The missing question

by Harry on August 30, 2019

Yesterday’s All Things Considered story about Brexit was a remarkably insidious piece of journalism. Their man in Albion visited the town with the highest Brexit vote in Britain (a ‘namesake’ of Boston Mass: the fact that they have the same name is, no doubt, a remarkable accident), managed to find a woman who voted for Brexit, and asked her what she thought of the Prime Minister’s decision to restrict the sovereignty of the elected parliament (not the way he put it). She was enthused “If that’s what it takes…then so be it”: Brexit has to be done and dusted because we’ve got to ‘slow and control” immigration. She freely admitted that Brexit would be bad for the economy, and he asked if she cared that it will be bad for her business. It as already been bad for her business, which relies on EU migrant labor, but that is something she was, nobly, willing to put up with. But what she was willing to put up with in order to slow and control immigration is entirely uninteresting. The question he didn’t ask was how she justified wrecking other people’s businesses and the businesses that other people who are worse off than she is work for. Next time, please present her with some remainers who are going to lose their livelihoods because of Brexit, or the non-trivial number of remainers who will lose their lives because the health service is understaffed (or just badly staffed) and ask her to justify the costs she is trying to impose on them. (Brilliantly, when I looked for the story to link to, I got an ad for an interview with the repulsive James Dyson).

{ 93 comments }

1

BruceJ 08.30.19 at 1:38 pm

Ahh, so you CAN conduct a “Cletus Safari” in England as well…

2

RobinM 08.30.19 at 2:55 pm

It seems to me, Harry, you’re going a bit overboard in your reaction to one NPR piece. There have, in my view, been an awful lot of insidious pieces on NPR over the years. As to its insidious—as others might see them— pieces on Brexit, to my memory NPR, like most mainstream American media, has, I think, wavered between incredulity and outright hostility towards it, and I don’t recall them being particularly balanced.

Balanced, disinterested reports on Brexit and much else are no doubt eminently desirable, but we’re never likely to get them.

3

William Timberman 08.30.19 at 3:10 pm

Before this sardonic shot at American journamalism was posted, I was in fact asking myself:

Isn’t it a Terrible Thing, everyone, that in this era of ubiquitous Ubers, a certain Mr. T. Friedman might actually be at risk of running out of taxi drivers to interrogate? Shall we shed a gentle tear or two? Wherever shall we go now for our weekly injection of stupidities?

Yeah, well thanks, Harry, for reminding us that, at least in the USA, there’s actually an endless supply of stupid in what one German social media critic I know somewhat cavalierly dismisses as the redacted media.

4

Chris Bertram 08.30.19 at 3:21 pm

Boston is quite an outlier in lots of ways as a basically rural/small town place which experienced a big increase in Eastern European immigration over a short timescale because of the need for migrant labour in big Lincolnshire agribusinesses. Other places with lots of immigration were big cities (which voted Remain). Large Leave votes, otoh, tended to be in places where immigrants (or at least EU ones) live. The consequence of Brexit for that part of Lincolnshire will certainly be the mass departure of E Europeans for places where they are not treated like crap and where they are not paid in ever depreciating ££. Quite a lot of that agriculture will then become unviable as there will be nobody willing to pick the crops at for the wages necessary to make the crops competitive. (One remarkable feature of Brexit is that it simultaneously undermines UK food production and makes food imports more scarce and expensive!)

5

Cian 08.30.19 at 3:30 pm

All US coverage of the UK is pretty awful.

At least they left London. That’s a novelty.

6

Alan White 08.30.19 at 3:31 pm

More evidence that the Trumpian/Johnson/ etc. zeitgeist is a worldwide sociopathic phenomenon. Reading this reminded me of how most farmers here in the US stand by Trump despite the fact that the tariffs are demonstrably harming them. I think some journalists believe that these kinds of interviews are instances of outrageous irrationality or the like; but in this zeitgeist it instead just spreads the madness.

7

HcCarey 08.30.19 at 3:58 pm

Yes, NPR is terrible, and that’s an excellent example of the way in which they’re terrible. Reactionary populism always gets cast as real and authentic

8

Z 08.30.19 at 4:31 pm

The question he didn’t ask was how she justified wrecking other people’s businesses and the businesses that other people who are worse off than she is work for. [A]sk her to justify the costs she is trying to impose on them.

Frankly, as someone who generally feels he is on the same page as you Harry both in terms of political philosophy and political practice, I’m mystified that this is considered a gotcha of some sort. Yes, Brexit will wreck lives. But all significant political decisions have losers and winners, so can be said to wreck lives, that’s why they are political decisions and that’s why we (supposedly) follow a strict procedure to adjudicate between them. If Remain had won, some lives would have been wrecked. If Bernie Sanders wins the presidency in 2020, many lives and businesses will be wrecked (or so I hope, at least).

Now it may be argued that that more lives are wrecked by Leaving than by Remaining, or that the decision to leave is wrecking significantly more lives than usual political decisions, or that it is wrecking them for no obvious reason. Obviously, some people think so (myself, for instance) and others disagree (the relative majority of British voters that voted for the Brexit party in the European election, for instance). But I don’t think it helps pretending that Brexit is unique among political decisions in that a fraction of the electorate has made a choice that has a huge and sometimes devastating impact on other people: that happens every year in every democracy, very often with much smaller electoral support, and quite often with consequences which rival what is foreseen for a hard Brexit. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does.

9

Dipper 08.30.19 at 4:58 pm

Everyone has a whole host of missing questions every time they hear someone interviewed.

This is one person’s view. She is entitled to her opinion. You are entitled to disagree. If you aren’t happy with her having an opinion, what do you suggest? We have a system of government that allows a self-appointed minority to over-rule a majority when they feel like it?

10

Dipper 08.30.19 at 5:54 pm

okay, Brexit and the NHS.

1. Freedom of Movement from the EU has failed to meet recruitment needs for the NHS. The UK has for years recruited nurses from Asia and elsewhere. The UK has done this without offering From of Movement to everyone from these countries, and neither have The Phillipines or other Asian countries insisted on helping make our laws or demanded money from us. Post Brexit we will still be able to recruit medical staff from overseas, including the EU. FOM is like letting 50 people in and hoping one of them is a nurse.

2. What the UK hasn’t done is train its own people as doctors and nurses. When Dipper was a lad girls would leave school at 16 and enrol as nurses at the local hospital as trainee nurses. Then it became graduate only. There there was a restriction on places. Now there is a shortage. The UK is now investing in more training places for UK staff.

3. If we are talking about people dying, then the NHS regularly comes below European insurance-based systems with higher private provision in efficiency tables. So we could save lives by moving to more private provision of healthcare. Are you in favour?

11

Scott P. 08.30.19 at 5:54 pm

We have a system of government that allows a self-appointed minority to over-rule a majority when they feel like it?

Yes, you do, apparently.

12

Dipper 08.30.19 at 6:11 pm

just to bang on about this, what guarantees are you offering about jobs, GDP growth, public finances, real wage growth in return for my vote? Will you be prepared to commit to matching global GDP growth? And if you fail to meet those guarantees, how will I be indemnified?

