I don’t agree, the limits of the devolved parliament are pretty strict, and they explicitly preclude self determination (similarly devolving power to Stormont in no way increased the likelihood of a united Ireland, if anything it did the opposite in that case); whereas the Edinburgh agreement actually allowed for the possibility of self determined independence.
Yeah, that makes sense. It seems that Labour in general (and English Labour/Scottish Labour’s relationship in particular) has not adapted to the political reality that Labour is to a great extent responsible for. You can’t establish a parliament somewhere and then expect to just radio in policy from Westminster.
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I think the confusion is arising because you’re using ‘self determination’ rather narrowly, to refer only to the scenario of Scotland independently determining that it should become an independent nation.
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That’s missing the point though, the fact is that a significant number of Labour voters (especially in the north of England) voted to leave the EU. Everyone expected the a large chunk of the Conservative and all of the UKIP voters to vote to leave, they did not expect Sunderland to vote to leave by 60%. This is a significant signal that there is a shift in long time Labour heartlands (outside of London) towards nationalism, it’s been there for a while now, the growth in UKIP wouldn’t have been possible without it, it’s very worrying, and it’s even more worrying given the recent stance by some within the party to promote anti-immigration policies, and with Corbyn’s lukewarm support of Remain (which is putting it mildly).
No. No. No. I didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t suggest that Corbyn is in anyways like Hitler. That would just be completely stupid.
All I was saying that the Nationalistic murmurings, from all sides, have echos of 1930s Germany (as well as 1930s England btw).
It’s the rising Nationalism within the Labour Party that I am concerned with and I am not suggesting that Corbyn is a Nationalist, I am merely suggesting that he is not a very effective leader and doesn’t seem to be prioritising countering those Nationalist murmuring within the Labour Party.
Well, while on the one hand limited self-governance is better than nothing, it does kind of contradict the very principle of self determination in the first place.
Its not nationalism, it’s protectionism. These areas have suffered from economic globalization more than most, and their traditions are unsettled by an increasingly rapid pace of change; they’re now fighting back in the only way they can: by refusing to play along, blowing political bridges and sabotaging economic roads.
The answer is not to berate them, or to roll out nutcases like Eddie Izzard (jesus christ, somebody should just find the courage to tell him to shut the fuck up); but to listen and find answers that can treat everyone (including migrants) with dignity and respect.
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Someone above suggested you had gone straight to Godwin so I’m not the only one to read that. If you didn’t mean it fine, but I still think that post was very hyperbolic.
I do think that there are a number of large-city Jews in this country who have been used to having a very significant presence in the Labour Party (which is understandable and which has generally been a good thing) and are now concerned, though nobody likes to say it, that Muslims are taking over. I may be wrong but I suspect that anti-Semitism is becoming dogwhistle for “Muslim”. I’ll be honest; I have no idea at all whether Muslims, whether British born or immigrant, are any kind of threat to “British values” (most of which should be threatened, anyway) or to British Jews. None of the Muslims I have met appear to be any such thing but that could be an artefact of the kind of world I live in. But I do know that the far Right is the enemy of all of us, Jewish, Muslim, Indian, Afro-Caribbean, Polish, Romanian, and we need to keep track of the real enemy.
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And as I try to stay optimist, the kids come back from school with forms to record their nationality, place of birth, and “first language heard at birth”. We don’t need to worry about fascists infiltrating the opposition when it’s pretty clear that they’re already in government.
It’s not simply protectionism, protectionism is limited to trade with other nations, tariffs and such. It’s quite clearly an ignorant fear of immigration to a large degree, and quite often straight up bigoted xenophobia.
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I was typing fast.
Absolutely right. My concern is with effective opposition and leadership, but that’s a different story.
Without a proper sociological investigation, that’s as speculative as saying that it was the desire to give Cameron a kicking in the bollinger. As @toyg says above, it’s more likely to be protectionism. As Kung Fu-tse put it a long time ago “Consider the woes of the people if you would sit calmly on your throne”, and that’s exactly what Cameron didn’t do.
My wife is deeply involved in anti-poverty, as a result I know what the Conservative Government did to poor people. Most people seem to have no idea, even people supposedly involved in support agencies. I wonder if you do? Concentrix is just the latest scandal. I imagine in places like Scunthorpe everybody knows someone who has been kicked in the teeth by Osborne’s policies, and it was the sheer failure of the Conservatives to obey Kung’s dictum, along with the desire to have a particularly stupid referendum, that has led to the present crisis.
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The mainstream objection to immigration around here is mostly on the back of competition for jobs and resources, enabling the “reserve army of labour” and such, which is all part of economic protectionism. There is no real fight over the right of minorities to exist and practice their beliefs (which, in case of Poles for example, mostly overlap with local ones anyway). Of course there are xenophobes and bigots, that’s always the case in low-education working-class areas: tribalism is simply innate in mammals.
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Given the nature of the problem, and as in the 1930s, leadership needs to come at community level. In the Mosley days, the Metropolitan Police were supporting the Fascists. Parliamentary democracy was not enough on its own to defeat them.
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You can’t say it’s likely to be protectionism, as basically nobody in the campaign was actually campaigning for protectionist policies (other than the idiotic threat of protectionism to get free trade deals without the need for free movement), a few people came out afterwards saying they’d be happy with WTO trade rules, but that never came up in the debate. Unless you have some proper sociological investigation to back it up, it’s ridiculous to suggest it had anything to do with protectionism.
On the other hand, there has been significant polling in recent years which has established without much doubt that immigration is one of the main fears with working-class people (it was the 2nd most common reason given for voting to leave the EU after ‘sovereignty’).
There was certainly a degree of protest vote in the result, cue lots of regretful idiots the next morning, but that has nothing specifically to do with protectionism.
It should also be noted that protectionism is a terrible idea.
It’s a flaw in the engine rendering the Markdown… in the Markdown spec, text surrounded by underscores is supposed be placed in an <em> tag and the underscores removed, but the rule is not supposed be applied to URLs, particularly URLs in URL tags… unfortunately, this site’s engine is doing just that.
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I thought the trigger is “<blank>_”? The b0rken URL had an apostrophe before the underscore, even generous whitespace definitions shouldn’t include this as match
yeah well’this engine seems to consider apostrophes whitespace enough.
You are talking about protectionism for companies, what I’m talking about is protectionism for workers. Workers are under economic pressure from international competition - under the form of delocalization and of cheaper migrant workers. This is not limited to Britain, similar stances exist in France, Germany, the US and so on. Workers want to be protected from such competition through visa restriction and capital controls, exactly like protectionist companies want to be protected from international competition through tariffs.
Few ideas are bad in absolute terms. Protectionism pretty much saved American IT manufacturers in the '80s, giving them time to adapt to the changing landscape of cheap Asian manufacturers. It’s not a long-term solution to anything, but used judiciously it’s an instrument that can help slow down the pace of change when things get too hot.
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