HuffPo got an opinion from Doughty Chambers. Their opinion after reading the relevant Labour rules is that they can’t keep him off.
Anyway, his being in charge doesn’t seem to have prevented Cameron’s sister in law from announcing she’s now a Labour supporter. My guess is that the Blairites have suddenly realised that the next election is winnable and want one of their own to get the credit. The number of protest votes against the government and UKIP will be enormous.
don’t forget: paid for by the Welsh and the Scottish.
Maybe she just assumes he won’t be in charge. I just watched Lisa Nandy discussing her resignation from the shadow cabinet. If even his supporters think he should step down, he’s probably toast. I do think he still has a lot of support among the young…unfortunately the same demographic that didn’t show up in sufficient force at the polls on referendum day.
So, the demographics that voted for “Leave” had higher turnouts.
While the older voters voted against their own interests, some of the blame has to fall back on the younger voters for not turning out to vote — if that graph was 81% straight down, it might have been a different result.
Older voters didn’t vote against their own interests, they voted squarely with theirs, their children’s and their grandchildren’s interests. The result may well have been different if younger voters had an interest, but it wasn’t. I’d prefer people take decisions who have an active interest in politics though, rather than those who couldn’t be bothered. This’ll hopefully put paid to the accusation that older voters sold the youngsters down the river, and hopefully encourage young voters to get involved in future elections and referendums. Those who are politically active make the decisions, as it should be. Everyone’s welcome, but not everyone’s interested.
The highest turnout being among retirees, who don’t exactly have a lot on in the day.
Well, I hope they have an exit plan for USD come November.
Scotland isn’t even looking to go it alone, they are looking to go it as part of the EU as opposed to as part of the UK, which are the two options they have available right now. It will be interesting to see what they will do if the EU tells them they will have to get in line to become a member state and they are left choosing UK or literally being alone and starting from scratch with trade deals as such.
I keep seeing anecdotes to that effect. But if 17M people voted to leave, how hard would it be to find 30-40 people who regret that? I haven’t yet seen polling or even any kind of social media analysis to suggest this is a real thing. I’m not even saying I disbelieve it, I’m just saying I don’t yet believe it is enough to have made a difference.
Men are just too emotional to rule.
It’s worse to call someone racist than to actually be racist.
Well I disagree about the not misguided part. Leaving the EU into the arms of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to escape neo-liberalism seems pretty backwards to me. I agree that a lot of people probably voted to leave because they knew something was wrong and they had to do something about it, but many revolutions replace the current structure with a worse one, and I expect this to fit that mold.
But if they sit around indefinitely not triggering Article 50 then the country is fucked. Cameron isn’t a genius, he’s a whiny baby who was willing to destroy the country for momentary political gain, and if this analysis is correct then he’s just done it again. Those big financial companies that are all going to leave Britain? They are still going to leave. Those EU doctors who are working in Britain? Mostly still looking for jobs on the continent. Falling immigration leading to falling young population and swelling elderly population increasingly dependent on an ever-less-funded medical system? Yup. Everything that was going to go wrong is still going to go wrong because of the cloud of uncertainty, and without certainty it is going to take much longer to get better.
If we take “interests” to mean positive real world outcomes rather than what I’d like right now then saying that old people voted in the interests of young people is saying that young people voted against their own interests. You can have faith in democracy, but you can’t say that some people don’t vote in ways that make themselves materially worse off. Part of the wisdom of crowds is that some people are dead wrong.
Honestly, elderly people only have so much longer to live. Given the short term upheaval caused by this I find it very unlikely they voted in their own interests by overwhelmingly voting to leave. Some of them will have seen their savings and/or pensions evaporate over night. Their access to medical care might be drastically reduced as non-UK citizen doctors leave the country and (as Nigel Farage admitted) it turns out that that money being sent to the EU will not be reinvested in the NHS.
I don’t think anyone knows what will happen in the long term, not really. If someone was confident they were giving their grandchildren a better future by leaving the EU then that’s democracy in action and the people who made the vote won’t live to see if they were right (none of us will, historians will be arguing over it for hundreds of years). If someone was confident that “getting control of their borders” would mean that they got better medical care, I think they are going to find out they were wrong.
Brexit or delayed Brexit, it’s fucked either way.
Johnson wants to negotiate before triggering the exit countdown, and the EU have said they won’t negotiate until he does. All the things he says he wants he’ll only get if the UK stays in the EU.
A snap election and a new PM saying “fuck no, we aren’t triggering Article 50 ever, because that’s a fucking stupid idea” is the only way to go.
Otherwise just nuke England from orbit to stop its idiocy from spreading. It’s the only way to be sure.
I resent that, as my part of England voted Remain.
All that is actually needed is a virus targeting right wing MPs. I have no way of knowing if Johnson is on Colombian marching powder or whether that’s just what Eton and the Bullingdon Club does to you, but I suspect that a virus that attacks the small cardiac lesions caused by cocaine would be a good start.