We all know the answer. No guarantees, no indemnity, just a firm conviction that you are right and others are wrong. Well, we all think that. Including the lady in Boston.

13

Ogden Wernstrom 08.30.19 at 6:17 pm

I have not extensively sampled US media for stories about Brexit, but I imagine that no US news organization has met Harry’s expectations.

Z @8, however,

…all significant political decisions have losers and winners, so can be said to wreck lives…

…seems to miss the point that Brexit will economically damage the Brexiteers, too. There appears to be a zero-sum assumption, when the expected economic outcome of Brexit is lose-lose.

The woman interviewed is willing to suffer, as long as suffering is also inflicted on certain people. That is what Harry was hoping would be exposed. The suffering of certain others is the prize (and must be the winning that Z refers to).

14

bianca steele 08.30.19 at 6:18 pm

I heard most of that story too. I suppose Lincolnshire likes having quaint businesses that can be run by yuppies, while preferring to house the industrial workforce required for efficient production elsewhere, in the cities. Perhaps Huntingdon is far enough away?

15

Tom 08.30.19 at 6:50 pm

Harry, I was driving when I heard the NPR piece and I had two different reactions.

1) Basically, to find an unabashed Leave supporter they had to go to a rural area, off the usual grid. So, in UK, as in US, the urban/rural divide is important in determining how one feels about immigration and globalization at large. Something to think about for those, like me, who tend to be in favor of openness.

2) The interviewee mentioned that she did not like that there were too many immigrants.* We often hear about arguments pro/con immigration based on economic benefits/costs but for many the cultural (and often chauvinist) considerations seem to trump (cheap pun intended) the economic ones. Again, something to think about.

Let me add that I also agree with Z @8.

*The whole passage is worth quoting: “there was such an influx of Eastern European labor here. And people here in Boston felt it really changed the community. They complained about drinking on the street and also just changing the culture.” Apparently, according to this interpretation of UK culture, people should drink indoor (the pub?).

16

Harry b 08.30.19 at 7:27 pm

Z. I thought about writing a really long post with lots of wrinkles addressing the issue you raise here. Typically politicians – and actually vox pops – simply evade the idea that policies involve the trade offs that we agree they always involve. In this case she admitted there was a trade off. So. When you know that you are deliberately advocating a policy that you imply will harm other people you owe a justification. Often god justifications are to hand. I think tax rates should be raised on people like me even though that would harm us and that is just audited by the benefit that will be enjoyed by other people. And I can articulate why the benefit to others matters more than the host to people like me. I doubt I’d have been bothered by the absence of the question if she hadn’t elaborated on the harm it will do her business. But why didn’t the reporter think it was the obvious question to ask?

17

Harry b 08.30.19 at 7:29 pm

Also. I did rather envy her assumption that immigrants have introduced the practice of drinking on the street. She should meet some non-immigrants.

18

Brian 08.30.19 at 7:42 pm

This whole prorogation business really is a travesty. Things were going so well…

19

Ogden Wernstrom 08.30.19 at 8:21 pm

Let me add that Tom @15 wrote one line of bothsiderism-by-proxy.

20

Dave Heasman 08.30.19 at 8:53 pm

“Apparently, according to this interpretation of UK culture, people should drink indoor (the pub?).”

Is that so strange? We’re (she’s) not talking about sophisticated open-air cafes where people sit at tables drinking discreetly from clean glasses and using the cafe’s urinals; the objection is to rowdy groups of men hanging round street corners drinking to insensibility industrial quantities of lager, or, worse, cheap cider, from multi-pack cans.

21

Dave Heasman 08.30.19 at 9:05 pm

No the practice of drinking on the street isn’t exclusive to immigrants, but there is a lot of it and it isn’t policed. The woman wasn’t clutching at straws when she brought it up.

22

Gareth 08.30.19 at 9:12 pm

It’s not an accident. Boston, Massachusetts is named after Boston, Lincolnshire.

23

Barry 08.30.19 at 9:43 pm

Harry b 08.30.19 at 7:29 pm

” Also. I did rather envy her assumption that immigrants have introduced the practice of drinking on the street. She should meet some non-immigrants.”

Actually, before Johnny Foreigner arrived, the British were quite careful in drinking:

A glass of port with the gentlemen, after dinner, when the ladies were off to knitting/sewing/discussing childcare/the Church Social.

A glass of sherry on special occasions.

Passing a single pint glass of beer around the Crew after winning sporting events.

Savoring a shot of Scotch whiskey after the Hunt.

And so on.

24

Cian 08.30.19 at 10:17 pm

Tom. Binge & street drinking are part of UK culture and have been for my entire life. The idea that the Poles are responsible for pasty faced 20 something anglo-saxons getting ****faced on a Friday night is a bit of a stretch.

Basically, to find an unabashed Leave supporter they had to go to a rural area, off the usual grid.

‘Have to’ would suggest there’s a shortage of leave supporters in the cities, or that ‘leave voters’ feel they are unable to express their opinions in polite society. Neither of these things are true. There’s no shortage of Brexit bores even in London. She could go to my very prosperous and cosmopolitan town in the south and find plenty of people who’d cheerfully say exactly the same thing.

25

Faustusnotes 08.31.19 at 12:55 am

Dipper, the party that organized the referendum and is delivering brexit “do or die” is the party that cancelled the nurses bursary and crashed numbers of uk citizens training for that job. You now have a measles resurgence partly blamed on a lack of capacity at GP surgeries that has been 10 years in the making.

Every time this comes up you blame foreigners and every time it comes up you refuse to accept that your Tory buddies have been strangling the nhs for 10 years. You’re so dishonest, you are a credit to the political movement that is wrecking your country.

26

WilliamR 08.31.19 at 4:39 am

Harry,

First-time commenter and I apologize for such a trivial and off-the-main-topic question, but my curiosity has the better of me: Why is James Dyson repulsive?

I really don’t know. I think of him as the guy who makes very pricey gizmos, esp. vacuum cleaners. From the latter, you could say, therefore–and metaphorically–that he sucks. But why does he really? The Intertubes are not providing any answers here. Thanks.

27

hix 08.31.19 at 5:01 am

” the objection is to rowdy groups of men hanging round street corners drinking to insensibility industrial quantities of lager, or, worse, cheap cider, from multi-pack cans.”

Sounds like the fiscal responsible way to get drunk. I am serious. Old people complaining about the young ones getting drunk with supermarket products instead of the propper way inside the (unaffordable) pubs and Bierzelte is a trend here since quite a while. Fact of the matter is: Alcohol consumption is decreasing substancially among the younger age groups In the “good old days” people got drunk a lot more. Its still far too much – but its not like the pub dont leave at maximum level of drunkness to become a nuisance outside aswell.

