Again where is limited statistical evidence that the majority of Labour Party constituencies voted Leave. But given the phenomenally messed up FPTP UK voting system that does NOT equate with the majority of Labour Party voters voted Leave.
Actually according to polls, the only way to have any sense of the political affiliation of those voting in the referendum Labour voters voted overwhelmingly Remain in the referendum. Please, stop making categorical statements void of evidence.
Also I would like to send a reminder that 23 June 2016 there was a major storm in the South of England. Home of the majority of Labour Remain voters and 10 000 of people could physically not vote because the transportation system broke down. I happen to know as I was caught up in it.
Ladies and gentlemen, witness democracy, one of the proudest achievements of human civilization and arguably the most successful form of government we have come up with yet.
The wonders of an Ill Informed Electorate. I don’t mean that as an insult; leaving Europe is such a complex question that you’d need to be an expert in economics and international law to have a chance of making an actually well informed decision. Plus the Electorate was Mal-informed too, by various populist politicians and weird lobbying groups.
It’s not so much FPTP that’s the problem as the constituency system. We’d have the same issue in most of the alternative vote systems as they generally still have a constituency system to some degree.
But given that we do have that system, whether the majority of voters in the country is for it or not doesn’t matter. I also did not say that a majority of Labour voters in general was for Leave.
I did not make any categorical statement. I initially said many Labour voters support leave. That is inarguably correct but not categorical.
I then amended your statement to read that a majority of Labour voters in many constituencies voted leave.
I’ll grant you that that is impossible to substantiate but it’s also not exactly what I’d call categorical. I also don’t see that the links you posted do anything to contradict that.
The evidence suggests that a lot of Labour constituencies voted in favour of Leave, many by quite high margins. That at least suggests that a lot of Labour voters in those areas voted leave.
As a party leader, Corbyn has to look at the electoral realities. And those are that if he supports a fresh referendum, Labour will potentially get a kicking in many, many constituencies and will still not win others.
That has to be a worry. Given the complete lack of interest the Lib Dems generated in the election by being openly against Leaving, I doubt very much that any of the major parties are particularly keen to hang their strategy on supporting a referendum.
Of course, Corbyn also has the problem that, as you say (and as I said) an awful lot of his supporters do support a referendum and to keep them happy, he promised to support a referendum if certain things occurred.
From memory they were:
Failure to get the government to agree an acceptable Brexit deal, meeting Labour’s key tests.
Following that, failure to get a general election.
Given that all of those things have occurred, his dancing around not supporting a referendum is looking increasingly bad (whether you support another referendum or not, a party leader making promises and not keeping them - while par for the course - doesn’t help with electability, you’re supposed to break your promises after you’ve won the election, not before it).
The trouble is that I suspect the Scottish economy depends much more on free trade with the rest of the UK than it does on free trade with the EU.
So while I think there’s a good moral case for a second indyref (as one of the main arguments of the “No” campaign was that an independent Scotland wouldn’t be guaranteed EU membership), the economic case is probably against it.
With a minority government, relying on hard-right, anti-EU factions to get anything through she was doomed to failure - Unless she tried to find a consensus across the house - a Customs Union option would have done that.
But she has her Red Lines - which are ERG/DUP Red Lines with little regard to the nation - which is why they are rejected wholesale by Parliament.
Well the DUP and loyalist terrorists. Half the unionists in NI are anti-Brexit. Many of them just voted “strategically” for the DUP to keep Sinn Féin out in their district. Which led the DUP to be the ones holding the whip hand over the rest of the UK.
I agree. It’s the same almost everywhere in the West, thanks to late-stage capitalism and so-called conservative parties. The question is, how and whether that anger in the UK will translate to a fascist mass movement of direct action.
Most dopes like this are usually more bark than bite, especially if they don’t have a charismatic demagogue to tell them what to do. They love complaining and blaming others (usually the wrong others) for their own problems, but except for scattered incidences of young thugs attacking people the most action most of them will take is calling into talk radio shows and posting Internet comments.