The way you wrote that second sentence suggests that the older voters felt that their interests and that of their children and grandchildren were one in the same. Clarify if I’m mistaken.
They may well have. We’ll only know for sure in 5-10 years which is the case. But I believe that returning democracy to the young is in their best interests.I find it surprising that so many Americans here are in favour of Britain giving away her democracy when they shed blood for theirs, as did many nations historically. It’s not something to be given away, even if it means a temporary blip in the price of the Pound. [quote=“anon50609448, post:613, topic:80366”]
elderly people only have so much longer to live
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The 45-54 age group voted to leave. That’s 30 years of productive service to the nation and several decades more in retirement. They’re still here for a good while.[quote=“anon50609448, post:613, topic:80366”]
and (as Nigel Farage admitted) it turns out that that money being sent to the EU will not be reinvested in the NHS
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Nigel Farage is not in government, he is the leader of a party with a single MP. All he can offer is an opinion, not a budget.[quote=“anon50609448, post:613, topic:80366”]
I don’t think anyone knows what will happen in the long term, not really.
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That’s certainly true.
Doesn’t everyone have their childrens’ interests at heart? Whether or not parent and child have differing opinions they both believe they have eachother’s interests in mind.
The BDI has already denied having said that.
(And the idea that the BDI is the institution to ask is grimly amusing.)
Your math seems a little funny here.
Yeah, but EU won’t believe it’s for real until about 10 years after the leave forces stop making headlines saying, “Hey, we voted, this is unfair.” And if things get bad then it will only add fuel to the “leave the EU” fire since it’s driven by economic conditions being bad. I think the only responsible thing to do is to trigger article 50 immediately and then go to the EU and bargain from a position of weakness, saying, “How can we hold on to as many of the advantages of being in the EU as we can while accepting all the disadvantages?”
No, and we all know it. We can haggle over what the percentage is, but we know it’s greater than zero.
So we agree that older people who voted to leave may have voted against their interests, and that it’s not anti-democratic to suggest they did, just an argument about facts?
But why doesn’t California assert its democracy by freeing itself from the Federal government of the US? Why doesn’t Ontario free itself from Canada? Why doesn’t London free itself from Britain? Why don’t I free myself from my municipality? Why doesn’t my liver go it alone from the rest of my body?
The EU offers a balance of large group and local decision making, just like all other governments I can think of, including the government of the UK. If people felt that balance was drastically out of whack then I can see how that’s a reason to leave. But if sovereignty for the UK is some kind of goal-in-itself rather than just another way of organizing things then I think that’s very foolish.
Right. And that does seem to be what happened just recently in, say, Egypt.
I was just trying to say (as I did say) that not every vote for Leave was necessarily driven by entirely bad and/or misguided motivations. Yes, bigotry is getting like 90% of the coverage, and nostalgic nationalism maybe another 9%, but a class-based understanding that some “Leavers” have that the EU’s policies have not been moving in a positive direction for anyone but the elite cabal pulling the EU policy strings is mostly ignored. It’s a perceptive resentment that’s ignored at the peril of those who have instead been benefiting from those policies.
Granted, Johnson, Farage, Gove et al. are not better alternatives, but I was trying to highlight an overlooked (and justified) motivation harbored by many, and not the sad and yes, ultimately misguided result.
Perhaps you middle class people get to retire early, but I know a good number of 75 year olds still slugging to make a living.
No. Fuck the middle classes, Boomers and Gen-Xers (of which I’m one) for milking it off the backs of an increasingly cheaper labour market.
Sure, abusers exist, but those that love their children have their interests at heart.[quote=“anon50609448, post:621, topic:80366”]
So we agree that older people who voted to leave may have voted against their interests,
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The same way we agree that young people who voted to remain may have voted against their interests.
Not anti-democratic to argue the point at all. And the argument will be made of many facts, most of which have yet to come to light.[quote=“anon50609448, post:621, topic:80366”]
But why doesn’t California assert its democracy by freeing itself from the Federal government of the US?
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Why did America even bother freeing itself from Britain then? Why don’t they come back under British rule if democracy’s that unimportant?
the EU has democratic deficits, one of the most obvious issues is the parliament not allowed to introduce bills
I’m pretty sure America left the British empire because American felt they were being oppressed or at least unfairly treated by the British. I think my point was that independence is not a worthwhile goal in and of itself but that the circumstances decide whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. If anything I would say that independence - other things being equal - is bad. So I don’t find your point about America fighting for its independence compelling at all. If there are good reasons to want to leave the EU then there are good reasons. Idolatry directed at independence is not a good reason.
I’m happy to agree that we don’t know how this will play out in the long run and that arguments about whether older UK citizens mostly voted against their own interests are really arguments about fact rather than about who loves or cares about who.
And I’d love to hear from anyone who voted leave because they disagree with specific rules and conventions of the EU parliament on why they feel those rules are a deal breaker.
If an independent and democratic country is having its independence and democracy gradually eroded to swell the coffers and power of an unelected, giant beauracracy, then that alone is reason enough.
I don’t consider it idolatry in the least.