28

Dipper 08.31.19 at 6:18 am

@ Cian, Harry, “immigrants have introduced the practice of drinking on the street”, … “Binge & street drinking are part of UK culture”

In areas where large number of Eastern Europeans have come over to do manual work landlords have been buying houses up and converting all living rooms into bedrooms to get maximum occupancy. Hence there are no areas to socialise in the house, so people socialise outside.

29

SusanC 08.31.19 at 8:47 am

I think part of the UK’s crisis is that oeople from rrural areas feel that they ate being ignored politically.

So if a reporter goes out to a rural area to find people to interview – rather than finding a Brexiter in London, which yes, you probably could do – they are at least making a decent effort to find put what people thonk across the whole country, not just London.

P.S. horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre arguably paint an offensive stereotyped view of rural areas of the southern united states. (See also: the works of H.P. Lovecraft) The British stereotype for – for example – Norfolk – is related, although different in the details.

30

Chris Bertram 08.31.19 at 9:13 am

On Susan’s rural areas point, I think Will Wilkinson is worth reading:

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/the-density-divide-urbanization-polarization-and-populist-backlash/

31

Wats 08.31.19 at 10:09 am

I take Susan C’s point about the urban/rural divide, but I also think one of the UK’s long standing problems is the tendency to think of England as ‘the whole country’.

32

Dipper 08.31.19 at 10:57 am

It is almost exactly 5 years since the publication of the Jay report into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham. What we learned was that over a thousand girls and young women has been systematically sexually exploited including many clear criminal acts, that this had not happened away from the authorities but had happened in full view of the authorities, and the authorities had seen all this and failed to act to protect. Subsequently we have heard the same story in a number of similar towns.

So when you nice folks in nice cities start poking fun at stupid people in places you’d never visit, it carries with it some unfortunate resonances about what the authorities thought of those places, what they though were suitable outcomes for children in those places.

So, please, show some respect for people who haven’t had the good fortune to tread your particular path.

33

SusanC 08.31.19 at 11:04 am

@wats: i agree that neglect of the UK’s other member countries is also a big part of the problem. Brexit is looking likely to cause big problems for Northern Ireland. There’s also a political divide between England and Scotland, and I get the impression that Brexit is not going down at all well in Scotland.

(For a bit of context on my own ethnicity: I’m Jewish/Welsh/Irish but live in England).

34

engels 08.31.19 at 11:06 am

Reading the Wilkinson piece you’d never suspect that where people live (or whether they go to uni) had anything to do with how much money they have. I guess there was a gap in the market for a libertarian version of David Goodhart’s ‘somewhere vs anywhere’ schtick.

35

Dipper 08.31.19 at 12:11 pm

@ SusanC “neglect of the UK’s other member countries is also a big part of the problem”

What ??? Scotland and Wales have been given their own parliaments, they get significant investments, and get large fiscal transfers. Scotland itself accounts for half of the UK’s fiscal deficit despite the fact it has its own tax raising powers. How exactly are Scotland and Wales getting ‘neglected’?

If Scotland and Wales are to be offered veto’s over UK policy, then clearly we will need England divided up into similar size portions – about ten I would guess – each of which also has a veto. Buying votes is going to get a lot more complicated.

As for Scotland becoming independent as a result of Brexit I would think the opposite is true. It is a lot easier for Scotland to become independent if the UK is still in the EU. If the UK leaves, rejoining the EU as an independent state is going to be practically impossible. Hard Border anyone?

36

Tim Worstall 08.31.19 at 12:27 pm

“Quite a lot of that agriculture will then become unviable as there will be nobody willing to pick the crops at for the wages necessary to make the crops competitive. (One remarkable feature of Brexit is that it simultaneously undermines UK food production and makes food imports more scarce and expensive!)”

If imports become more expensive then domestic production becomes more competitive. Even to the point that wages in food production might rise…..

37

Chris Herbert 08.31.19 at 12:28 pm

Not to be too boring, but the EU paradigm leaves a lot to be desired. Just ask the Greeks. Britain has the advantage of a sovereign currency, so if there is a ‘no deal’ Brexit it will have quite a few levers to negotiate with the EU membership, most of whom have adopted what is a foreign currency, the euro. And that is a fatal flaw which is coming to the fore sooner rather than later.

38

ph 08.31.19 at 12:55 pm

I’m sympathetic to the losing side on the Brexit vote. I’d prefer Britain remained in the EU. All is all Britain is doing a far better job of coping with the loss to upstart populists who place their view of the future of Britain ahead of their own short-term needs and those of others than elites in America, who still can’t come to terms with the fact they lost control of the unwashed in 2016. Hard as it is to believe, some people do have the ability to ignore instructions their intellectual and moral superiors.

I’m especially grateful Harry has not been reduced to insulting those he disagrees with. Being sneered at for living and believing in a particular form of British life is part of what drove Brits to vote for Brexit in the first place. The latest poll supports proroguing parliament by a small margin, most do not want a delay, and most disapprove of civil disobedience to disrupt or delay the final Brexit deal or no deal. That’s where we stand.

That doesn’t mean the Boris can be trusted to turn out the lights without unscrewing all the newer light bulbs and slipping them in his pocket, and inserting duds in their place. This whole rebuilding Britain isn’t the sort of thing Boris is likely to do well. But that’s where we’re at. Getting out of the EU cleanly was the order of the day from the time the votes were counted. However, a significant subset of the elites saw things quite differently. An election lost to the unwashed could not by definition be a “real” election loss, so the “right” thing to do was ignore the result and obstruct Brexit in every way possible. The public has witnessed these efforts with mounting disgust and dismay. One good thing about being British, in theory anyway, is respecting the result of a loss. Be proud and humble in victory and defeat. Show respect to the vanquished and to the victor. Remain lost, most Brits know that. Brexit is going forward and perhaps know its time for the hold-outs to recognize the results of all that led up to their defeat.

History will not be kind to Cameron, Blair, and all those who managed to convince a significant subsection of the British populace that they had no place or future in their own country. Take a bow, if you feel you must, please. Just exit the stage, that’s what support for proroguing parliament means. Your work is done. The rest of us are all going to have to deal with the results of your incompetence and arrogance, thanks very much.

A few of us may even clap as you depart.

39

Faustusnotes 08.31.19 at 1:45 pm

Dipper is outdoing himself here. What kind of distorted view of British culture do you have to have to think public outdoor drinking is a foreign import?

And as for child abuse happening under the nose of British authorities… perhaps dipper was in a coma when jimmy savile was in the news?

40

Cian 08.31.19 at 2:18 pm

One of my earliest memories is of men getting lairy in the street on cheap lager in 1979. So spare me the racist blather about how it’s the fault of swarthy foreigners

41

Jim Buck 08.31.19 at 3:14 pm

‘So, please, show some respect for people who haven’t had the good fortune to tread your particular path.’
I grew up, 20 minutes walk along a path to Rotherham town centre. Traditionally, the attitude prevalent, towards lasses who went wi’ blackies, was that they were dragged-up low-lifes who deserved everything they got. Happily, the metropolitan elite constructed a discourse that enabled abuse to be identified and articulated—-even by those who formerly did not give a toss for the victims.

