This. The UK’s post-industrial and rural poor, white working class has been inchoately crying out for the last couple of decades that it has been left behind, left out, ignored and denigrated. The Tory right has allowed financiers and industrialists to offshore and eliminate their jobs and not shared the fruits of the service and high finance sector that replaced it. New Labour slid economically right and ignored them too. The Progressive left replied with #racist; #islamophobe; #homophobe; #~ist; #bigot; rather than actually seeing the protest for what it really was.
If you’re poor, disadvantaged, denigrated and can’t see a way out, why not pull the whole thing down and bring your tormentors down to your level? You’re poor either way and maybe things will change for the better.
Maybe we should be concentrating on reducing poverty and socioeconomic deprivation? I seem to remember arguing that in another thread somewhere?
Particularly as the ‘worse’ things that Britain got through were shared struggles where most of the population felt involved in society. Brexit is a protest vote by those who’ve felt left out.
That’s what the pundits are reporting, yup. No wonder David Camberwell - was that his name already? - is chickening out of the next phase of leading the country.
I tell you - you can’t leave anything in the control of politicians. They will screw it up.
Just because you and I know that, doesn’t mean that people registering a protest vote know that. Or that they even care very much.
And don’t just write them off as #stupid#bigots#racists, because that’s part of the problem. Being poor and disadvantaged means that stuff is meaningless and just a driver towards the fascist right. Being poor is shit and leads to grasping any straw that offers a way out of it.
How do you revive dying economies in places like Sunderland, or Stoke, or Cornwall?
How do you reassure people who are worried about immigration when immigration isn’t an issue, and pulling up the drawbridge would only make other things worse?
If the concern is that the UK economy is far too biased towards financial services in London, and all the money is being concentrated amongst the rich in the SE, how does Brexit solve that? Do Farage, Johnson, Hannan even want to do anything about that?
Britain already had the cushiest deal of anyone in the EU, so I’m unsure of what even Johnson’s pipe dream of blackmailing the EU into further concessions after a No vote is meant to gain.
I was listening to some of the interviews on ‘As it Happens’. One MP, Elizabeth Mayfield, I think, actually said that she thought that because the UK would be out of the EU, that she would not be able to travel in Europe anymore. That’s when I had to turn the radio off. Jeebus Frak! I was gobsmacked. How does she manage automatic breathing?
Oh my friggin’ gawd, the other interviews must have been all the same people from when, a few years ago, there was going to be a minority government in London. The moaning, the bleating, the ‘what will we do’s’, the ‘it’s the end of civilization as we know it’ from these people. FFS!
Jeez!
We get minority governments in Canada all the time. In fact, a lot of the voters here like them, because the government tends to be a lot less high-handed. Did the UK sink into the ocean because of the minority government? Did Prince Charles ascend to the throne because of the minority government? Was Torchwood renewed for another five seasons because of the minority governemnt? Nope. Nope. Nope.
What was all the hand-wringing about, then? Nothing!
We also get major snowstorms, in Canada. Some years, we get at least ten of them, man. Really, really bad snowstorms that will just shred your vacation plans, your work plans, that keep your kids out of school, that cause power failures, winter conditions that halve the life of your car, snow shoveling that will cause cardiac failure. We just get through it, one step at a time.
Canada has had a separatist movement in Québec since the 1950s. The federal government has dealt with it usually poorly, sometimes well. There was and is racism and prejudice because the separatism from both sides of the questions, some of which I experienced personally. And the lies. Oh, the lies…
It’s what politicians do, they lie - I have this on good authority.
As a nation, as a people, we worked our way through this, over the decades, and we are still working on it. We still have a lot of work to do; our relations with the First Nations, for one. Canada’s still here and whole, and we’re doing fine.
Well Brexit wasn’t the answer, it’s just going to make things worse.
I left the UK years ago because I disliked what it was turning into then, and I’m even less happy now. I have no idea how to fix it. But I am just a little hacked off at the Progressive Left circle-jerk comments about how the “stupid and bigoted” have done this, when that attitude was part of the push to this outcome.
