Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

I doubt that Brexit adresses that though. The elites in London are just as alienated from the people of Cornwall or so as the elites in Brussels.

Oh it doesn't, I see the brexit vote as a scream of rage from those left behind. It isn't going to help them, but at least they have the joy of seeing Cameron humiliated and Farage being rude to Juncker.

People are not very rational, we can see that on Languish and that is despite the generally high level of education here. I had hoped for more British common sense in the vote, but was proven to be wrong to hope for it.

[Sheilbh]

It seems that this time next year, 4 of the major western democracies will be led by women.

The US (Clinton), the UK (May), Germany (Merkel), and France (Le Pen).

Okay, maybe just 3 of them. 

Scotland's had a bit of a revolution on this without anyone really noticing. Three of the main six parties are led by women (SNP, Tories, Labour), four of the main six parties are led by gays or lesbians (Tories, Labour, Greens, UKIP).

People are not very rational, we can see that on Languish and that is despite the generally high level of education here. I had hoped for more British common sense in the vote, but was proven to be wrong to hope for it.

I've never been a believer in people being rational. But as the article I think the issue isn't even being economically left behind it's being culturally and socially left behind. As it puts it New Labour offered 'redistribution' but not 'recognition' and I think it's the latter that people want and we're recognising them now.

[Josquius]

I've said it before but it annoys me just how stupid so many people are.
On TV they're speaking to a guy in Northern Ireland. He says he voted out. Why? Why red tape and bureaucracy and all these other things that he doesn't understand but knows are bad because the media says so.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've never been a believer in people being rational. But as the article I think the issue isn't even being economically left behind it's being culturally and socially left behind. As it puts it New Labour offered 'redistribution' but not 'recognition' and I think it's the latter that people want and we're recognising them now.

Yes, that is a good point.

It reveals a fairly intractable problem though. I don't want to eat fish and chips with those morons, I want to hang out with my continental friends and eat tapas 

[Zanza]

and we're recognising them now.

How so?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've said it before but it annoys me just how stupid so many people are.
On TV they're speaking to a guy in Northern Ireland. He says he voted out. Why? Why red tape and bureaucracy and all these other things that he doesn't understand but knows are bad because the media says so.

I still place the blame on the political class; we can say that those voters are stupid but, if they are, then the grown-ups have a duty of care.

[Sheilbh]

and we're recognising them now.

How so?

Well we're having to listen to them at least. We're leaving the EU because of that vote.

As I said at the time I hope we get as much news from the North as we did during the referendum count because, as I think RH pointed out, Yorkshire and Lancashire have about as many people in them as London, but you'd never normally know.

I still place the blame on the political class; we can say that those voters are stupid but, if they are, then the grown-ups have a duty of care.

I entirely blame the political class - and the EU. I don't think voters are stupid, I think the vast majority of the time they get it right and hopefully that's the case here. For example I don't think we would have had this result at any other point in our membership of the EU.

I don't like sneering at stupid plebs or, the barely better, left-wing position of convincing yourselves they're all duped by false consciousness and that a corrective course of Guardian reading would make them into sensible, pro-immigration, anti-austerity Europeans. There's clearly profound issues and real pain in deep England that shouldn't be ignored because people are thick.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally Len McCluskey (head of one of the big unions) was asked about Corbyn. He replied that 'the coup has failed. Corbyn is a man of steel.'

He was then asked why the opposition to Corbyn came from all wings of the party not just the right/centre-left. He said that many on the soft left had been 'seduced by sinister forces'. He was asked what they were and went head-first into the internet conspiracy theory that it's all being orchestrated by Portland Communications a PR firm that works with Mandelson and Blair

Edit: Also Ben Wallace, key aide to Boris, on Gove - Game of Thrones comparisons:



Edit: And some polling on Bregret and priorities by Mori:
In a 2nd #EUref would you vote same way or change vote?

Leavers:
Same 90%
Change 5%

Remainers:
Same 94%
Change 2%

Ipsos MORI- Remain voters:
Should Britain:
Accept EU migrants to access single market 67%
Give up single market to block EU migrants 16%

Ipsos MORI - Leave voters:
Should Britain:
Accept EU migrants to access single market 18%
Give up single market to block EU migrants 66%

[Richard Hakluyt]

Oh dear, looks like Govism is still-born as a political movement 

[Agelastus]

I was watching the same program Sheilbh was, and I may have missed a few words as I was only half-listening, but it came across to me that Gove didn't know the difference between Game of Thrones and House of Cards.

"I've seen the American version"...

And yes, I can also see why people consider him to be "creepy".