42

Chris Bertram 08.31.19 at 4:01 pm

I’m confused by Dipper’s remarks about Rotherham. There are and were “authorities” with the power to do things about child abuse in Rotherham. They are located in Rotherham, led by members elected by the people of Rotherham, and staffed largely by people living in Rotherham.

43

bianca steele 08.31.19 at 4:28 pm

In the show’s defense, it’s a magazine show that runs human interest stories on stations that run it alongside harder news shows. The news of the day was Johnson and they spent less than four minutes asking someone who didn’t like him whether she’d oppose his policy. She said no. That was the story. In the hour and a half, they spent 30 seconds longer talking to Ireland’s PM and more than twice as long talking to Sheryl Crow. They can hardly recap the entirety of the issues every day. If they tried they’d barely be able to mention what’s different about today.

I’m also wondering what variety of English humor the “Boston” remark is. What if the immigrants don’t get that kind of irony?

44

William Timberman 08.31.19 at 5:31 pm

Ah, ph….. All this Blut und Boden stuff is bad enough in Germany, where you sort of expect it’ll never be entirely expunged, but in the UK it just looks like the last defense of upper class idiots and scoundrels. You genuinely think that a tosser like the PM, and an upper-class twit like Rees-Mogg represent true Britishness, and are therefore destiny’s proper children? I’d advise you not to step too close the collective suicide you’re so eager to assist in, lest some of it lap over onto your own wingtips.

45

William Timberman 08.31.19 at 5:33 pm

Apologies for the runaway italics. The tag should have been closed after Boden.

46

Stephen 08.31.19 at 6:23 pm

SusanC @33: “I get the impression that Brexit is not going down at all well in Scotland.”

Well, impressions vary. The latest Opinion Poll, a few days ago, (YouGov, usually quite objective) gives support for the SNP at 41%. Given first-past-the-post, that translates into substantial majorities in Scotland. In an independence referendum where every vote counts, not so favourable.

47

PatinIowa 08.31.19 at 7:48 pm

Dipper @ 28 “In areas where large number of Eastern Europeans have come over to do manual work landlords have been buying houses up and converting all living rooms into bedrooms to get maximum occupancy. Hence there are no areas to socialise in the house, so people socialise outside.”

Puts me in mind of this, from the Wire. I don’t know if it has any bearing on NPR or Brexit, but it does suggest that what the privileged regard as barbarity, is simply a lack of privilege.

48

Charles Williams 08.31.19 at 8:17 pm

Some London friends of mine have a cottage in Lincolnshire, which they have used for weekends and holidays for 40 years. They say that they are still seen as outsiders. Perhaps this has a bearing on the topic of Lincolnshire and foreigners. Some rural areas seem to me to have clear insider/outsider features. If either of your parents was not born in the village, you are not really ‘one of us’?

49

Dipper 08.31.19 at 8:38 pm

@ PatinIowa, Faustusnotes

You’ve got this the wrong way round. Drinking in public is banned in quite a few areas including mine. We had some alcoholics (white English) who used to hang round the high street and harass women, so a local bye-law was brought in to prevent it in specific areas. People drinking in public, like wolf-whistling women, is something that used to be considered acceptable but generally now isn’t.

A cause identified here is the practice of ‘hot bedding’ where someone works shifts and swaps their bed with someone else. Orwell mentions this in The Road to Wigan Pier and clearly regards it as degrading conditions. Now, apparently, the left regard this as a success for the EU.

The notion that people only complain about people drinking in the street if they are foreign is not correct, and the implication by various people here that its okay to break the law if you’re not white English is ridiculous and obviously racist.

50

Dipper 08.31.19 at 8:42 pm

@ William Timberman

“and an upper-class twit like Rees-Mogg represent true Britishness …”

Do you think Brexit supporters hadn’t noticed the upper-class credentials of Johnson and Rees-Mogg? Seriously?

Yet again, in this world where politics has gone through the Looking glass, the working class look beyond someone’s background and identity to listen to what someone says, whereas the ‘left’ cannot get past someone’s background.

Let’s not start on the number of rich public school folks in the upper echelons of the left …

51

dilbert dogbert 08.31.19 at 8:46 pm

Will crash out Brexit be as momentous as this date?
September 1, 1939 80 years ago tomorrow here across the pond.
Have some poetry to go with your remembrance beer:
https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939?fbclid=IwAR3fuA-bChzDonxIgi3qAPSG0iWXQQ9DqXfKX6p5qaa0oGjXYMT0AJLfM5c

52

Ray Vinmad 08.31.19 at 9:57 pm

This is one of those things where there is what’s called ‘a fact of the matter.’

The Leave Campaign made quite a lot of factual claims to get people to vote Leave.

The Remain Campaign also did so.

We will eventually find out who was right. That moment is going to be extremely unsatisfying I suspect (1) people will do alternate history that allows them to blame their enemies (2) it will seem like rubbing people’s noses in it when they are suffering if the vote turns out as bad as it might (3) the goalposts will have moved very far and national amnesia will set in. (4) Things may suck enough so that ‘told you so’ is not going to be at all enjoyable. (It was definitely not enjoyable after the US-Iraq War).

The whole debate will be about the recent past, and what really happened, and everyone will be going crazy trying to get others to share their memories, and what should be clear will be made very muddy. That is very disorienting.

Am I wrong that the Leave Campaign moved the goalpost? The things they promised VERY clearly aren’t possible now so they are promising new things. They are even promising better things, which is kind of weird given the circumstances!

Already, what they claimed has been shown false in some important respects.

This makes me wonder if there’s some delusion involved. And perhaps this is why the NPR story is so frustrating. It is depressing when a reporter goes to a distant land like the UK–and gives a misleading slice of their reality. Sure, opaque cultures like. the UK are very hard to report on. But would it kill reporters to be a bit circumspect about whom they interview when trying to give an overall normative assessment of a political decision? All sorts of trouble starts when you just pick the first cab driver you see or whatever, as Thomas Friedman has inadvertently taught us.

One reason Brexit seems like a crock (to me, an American, who can only interpret this through their newspapers) is all the hand-waving. When trying to understand the situation, I read as much as I could. I watched the show on Netflix or wherever–which is apparently a serious distortion. I read the blog of the guy that show was about. And he seemed to be writing utopian fiction about what will happen when Brexit occurs. This made me notice that there’s a lot of that going on over there.

I looked and looked and looked in British newspapers for a specific reasons why Brexit would be significantly better for British people than staying in the EU and everything I found was (a) hand-waving promises about the future and British gumption and by-golly we’re innovators and these struggles will just make us stronger or (b) actual propaganda based on demonstrable lies or (c) very convoluted super arcane accounts of small details in the Treaty of Maastricht and various other kinds of labyrinthine logic based on historical analogies that I doubt anyone could make heads or tails of.

It’s not that anyone can prove Brexit to be certain catastrophe. We cannot prove anything about the future in the present. All the proof is about whether Brexit is a risk. People know what they have now. Remain was a bird in the hand. When getting rid of your bird in the hand you’re supposed to make sure that the birds are definitely IN the bush, and you can catch them, right?

