate of "left behind" voters has grown up. These voters are on the wrong side of social change, are struggling on stagnant incomes, feel threatened by the way their communities and country are changing, and are furious at an established politics that appears not to understand or even care about their concerns. And it is these left-behind voters who have finally found a voice in Farage's revolt.

Farage is no catch-all populist; his appeal is concentrated in specific groups and is utterly alien to others. Ukip has virtually no support among the financially secure and the thirty- and fortysomething university graduates who dominate politics and the media. Support is weak among women, white-collar professionals and the young. Ethnic-minority voters shun the party totally.

Make no mistake, this is a revolt dominated by white faces, blue collars and grey hair: angry, old, white working-class men who left school at the earliest opportunity and lack the qualifications to get ahead in 21st-century Britain. That Ukip's core voters are middle-class Tories animated by the single-issue of Europe is the biggest myth in Westminster. In fact, Ukip is the most working-class-dominated party since Michael Foot's Labour in 1983. They struggle financially, worry about the future, and loathe the political class, not just Cameron and the Conservatives.

Don't think of Ukip as just a party; think of them as a symptom of far deeper social and value divisions in Britain. Farage is winning over working-class, white male voters because they feel left behind by Britain's rapid economic and social transformation and left out of our political conversation; struggling people who feel like strangers in a society whose ruling elites do not talk like them or value the things which matter to them.

This should ring loud alarm bells on the left. In a time of falling incomes, rising inequality and spending cuts, such voters should be lining up behind the party that traditionally stood for social protection and redistribution. Instead, they are switching their loyalty to a right-wing party headed by a stockbroker and staffed by activists who worship Thatcher. Those who are getting hit hardest by the crisis and austerity are turning not to Labour, but to Farage for solutions.

One reason for this is that for those left behind, politics is no longer about economics. These voters are not backing Ukip because of their economic concerns; they are backing the party because they see Farage as representing an identity and set of values they cherish but do not see expressed anywhere else. These voters have been left behind not just by wider trends, but the rise to dominance of a university-educated, professional middle-class elite whose priorities and outlook now define the mainstream.

The dramatic nature of this shift is often missed because it has been accomplished over decades. Yet in only 50 years Britain has gone from a society where working-class voters with little education decided elections to one where such voters are now only spectators, and the crucial and decisive battle is fought between middle-class graduate candidates seeking middle-class graduate votes. When Harold Wilson was elected in 1964, working-class voters outnumbered professional middle-class voters two to one; by 2010 the professional middle classes had a four to three advantage. Both Tony Blair and Cameron have sought to revive their party's prospects by appealing to the rising middle classes. Neither has shown much interest in the struggling, left-behind voters, and since 1997 these voters have made their feelings about being marginalised clear: turnout from these groups has collapsed, and dissatisfaction with politics has increased. Ukip's deputy leader, Paul Nuttall, captured this sense of exclusion in a 2013 speech: "In the days of Clement Attlee, Labour MPs came from the mills, the mines and the factories. The Labour MPs today go to private school, to Oxbridge, [then] they get a job in an MP's office."

These changes have been accompanied by a major transformation in the values that dominate the country. Across Europe it is no coincidence that radical right parties similar to Ukip win support from the same working-class voters, and accomplish this by targeting the same issues: national identity; immigration; Europe; and resentment of political and social elites. This is because there is now a deep and growing divide in the values of the left-behind and the professional middle-class mainstream.

The radical right in Europe is making a similar pitch, and for the same reason: the emergence of a large section of the electorate who feel the world they grew up with and valued is fading away, that what is replacing it is alien and threatening, and that no one in the mainstream understands their desire to turn back the tide of change. You cannot just ignore these voters – you need to have a conversation.

When thinking about Ukip, those around Ed Miliband must think beyond the next 12 months to a time when Labour may be in power with a small majority, or as part of a coalition. The party will then face many of the same challenges as the current government: an ageing population; straining public services; high migration from poorer EU states; persistent inequality; and the economic and fiscal overhang of the worst crisis for 80 years. By 2015 Ukip will be a known alternative. After European, local and general elections, it will have consolidated its support and be well positioned to make inroads in Labour-dominated areas by winning votes from those who will inevitably feel disappointment with what a Labour government can achieve.