That said, I don’t know who all the players are at the moment. If not Farage, are there any strong possibilities for their violence-inciting fuhrer at the moment? Is Nick Griffin a factor anymore in this regard (if he ever was)?
They won’t stop talking about it in the aftermath of a hard Brexit. Quite the opposite. As long as it continues to be only talk, they’re welcome to keep doing it.
As a party leader he also has to lead instead of dithering. Any decision he makes on the issue is going to lose Labour voters, and the time to have made that decision was months ago. I’m sure the knives are out within the party and, whatever the outcome of this debacle, I doubt he’ll be leader by the end of the year.
This and this again. The man has no concept of leadership.
This is wishful thinking. The Corbynista propaganda machinery is in full force and the Labour Party election system is even more messed up as the UK FPTP disaster. Allowing everyone and their cousin to become voting members for £3 without even the most basic diligence or scrutiny does not provide for a democratically elected party leader --me thinks.
Unless Corbyn Labour for once actually does the right thing and encourages tactical voting supporting progressive Lib Dem candidates in constituencies where Labour has no chance. Allowing Zac Goldsmith to re-gain Richmond by a few 1000 votes (Labour won all of 5000) was a crime for which Corbyn’s labour should never be forgiven.
Ok so I’m beginning to learn something here. Still curious why the border and its check points were the biggest locus of violence? My guess is that these paramilitary actors found these to be easy targets as they were “bottlenecks”. Or were the skirmishes the result of them trying to get their hands on the goods coming and going?
Well, there’s a couple of walls in place already; though it would require a redrawing of the map to use either as the new border.
@kennykb “Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”, of course, the poet was referring to certain factions within the Scottish Nobility who sold out their nation’s independence in return for clearing their personal debts. I guess that this line was an early example of what the kids would a “Burn” these days
Just so. I’d say there is a fair chance of it. Not a huge chance but definitely there.
There has been a fair undercurrent of it for as long as I can remember but previously it has always been hampered by the lack of sophistication of e.g. people like Nick Griffin and the flat out obvious racism.
I think the Brexit debate has made xenophobia a lot more acceptable to the mainstream. There are a lot of people who previously wouldn’t support an “anti-Paki” group who will support an anti migrant, anti ‘radical’ Islam group so long as it keeps its rhetoric within ‘acceptable’ limits.
That’s where your question about the ‘players’ is relevant. I’d say at present there aren’t any.
UKIP has probably imploded beyond relevancy due to obvious incompetence, if not outright insanity on the part of everyone who isn’t Nigel Farage but they might still go through some sort of internal revolution and come back again.
Yaxley-Lennon obviously springs to mind as a possible candidate but I suspect he doesn’t have what it takes to gather sufficient support from the “I’m not a racist but…” crowd. I could be wrong though, that’s been said about others before…
I’d say Nick Griffin is definitely out of it these days. UKIP successfully nicked all the BNP support that wasn’t outright nazis, the Tories have (so far!) nicked back the people who think of themselves as non-nazis and the BNP’ers are now taking over UKIP. Nick Griffin had a major falling out with most of those, mainly because he tried to shift the party’s image away from nazism and over to the niche that UKIP grabbed instead.
I believe he founded some new party called the British Unity Party but nothing much seems to have come of that.
The current BNP charmer is this gentleman:
Speaking as someone who remembers gangs of skinheads roaming the streets looking for people to kick the shit out of, I’m not keen on that sort of thing.
One scattered instance is one too many.
The emphasis was intended to be on “already” and “talking” with an implied “so far only” for the “talking”…
Agreed. I thought he came up with a reasonable strategy at the conference. Challenge the government but if we can’t succeed there, then it will have to be a referendum was a reasonable fudge. But I think it underestimated both the degree of Tory infighting and the degree of Tory unity.
I don’t mean that as an insult; leaving Europe is such a complex question that you’d need to be an expert in economics and international law to have a chance of making an actually well informed decision. Plus the Electorate was Mal-informed too, by various populist politicians and weird lobbying groups.