That’s what it’s so hard to find evidence for. Already billions have apparently left the UK, much time has been spent, there is a massive social division that has been created entirely around this issue. Was it worth it? If all this is a good idea doesn’t that depend on whether there are two birds in the bush? The radar spotting the two birds is very faulty. To me, that suggests the risk is not worth it.

If that’s the case, there is the referendum result to fall back on. But if the vote is based on fantasy, and the risks are high, can we honestly blame people for wanting a do-over?

Every time I discussed the issue with a Brexiteer, they would offer facts about ‘British fishermen’ and whatnot. I would look it up and it would be an actual hoax–a planted story that was not accurate. Or they would talk about culture and identity and sovereignty –and one could not figure out why you all don’t still *have* those things. It’s not like you. all are actually French now. I don’t get how the French can handle the situation without panicking about French identity and sovereignty and you all cannot. Is it supposed to be that British are less like the French than the French are like the Germans? That’s doesn’t seem to be the case. Is the unbridgeable difference because you’re on an island? None of this makes sense to me, who is admittedly an outsider to your culture.

I admit that I am analogizing to the times when I’ve seen a lot of Americans lose their minds–like after 9/11- and noticing only the similarities. Clearly, I’m cherry-picking data based on my personal experience with American delusional group-think–something that happens pretty often. But what’s weird is that I find *the same data in this blog.* I cannot find anything except that wishful thinking or exaggeration of the harms of the situation under the EU and speculation about the future. And I swear I *really, really, really* tried.

Maybe some people just want Brexit. They cannot give convincing reasons. They’ve just got a gut feeling and that’s good enough for them. And likely that’s the reporting we will get from most news sources here because it’s so much easier to report what people want than to report on the reasonableness of the beliefs that make them want it.

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ph 08.31.19 at 10:36 pm

WT Thanks for the response. I don’t own wingtips and my only concern in that regard is not find myself splattered from any more “wars of choice” waged on brown people by Blair, Cameron, Obama, Bush, et al. I don’t for a moment believe in any idea of “true British” values but accept that we do tell stories about ourselves with myth systems, one of which might be accepting victory or defeat in an election, or referendum is not a matter of choice. I’d have preferred a different outcome on Brexit, but I don’t see the sky falling either way – just a greater level of more of the same only worse, re: feckless self-interest and arrogance. The refusal of elites to accept defeat at the hands of the unwashed is highly instructive – and a reminder that those on top didn’t get there and stay there by playing fair and square.

None of our betters can be trusted for a moment.

54

nastywoman 09.01.19 at 7:26 am

@
”the missing question”

Why are there so many people (Brits) out there who want to ”teach others a lesson”?

55

PeteW 09.01.19 at 8:13 am

Ray Vinmad @52, excellent post.

Pardon my language, but Brexit is truly fucking weird. Thousands, if not millions, of people around the world would literally risk their lives (and in many cases have) to get into the EU, to enjoy its collective democracy, freedoms, travel rights, health and safety standards, work and wealth opportunities, and welfare safety nets when times are hard.

The UK is doing the opposite. Like reverse economic migrants, the British Right is loading the boats with the country’s people and departing for, almost certainly, a poorer, more vulnerable, more chaotic future. For what? Beats me.

56

engels 09.01.19 at 8:54 am

A cause identified here is the practice of ‘hot bedding’ where someone works shifts and swaps their bed with someone else. Orwell mentions this in The Road to Wigan Pier and clearly regards it as degrading conditions. Now, apparently, the left regard this as a success for the EU.

Might this have something to do with the housing crisis caused by low wages, the housing bubble fueled by government policy and the ongoing sell-off of public housing? Just a thought…

57

Dipper 09.01.19 at 9:06 am

@ Ray Vinmad ” I don’t get how the French can handle the situation without panicking about French identity and sovereignty and you all cannot. Is it supposed to be that British are less like the French than the French are like the Germans? That’s doesn’t seem to be the case. Is the unbridgeable difference because you’re on an island?”

These are all fair questions.

Firstly, there is strong anti-EU feeling in France, and of course the Gillet Jaunes, but not a majority.

Secondly, the EU was formed as a response to the second world war. The Netherlands, for instance are very keen on the EU. This is because IMHO it gives the Netherlands a means of maintaining relations with their neighbour Germany. This is important because the last time the Netherlands disagreed strongly with Germany, Germany bombed their country, invaded it, murdered most of the jews and starved the inhabitants. Hence you can see for the Netherlands the attractions of sharing sovereignty on this basis. (One response the UK has had from various Europeans is ‘what the UK doesn’t understand is that for us this is not about trade, it is about peace in Europe’. How is the UK meant to respond to that? Threaten war?)

The UK has a different history in that we managed to resist being ruled by Germany, so a lot of us are not sure why we would give up in peacetime what we successfully fought for in war time. To that extent, it is because we are an island.

In my view, being an island has another consequence. I find it odd, as an islander, that a land mass should divide itself up into countries. That people should so clearly say we live here and theylive there. I think it is language that enable this divide, and this is most clearly seen in Belgium which is technically one country but is really split into two.

The consequence of this is that on the continent people have a way of looking out for each other that extends beyond simple nationality. Hence many nations sign up for the ‘official’ version of the EU but operate an ‘unofficial’version where only Italians get Italian university jobs, only Catalans get Catalonian university jobs etc etc.

Here in the UK, we don’t have that ‘looking out for each other’ approach. It is not an inherently nationalist country. Hence the people at the bottom of the pile are, unusually, a distinct part of the native population. Immigrants do better, earn more, etc. And as you can see from Chris Bertram @42, when this issue is raised the response of the large part of the UK dominant cultural class say ‘nothing to see here. Move on.’

I would also point out that the notion that Remain is a ‘bird in the hand’ is not one most Leavers would agree with. What we have found in the 40 years of our membership is that it is on a journey with a very clear destination, which is a federal super-state. Senior figures keep on saying this. Remain are split between those who want the super state and those who want the status quo. The Cameron/Osborne line was that they had commitment to the status quo, but I didn’t believe or trust them.

I believe Macron has mentioned a two-tier Europe, and I for one would be prepared to be part of an EU in which it was specifically stated in the treaty that there were tiers of membership that gave differing degrees of hospitality. But the treaty doesn’t say that and many prominent Europeans don’t say that either, they just talk about more integration, more powers for the superstate.

I strongly suggest that if your conclusion is ‘these people are stupid’, then your trail of reasoning has been wrong. All national politics is a family argument and opaque to the outsider, but that doesn’t mean there is no logic to it.

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Jacob 09.01.19 at 9:19 am

Would you also consider an article that interviewed a remainer but not a Brexiteer, without asking them any of the questions Brexiteers would like to see them challenged with, to be “invidious”?

Yes, this sounds like an article that is only putting one side of a story. But given how many that only put the other side there have been, I suspect this of being an isolated demand for rigour.