At this point Labour will be exposed to serious and sustained competition for support in its northern, working-class fortresses. The largest concentrations of core Ukip supporters are not found in Tory seats in the shires but in Labour fiefs like Miliband's Doncaster North. We identified the 10 most Ukip-friendly seats in the country, and eight are Labour. Strategists on the left need to ask themselves – are your local councillors and activists in these areas ready for the first serious challenge they have ever faced? They may be laughing now, as Ukip drive their Tory opponents to distraction, but after May 2015 the men with purple rosettes may be knocking on Labour's doors.

• Revolt on the Right: Explaining Public Support for the Radical Right in Britain, a new book by Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford, is published next week. For a 20% discount, order direct from the Routledge website using the code RTR14

[Syt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/world/europe/british-view-of-europe-faces-a-test.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=WO_BVO_20140506&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=1

British View of Europe Faces a Test

LONDON — Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, recently unveiled a campaign poster he hopes will help his anti-European message win the European elections later this month: An outsize index finger points at onlookers under the headline: "26 million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose job are they after?"

And so it was with some embarrassment that Mr. Farage faced questions about employing his German wife as his secretary. "You've warned about Europeans taking British jobs," said Nick Robinson of the BBC. "Is your wife taking someone else's job?"

The two-minute video of Mr. Farage's fumbling response (he has to employ his wife, he says, because no one else could possibly toil such antisocial hours so close to him) has been widely mocked. But it is unlikely to change polls suggesting that UKIP, which wants Britain to leave the European Union, could beat both Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party in elections for the European Parliament.

European elections tend to have a low turnout and little impact on domestic politics here. But with a possible referendum on European Union membership in 2017 — Mr. Cameron has promised one if he wins re-election next May — this year's result matters, not least in the way the government responds to it, said David Hannay, a former permanent representative of Britain in Brussels and now a member of the House of Lords E.U. Select Committee.

"When the results come in, which I suspect will not be a very happy day for the prime minister, he should not try to appease UKIP because it is impossible to achieve," he warned.

How did it come to this?

A popular answer is that as an island and former empire, Britain has always had fewer physical and psychological links to the Continent, still referred to as "Europe" here as if Britain was not actually part of it. Britain was not a founding member of the European project in 1957. It only joined in 1973.

After the Eurostar started operating two decades ago, one lawmaker quipped: "I am glad that the Continent is no longer isolated."

But as Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at the University of Oxford, points out, you don't have to go back very far to find a pro-European Britain — and a pro-European Conservative Party.

Winston Churchill spoke of a "European dream" as early as 1948. It was a Conservative government that eventually took Britain into the European Union, and when the Labour Party called a referendum on membership in 1975, Margaret Thatcher campaigned in favor, sporting a sweater featuring a collection of European flags. As prime minister, Mrs. Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1987, which created the internal market and still constitutes the single biggest surrender of sovereignty since Britain joined.

In the three decades since then, Britain has become only more European. Britons take advantage of Europe's low-cost airlines and high-speed trains. Many study, work, marry and retire across European borders. When it comes to Europe's social model, an attachment to the welfare state that sets Europeans apart from other regions in the world, Britain's National Health Service, celebrated with much pomp and national affection during the Olympic opening ceremony two years ago, "is surely Exhibit A," Mr. Garton Ash said.

The irony, says Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist affiliated with the London School of Economics, is that as Britain has become more Europeanized, it has also become more euroskeptic. Mrs. Thatcher did change her tune radically late in her political life. That later legacy still shapes the narrative of the tabloids and the politicians that depend on them such that, as Mr. Beck puts it, "The most pro-European voices in Britain today are business and the Obama administration."

But the arguments Mrs. Thatcher once put forward for staying inside the Union are even more relevant in the 21st century, Mr. Garton Ash said: A united Europe brings economic benefits and greater political say on the world stage from climate change to Russian aggression. "The emotional narrative won't get you very far with the EasyJet Europeans," he said, "but reduced mobile roaming charges might."

[Sheilbh]

"The most pro-European voices in Britain today are business and the Obama administration."

The business angle is less true than it used to be. The EU Financial Transaction Tax and some EU regulations seem to have people worried. We'll see after the ECJ have ruled on some of these issues.