The only thing I have is that if a large enough segment of the population don’t feel part of Society then one way or another they’ll try and bring the whole thing down. So it’s really a bad idea to have a large group who feel left out.
Sadly it wouldn’t surprise me if the same demographic in the USA voted Trump in for all the same reasons as UK Leave voters voted Leave … I’ll keep my fingers crossed, as President Trump would be even worse than a Brexit. Maybe you have enough time left to build bridges there and make them feel more wanted?
sucession risks for Scotland and Northern Ireland; the increased
legitimacy of the reactionary right and xenophobia and racism as the
“shy UKIPpers” realise (or claim) that they were more numerous than they
had believed.
The Tories will have a leadership change. As they didn’t bother to
appoint a deputy PM when they took office, secession is unclear.
should be:
secession risks for Scotland and Northern Ireland; the increased
legitimacy of the reactionary right and xenophobia and racism as the
“shy UKIPpers” realise (or claim) that they were more numerous than they
had believed.
The Tories will have a leadership change. As they didn’t bother to
appoint a deputy PM when they took office, succession is unclear.
Even as someone who lives in the US, I can’t agree. Trump would be for 4 years. Brexit is forever.
I’d rather not have either, but that ship would appear to have sailed.
Me? I’ll get on it.
Except I won’t, because a) I’m lazy b) my candidate in the US is gone, so fuck it and c) I’m not a very empathetic person anyway. People can vote how they choose to and suffer the consequences. They’re adults, they can make their stupid decisions on their own. I’m not feeling very well-disposed towards humanity right now.
Dunno. You can tank the economy pretty well in just a few years, look at all the fallout from GW Bush’s presidency the world has yet to recover from. Plus he’s a spur of the moment, snap decision, damn the facts sort. We’ll just have to pray his tiny hands really can’t hit the big red button … ;-(
I am, which is why I voted remain. I have seen the EU tell UK governments (both Labour and Conservative) to act like decent human beings on numerous occasions, I studied some of the cases before I became ill.
I also remember what Carlisle (Voted strongly in favour of Brexit) was like before EU funding. We literally had buildings rotting and collapsing (sometimes killing people) because of lack of investment. EU investment in the 80s and 90s fixed a lot of that. Now they want to go back to the 70s. Well, I can’t stop them, but I can and will fight to keep the remain areas in the EU, even if it results in the break up of the UK. I identify more as European than British anyway.
Is the EU perfect? No. That’s why we need groups like DiEM25. We never needed Brexit or what they offered.
“… collapse of the finance sector when Euro-denominated derivatives trades
relocate to an EU state; collapse of the London property market (a big
deal as 40% of the UK’s national wealth is property in the southeast);
sucession risks for Scotland and Northern Ireland …”
The finance sector who destroyed the economy in 2008 and afterwards claimed huge bailouts part of which were paid out as bonuses to the CEOs, a very special kind of welfare for the super-rich. Maybe UK (and the world) are kind of better of without them?
Am i the only one who thinks that a renormalization of property prices in London to humanly-affordable levels might not be such a bad idea?
And honestly, I always favoured Scottish and Irish independence.
Please someone explain to me why these ae bad things?
The really, really sad thing is the validation of UKIP and the racists. But honestly, good things may come out of this too.
For the record, I don’t believe there’ll be an economic meltdown after the leave vote either.
Pound tanking, stock markets down?
These are fictitional fluctuations and don’t represent real values. There is a process now, and a lot of treaties need to be renegotiated, and a lot of these treaties are still in power unless the UK explicitly leaves them too. Keep calm and renegotiate. This may not be the end of the world.
… and this is not to say that this referendum will not lead to increased pain for people in deprived areas in the UK. It probably will.
But there’s no necessity to that. If it happens, it’s because the Tories will use the result as the pretext to inflict more of what they already had in mind. This does not make the vote “self-destructive”. The UK has resources to lift all of its population from poverty ten times over, if only it wanted to.