59

Dipper 09.01.19 at 10:26 am

@Ray Vinmad “Am I wrong that the Leave Campaign moved the goalpost? The things they promised VERY clearly aren’t possible now so they are promising new things. They are even promising better things, which is kind of weird given the circumstances!”

One of the issues with the referendum is that the question we were asked was unclear. Parliament is now effectively saying that because no one specific outcome was voted for, then in effect there is no definitive answer to the question they asked, hence there is no need to fulfil the promise they made to implement the result of the referendum.

As to what is possible, most Leavers would say that the current state of affairs does not constitute what is possible and this centres round the issue of leaving without a deal. We would say that in order to negotiate properly you need to be able to walk away without a deal. If you cannot leave without a deal, then in reality you cannot leave as you are being forced to accept different terms of membership. In terms of what was offered in the referendum, the notion that if the UK voted to Leave we would then ask the EU for the terms we could leave under and if Parliament decide those were not acceptable we would not leave was never mentioned at all for obvious reasons. The time to decide that the UK cannot leave the EU without accepting whatever deal the EU offers us is before you decide to offer a referendum asking if we’d like to leave the EU, not after you’ve done it and got the result you weren’t wanting.

The negotiations have been clouded IMHO by the behaviour of Remainers. Instead of accepting the result, many have refused to accept it and have been working to bypass the result. Whilst the Government has been negotiating with the EU, the Opposition and others have been conducting side negotiations asking for something different; they have been clearly signalling to the EU that they will work with them to try and keep the UK in the EU against the result of the referendum, so if the EU offers terrible terms they will try and get Article 50 revoked. It is fair to say that many Leavers are absolutely seething about this. I invite you to consider how the you would react if when your President went to negotiate with, say, China, politicians from the ‘other party’ went to China asking for punitive terms so they themselves could benefit from poor outcomes for the USA.

Most leavers would like some kind of deal . We would have preferred to leave with a deal, but as there has been no such agreement then many would like to leave with no deal so we can negotiate a trade deal from outside. Leaving with No Deal and wanting a Deal are not incompatible.

As to outcomes, prior to the referendum we were told that if we voted to leave, then after the vote we would have a recession and job losses. In the event the economy continued to grow and we had a jobs boom. For the first time in a decade real wages have gone up. So we should, when considering the predictions of expert, remember that firstly they have a side in this game which is being part of a system of government that explicitly empowers experts through the European Commission, and secondly that the last time they predicted the outcome of a significant event they were completely wrong.

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Tim Worstall 09.01.19 at 10:45 am

“Pardon my language, but Brexit is truly fucking weird. Thousands, if not millions, of people around the world would literally risk their lives (and in many cases have) to get into the EU, to enjoy its collective democracy, freedoms, travel rights, health and safety standards, work and wealth opportunities, and welfare safety nets when times are hard.

The UK is doing the opposite. Like reverse economic migrants, the British Right is loading the boats with the country’s people and departing for, almost certainly, a poorer, more vulnerable, more chaotic future. For what? Beats me.”

Two hundred and some years ago we could have said the same thing about those Americans who wanted to leave the British Empire. No doubt some did a hundred years ago about those Irish who wanted to leave the UK.

Some groups of people want different things sometimes.

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faustusnotes 09.01.19 at 10:51 am

Jesus Christ Dipper can you be any more dishonest? Drinking in the street is absolutely a British cultural thing. In 2009 when the government banned drinking alcohol on the tube the people of London famously had an all night cocktail party on the Tube trains. Every time you walk past a pub you have to navigate a huge crowd of red-faced white men because smoking inside is banned so they all smoke outside and drink while they do it. Any park in summer is full of people getting ratted in public. Drunk young people in public is a recurring theme of the Daily Mail’s slut-shaming efforts, and something every British adult has done. Anyone who has, like me, attended new year fireworks (or any other outdoor festival in Britain) will be familiar with the scenes of young British people drinking white wine straight from the bottle.

Yet here you are blaming it on foreigners. And blaming “hot beds” on foreigners too, when it is quite obvious to everyone that the person at fault for that is the British landlord, not the European worker.

You really can’t find anything to say about Britain’s problems without blaming it on foreigners, can you?

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nastywoman 09.01.19 at 11:40 am

@55
”but Brexit is truly fucking weird. Thousands, if not millions, of people around the world would literally risk their lives (and in many cases have) to get into the EU.”

Ja – but there was this time when our British friends -(just like our fellow Americans) asked themselves:
”Who’s effing fault is it”? -(EVERY-thing!!)
And as people -(on Islands) really don’t like to blame themselves –
BUT!! – always the first ”OTHERS” which come in mind – Americans blamed ”Every Fureigner” – while our British Friends blamed the EU – which in their minds made much more sense – as blaming something ”buerocratic” as ”teh EU” doesn’t out you right away as somebody who just doesn’t like ”them Fureigners”.

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Harry 09.01.19 at 11:48 am

Jacob — I suppose what was invidious, for me, was the combination of presenting the interview to a non-British audience, which has (believe me) little understanding of the situation, and deliberately seeking out an entirely unrepresentative vox pop that shed no light at all on the situation (a fairly serious political crisis) and presenting the willingness to take an economic hit for oneself (which is entirely normal) as if that is the story rather than the willingness to impose an economic hit on others. If remain looked likely, and there was a consensus that it would be economically harmful, and they found a remainer who was happy to take an economic hit for the sake of remain, yes, I would be pissed off with an interviewer who didn’t delve by asking “and what do you think justifies you in imposing this economic cost on other people?” I’d want to know what their answer to that is. Wouldn’t you? Maybe she had a great answer, in which case she’d have come out of the interview seeming thoughtful: Instead he constructed an interview that makes her seem like an ideologue who is entirely reckless about other people’s wellbeing. [The OP is not, at all, making fun of her, if you read it properly. It is directed at NPR for bad journalism. Of COURSE bad journalism is rife: maybe we should never bother to comment.

64

William Timberman 09.01.19 at 11:55 am

Dipper @ 50, ph @ 52

We’ve been talking past each other here, haven’t we? As is our wont….

Dipper, the class system of Britain is weird enough without trying to map it onto the left/right topography of continental Europe. Where shall we begin? 1789? How about 1848? 1870? October 1917, maybe? Or 1956? 1968? What left exactly is this left that you’re hating on? And who? Tony Benn? Tony Blair? Jeremy Corbin? One of those things is not like the other, no? And honestly, Dipper, the idea that the careerist cat-herders of the EU bureaucracy are the second coming of Stalin is the kind of paranoiac fantasy that might prompt even a certifiably libertarian psychiatrist to start drawing up your commitment papers.