[Sheilbh]

Oh dear, looks like Govism is still-born as a political movement 

Given that threat even still-born looks optimistic

[Josquius]

I entirely blame the political class - and the EU. I don't think voters are stupid, I think the vast majority of the time they get it right and hopefully that's the case here. For example I don't think we would have had this result at any other point in our membership of the EU.

I don't like sneering at stupid plebs or, the barely better, left-wing position of convincing yourselves they're all duped by false consciousness and that a corrective course of Guardian reading would make them into sensible, pro-immigration, anti-austerity Europeans. There's clearly profound issues and real pain in deep England that shouldn't be ignored because people are thick.

Agreed that this was the perfect time for the leavers.
If only Cameron hadn't been so crazy and waited a few years....

But I do blame the lumpens for being stupid.
Yes. There are problems in England.  I'm usually the first to complain about the London centric screw the north nature of the country.
But the eu isn't the problem. The eu indeed is a salve if anything for most.  I get why they lashed out at the eu like this, its the only target they were given. But it doesn't make it any less dumb that they are upset at the government, austerit, zero hours contracts, etc.... yet they vote for the wide that represents more of that.

[Sheilbh]

I wish this vote were about zero hour contracts and austerity. But I really think it was an English nationalist moment and that the coming fights will ultimately be about what England is.

[Sheilbh]

God bless Buzzfeed for this bit of map geekery
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisapplegate/why-a-pro-eu-party-could-be-screwed-in-the-next-election?utm_term=.nkjPDWMnx#.ulvk87v3l

[Tamas]

Edit: And this stuff is fascinating:
http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/
One section:

HANDOUTS DON'T PRODUCE GRATITUDE
By the same token, it seems unlikely that those in these regions (or Cornwall or other economically peripheral spaces) would feel 'grateful' to the EU for subsidies. Knowing that your business, farm, family or region is dependent on the beneficence of wealthy liberals is unlikely to be a recipe for satisfaction (see James Meek's recent essay in the London Review of Books on Europhobic farmers who receive vast subsidies from the EU). More bizarrely, it has since emerged that regions with the closest economic ties to the EU in general (and not just of the subsidised variety) were most likely to vote Leave.

While it may be one thing for an investment banker to understand that they 'benefit from the EU' in regulatory terms, it is quite another to encourage poor and culturally marginalised people to feel grateful towards the elites that sustain them through handouts, month by month. Resentment develops not in spite of this generosity, but arguably because of it. This isn't to discredit what the EU does in terms of redistribution, but pointing to handouts is a psychologically and politically naïve basis on which to justify remaining in the EU.

In this context, the slogan 'take back control' was a piece of political genius. It worked on every level between the macroeconomic and the psychoanalytic. Think of what it means on an individual level to rediscover control. To be a person without control (for instance to suffer incontinence or a facial tick) is to be the butt of cruel jokes, to be potentially embarrassed in public. It potentially reduces one's independence. What was so clever about the language of the Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment, then promised to eradicate it. The promise had nothing to do with economics or policy, but everything to do with the psychological allure of autonomy and self-respect. Farrage's political strategy was to take seriously communities who'd otherwise been taken for granted for much of the past 50 years.

This doesn't necessarily have to translate into nationalistic pride or racism (although might well do), but does at the very least mean no longer being laughed at. Those that have ever laughed at 'chavs' (such as the millionaire stars of Little Britain) have something to answer for right now, as Rhian E. Jones' Clampdown argued. The willingness of Nigel Farrage to weather the scornful laughter of metropolitan liberals (for instance through his periodic appearances on Have I Got News For You) could equally have made him look brave in the eyes of many potential Leave voters. I can't help feeling that every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way on that increasingly hateful programme was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived. The giggling, from which Boris Johnson also benefited handsomely, needs to stop.

Well if they would rather have their way of living destroyed/starve to death, power to them.

I think they over-analyse something much simpler: ignorance. Not in general, but how your county/country works. Why would the good people of Cornwall be familiar with the crucial part EU funds have played in their lives?
Most of that happens well over their head, and some stamp on some signs informing that this and that was using EU money to be built will hardly have a big consequence, especially, as  I suspect, local politicians were not eager to point out it was EU funding, not their own jolly good splendid personal efforts, that brought results.

Plus, yes, the mainstream political parties need to hear the grumblings of the grumblers but to what extent? If the grumblers want a way back to the separated nation states of pre-1945, if they want gender equality lessened, if they want Muslims and other immigrants to be second class citizens, should the mainstream listen and change policies? Basically, should the mainstream become the populist fringe parties? What's the point?