The Eurosceptic argument would be that business voices were also the loudest in saying we should join the Euro which I think everyone would agree would've been catastrophic for all involved

I hate to steal from the FT but they're starting a series on Eurosceptic populist parties round Europe with a very good article on Ukip:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb9a8cec-d11a-11e3-bdbb-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#slide0

[Iormlund]

It's hardly stealing when we can't see it. 

[Syt]

Indeed. It prompted me to check if the subscription rates for The Times have come down, but it's still GBP 26.- per month for their digital sites.

[Tamas]

And so it was with some embarrassment that Mr. Farage faced questions about employing his German wife as his secretary. "You've warned about Europeans taking British jobs," said Nick Robinson of the BBC. "Is your wife taking someone else's job?"

It is amazing how all of these people around the world are hypocrites.

[Josquius]

His wife is German? /
Just...wtf?


He gets his foreign wife and now he's happy to lumber the rest of us with Brits? Grr....

[Viking]

The problem with the debate for pro-Europeans is that a lot of the Eurosceptic positions are based on distortions of reality or outright falsehood.

Yeah, this is all there is to it.

99% of EU-scepticism is about ignorance, illiteracy, xenophobia, and racism. It is a set of beliefs, not rational arguments.

Add self interest. There are political interests in norway which would lose economically by replacing norwegian rules on fishing, forestry and farming with european ones.

[Maladict]

The full transcript is even better:

'Nick Robinson: You've warned about Europeans taking people's jobs. Your wife is German. She's your secretary. She's paid for by the British taxpayer.

Nigel Farage: Yes. She came here as a highly skilled person earning a high salary, paying a very large amount of tax. It all goes to show nobody must think....

NR: Is your wife taking someone else's job?

NF: No, because I don't think anyone else would want to be in my house at midnight, going through emails and getting me briefed for the next day. And actually if you look at Westminster one in four MPs at Westminster, all right, employs a close family relative, and actually what's happening in the last two weeks, of the 73 British MEPs I'm the one that is being singled out and saying "Goodness me, Mr Farage, you're costing the taxpayer a great deal of money." Don't forget, I am the turkey that will vote for Christmas. I want to get rid of British MEPs and all the expenses.

NR: You see, you try to turn everything into a joke. You have a campaign which says Europeans are taking British jobs. You employ a German woman to work in your office. She happens to be your wife. She happens to spend many hundreds of thousands of British taxpayers' money. How do you justify that?

NF: No she doesn't. She earns a very modest salary for working extremely unsociable hours for me and being available up to seven days a week. It's a very different situation to a mass of hundreds of thousands of people flooding the lower end of the labour market.

NR: Why hasn't she taken a British person's job?

NF: Because nobody else could do that job.

NR: No British person could work for you as your secretary?

NF: Not unless I married them

NR: You don't think anyone's capable of doing that job?

NF: What, of marrying me?

NR: No. Of doing the job of your secretary.

NF: I don't know anyone who would work those hours, no.

NR: So that's it. It's clear - UKIP do not believe that any British person is capable of being the secretary of their leader?

NF: That's nonsense and you know it.

NR: You just said it!

NF: I said I need someone who can help me work at midnight, at one, two o'clock in the morning, unsociable hours. For seven years she did the job unpaid, for the last few years she's done the job on a monthly salary and from May she'll be doing it unpaid again.

[Josquius]

Clearly he knows nothing about the type of jobs bottom rung immigrants take if his defence is that no British person would do it

[Tamas]

  priceless

[Tamas]

Clearly he knows nothing about the type of jobs bottom rung immigrants take if his defence is that no British person would do it

That is the point. His official line is that all foreigners working here are taking a Brit's job, then it turns out that his personal secretary is a German employed by taxpayer's money, and then declares that the reason for that is the Brits (who by official line could do all the jobs foreigners do at present) are incapable of being a secretary.

[Syt]

The video is here: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-27115043

My English colleague said recently that she's against immigration. I pointed out to her that she's an immigrant, too. She said she meant the immigration from places outside the EU. I asked if she meant Canada and the U.S., then. She explained that she meant places that were culturally very dissimilar from the UK.

[Syt]

are incapable of being a his secretary.

FYP. His "defense" is that she's there for him 24/7 and no Brit would be willing to do that.

[Sheilbh]

It was funny, but as with the Times story on his expenses, UKIP went on the attack saying it showed the establishment was rattled. Since then they've been doing very well in the Euro polls, over 30% for the most part.