I think it likely that the gigantic interlinked economies which we’ve come to utterly and completely rely on, with all of the casual oppressions, exploitations and inequities they’ve raised to the level of inevitability, are the true mortal engines of our downfall. Left or right, we’ve already got plenty of reasons to suspect that they’re going to prove impervious to democracy. If so, neither closing the gates at night against foreigners nor railing against the kings across the water is gonna save us.

ph, I misjudged you, I think. If so, I’ll gladly reconsider. I still believe, though, that the venality of the British upper class, not Polish plumbers, is principally responsible for the inflamed parochialism of the good burghers of Boston. Many books, among them some very good ones, have been written about the toxic synergy between the need of an economic elite for cannon fodder in an era of mass politics, and the enforced ignorance of the working classes they invented to serve that need. No reason to do a less thorough job in the space available here, I think..

65

J-D 09.01.19 at 12:05 pm

Dipper

One of the issues with the referendum is that the question we were asked was unclear.

I can’t figure any question you could have been asked that would have been clearer. What do you think would have been a clearer question?

Parliament is now effectively saying that … there is no need … to implement the result of the referendum.

Parliament hasn’t said that. As far as I can tell, Parliament has so far failed to make any clear statement of what they think should happen next: that is, not since Parliament said that the government should give official notice of withdrawal from the EU (which was done, as we all know).

As to outcomes, prior to the referendum we were told that if we voted to leave, then after the vote we would have a recession and job losses.

Citation needed.

faustusnotes

And blaming “hot beds” on foreigners too, when it is quite obvious to everyone that the person at fault for that is the British landlord, not the European worker.

If there is anybody who is at fault for ‘hot beds’, it’s the person, group, or organisation who is responsible for a failure to provide sufficient accommodation: that’s obviously not the European workers (or anybody else) using the ‘hot beds’, but it’s not immediately obvious that it’s the landlords.

66

Dipper 09.01.19 at 12:33 pm

@ Faustusnotes.

I have been making it clear that the landlords removal of social areas and also beds is the thing that leads to people drinking outside. Comparisons of people drinking outside on rare events in the social calendar near places of entertainment is not the same as people drinking in streets on regular basis. I gave you an example of white English men drinking regularly in public and how that had been banned after complaints.

I realise that your inner angst requires me to be blaming foreigners, but I am not, so you have to invent it.

67

Dipper 09.01.19 at 12:40 pm

@ engels “Might this have something to do with the housing crisis caused by low wages, the housing bubble fueled by government policy and the ongoing sell-off of public housing? Just a thought…”

FOM provides a large supply of people willing to work under these conditions for these wages because whilst they are considered low here, they are worth a lot in their homeland.

68

engels 09.01.19 at 1:09 pm

In 2009 when the government banned drinking alcohol on the tube the people of London famously had an all night cocktail party on the Tube trains.

Er there was no all night tube in 2009

69

PeteW 09.01.19 at 1:17 pm

@Tim Worstall

“Two hundred and some years ago we could have said the same thing about those Americans who wanted to leave the British Empire. No doubt some did a hundred years ago about those Irish who wanted to leave the UK.”

I’m not sure what point you are making. I don’t know much about the proximate causes of the American revolution but weren’t many of the original colonists fleeing religious persecution? And didn’t they leave for a continent that offered boundless arable land and untapped natural resources? Seems a fairly rational choice to me. I don’t see the parallel with Britain leaving the EU.

As for Ireland, if you think the Irish who left on the coffin ships for the USA were deliberately choosing a poorer and more uncertain future on some point of political principle, you are, well, mistaken.

70

Cian 09.01.19 at 2:24 pm

ph:

the problem with your narrative is that Brexit wasn’t simply a case of the poor voting leave, and the well off voting remain. The core of Brexit are the tory party members from the shires, billionares like Murdoch headed by Farage a public school educated ex-commodities trader. Much of the desire to leave was driven by a 40 year propaganda campaign conducted by right wing, billionare owned, newspapers.

But that’s where we’re at. Getting out of the EU cleanly was the order of the day from the time the votes were counted. However, a significant subset of the elites saw things quite differently. An election lost to the unwashed could not by definition be a “real” election loss, so the “right” thing to do was ignore the result and obstruct Brexit in every way possible.

There is no ‘clean’ exit from the EU because of the border with Ireland. Also the idea that the UK could separate itself entirely from a huge trading block on it’s doorstep, or be anything other than an order taker once outside, was always a bizarre fantasy.

71

Orange Watch 09.01.19 at 2:33 pm

Dipper@57:

Firstly, there is strong anti-EU feeling in France, and of course the Gillet Jaunes, but not a majority.

One of these things is not like the other. While there is a certain amount of leeway to be given in interpreting the motives of a spontaneous decentralized mass movement, you need to look long and hard at the agenda of anyone offering you a pat, concise, simple explanation of what such a movement wants; e.g., “gillets jaunes signifient Frexit”.

72

bianca steele 09.01.19 at 2:46 pm

I took the story to be “will tories turn on Johnson?” (rather than say “are tories bad people?”) which is a question of import to people who feel they have some measure of control over what their government does (other than some spiritual benefit to be obtained by increasing worldwide karmic pressure against one’s opponents by voicing impotent condemnation of them). The interview as presented very effectively scotched that possibility.

I admit I don’t understand at all why you would believe NPR listeners are under the impression that Brexit is a good thing, or that they took the story as justifying the interviewee. I don’t think I’ve heard a single radio news story that wasn’t appalled by the chaos that’s bound to ensue, nor one that suggested “they’re changing the culture” is a reason to keep immigrants out.

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Abby 09.01.19 at 4:38 pm

Purely on the Boston namesake issue/joke/misunderstanding, I think we have a “two great people’s separated by a common language” example. Per a grammar website ( https://grammarist.com/usage/namesake/ ):

“In American English, the traditional definition of namesake is one who is named after another. For example, John, Jr. is the namesake of his father, John, Sr. But in 21st-century usage, namesake is often applied to the source of the name, making John, Sr. the namesake of his son, John, Jr. This makes usage of namesake rather confusing. Fortunately, it’s usually easy to figure out which version of namesake a writer means.

In British English namesake often means simply one who shares a name with another, without implying that one is named after the other. Two unrelated Johns on opposite sides of the country might be called namesakes of one another.

Namesake usually applies to people, but it’s sometimes used for things. For instance, we might say Washington, D.C. is the namesake of George Washington. Or, if we were using the other sense of namesake, we would of course say George Washington is the namesake of the city.”

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harry b 09.01.19 at 5:44 pm

“I admit I don’t understand at all why you would believe NPR listeners are under the impression that Brexit is a good thing”

I don’t believe that. I do think that NPR listeners don’t have a good understanding of what is happening. My evidence is that every informed person I meet tells me they don’t understand what’s going on.

75

Dipper 09.01.19 at 5:55 pm

@ can “Also the idea that the UK could separate itself entirely from a huge trading block on it’s doorstep, or be anything other than an order taker once outside, was always a bizarre fantasy.”

Canada seems to exist as a separate nation alongside its nearest partner and huge trading block. If you’re wondering what my preferred future is for the UK, think Canada. Works as the answer to most EU-related questions.

… border … what is the EU worried about? Most controls apply within country not at the border. No hospital or other serious outfit buys pharmaceuticals off the back of a lorry. And currently there’s concerns about unlicensed pharmaceuticals available from outside the EU on the internet despite all those hard borders.

76

Zamfir 09.01.19 at 7:02 pm

On the “parallels” with the US or Ireland fighting to leave the British empire:

I feel strange to point this out, but the EU has a procedure to leave. It consists of you telling them that you want to leave, and they saying OK.

The British empire had a procedure that consisted of sending loads of soldiers to help you change your mind.

Brits are now unironically comparing these . I still can’t get over it.

77

Cian 09.01.19 at 10:57 pm

Dipper: Canada. So you want to be the junior party where the larger economy (the EU) dictates the terms of the deal. I mean fair enough, but it’s hardly freedom is it.

… border … what is the EU worried about?…No hospital or other serious outfit buys pharmaceuticals off the back of a lorry.

I can’t even…

SMUGGLING IS A THING THAT HAPPENS A LOT BETWEEN COUNTRIES THAT HAVE DIFFERENT STANDARDS AND TAX REGIMES YOU IDIOT. Especially when there are import duties, which will be the case for trade between the EU and the UK if a deal doesn’t get thrashed out.

Every time I think surely nobody could be that ignorant you surprise me by demonstrating that actually they can.

78

eg 09.01.19 at 11:47 pm

@Barry #23

You’re joking, right? Hogarth’s “Gin Alley” suggests a rather different England …

79

Blue Stater 09.02.19 at 12:47 am

This has been a most interesting discussion from which I’ve learned a great deal. I am, however, still at sea about Brexit. I lived in the UK for three years; I’m married to a Brit (Leicester working-class native, half Scots, half English). I was even a university professor of English literature (in the US) for 45 years.

But I have never understood British politics, least of all now. Britain’s EU membership does not seem to me to be worth all this attention. What *do* seem to be worth much more attention and reform are Britain’s vicious and counterproductive class system; its lack of a written constitution; its sufferance of an hereditary monarchy in which the monarch, having won the sperm lottery, is immediately one of the wealthiest people in the world in a country with income inequality almost as gross as ours is; its inability to accept the fact that Britain has not been a major world power for the last 100 years and needs to comport itself as just another middle-sized European country, no more, no less. I don’t understand this, either.

But then, I’m a national of a country that just “elected” Donald Trump, so what do I know?

80

Chetan Murthy 09.02.19 at 12:51 am

Dipper is a malicious and useless commenter; his behaviour is perfectly described in Harry Frankfurt’s _On Bullshit_, and makes reading this blog’s comment section far more tedious than it would otherwise be. Ah, well.

One thing I wondered about, after all the months/years of foofaraw about the backstop, is why the UK government even *cares*. The Withdrawal Agreement is an agreement between nations like any other. So the UK can agree to it, and then later decide to abrogate it. At that later point, it is up to the EU to decide whether it wants to treat that as canceling the entire WA, or any further trade agreements for that matter. How can this be worse [from the point of view of people like BoJo and Rees-Mogg] than a no-deal Brexit? I just don’t get it.

81

ph 09.02.19 at 1:33 am

@70. Cian, I generally find your comments useful and well-grounded. Whining after the fact deserves nothing but contempt in my view. I do not include you in that group. But you’re condemned by your own analysis when you write that the core Tory vote…40 years etc. The racist reactionary right is baked into the cake and a constant in all elections and in discussions of all issues. That group, however, could never have accomplished Brexit in four hundred years without expanding the broader base of support. The fact is Britain would still be in the EU had urban elites in all parties not managed to do exactly that, the most important fact in the entire debacle and one you largely omit.

Like it or not, the venom leveled at anyone and everyone who suggests/ed borders might be a positive feature of the nation state and that controlled selective immigration might also be a net good managed to convert has had and will continue to have real consequences. Charges of racism are/were and will be routinely and even reflexively leveled at a variety of forms of dissent, so much so that the skeptical might start to believe that those leveling the charges are guilty of dishonesty and of indifference to the actual lives of the “others” they selectively defend. That’s certainly my own view.

I’ve heard the term “racism” overused such that I only hear the term as white noise, or as a place-holder for “I’m all out of arguments and evidence.”

And that cultural dimension – the sense that “caring for others” has become a scam, much like “green” product marketing – combined with real government indifference to the challenges the lower orders face – forced this outcome. Had the unhappy had their complaints aired and received graciously and respectively, instead of sneers and attacks, there would be no Brexit, just as there would be no Trump. Both are the consequences of globalist managed decline promoted by all leading parties.

Citizens on the receiving end of the screwing realized no elite parties were riding to the rescue. Indeed many were laughing and sneering at their plight – see “fly-over country” and “white-van man.” The liberal excuse for this self-interest at the expense of others was nothing other than survival of the fittest. The left and the liberals abandoned the lower orders, or so it seemed to far too many. How many? Just enough to hear the siren song of the right and support anyone willing to listen to their concerns and not laugh or sneer.

Hillary didn’t even bother to visit Wisconsin, even after she lost the primary to Sanders, while traveling the globe to speak to elites willing to pay her big bucks. As one sensible observer noted, when Pennsylvania voters saw Obama and Hillary on stage with Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Springsteen, many saw clearly galactic gulf separating the world of the Versailles liberals and the poverty of their own lives. And they turned up to vote.

Now deal with it.

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faustusnotes 09.02.19 at 1:47 am

Yes engels, sorry for the slip – the parties were until the last train. The idea even has its own Wikipedia entry but I guess I should probably assume its all johnny foreigner’s fault.

As eg notes, public drinking was a well-established behavior in the UK even in the 18th century, and this has always partly been blamed on a lack of suitable private spaces for partying. I know there was a large eastern European presence in London in the late 19th century, and I wonder if Dipper can turn that into sufficient evidence to blame 300 years of public intoxication in the UK on johnny foreigner?

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Collin Street 09.02.19 at 3:02 am

There’s no way of getting canada without breaking the gfa, and the EU fairly obviously won’t come to an agreement with a counterparty that starts with “first up, we don’t want to be bound by our commitments”. The WA doesn’t have any huge connection to brexit, really: it’s just a short list of non-eu commitments to EU nationals and countries that the UK has to visibly commit to before negotiation can be given credibility.

Not that this hasn’t been pointed out before. The real lesson is that right-wingers are all thick.

84

Dipper 09.02.19 at 6:51 am

@ Cian

“SMUGGLING IS A THING THAT HAPPENS A LOT BETWEEN COUNTRIES THAT HAVE DIFFERENT STANDARDS AND TAX REGIMES YOU IDIOT” Yes. It happens now in Ireland across the border due to differences in fuel duty, VAT etc. People try and get round regulations all the time, eg beef in cook-chill lasagne that is in fact horse etc etc. Smuggling is not tackled ‘at the border’ it is tackled elsewhere . What’s your point?

@ Collin Street “There’s no way of getting canada without breaking the gfa” Yawn. Which bit? Which clause does it break?

@ faustusnotes “public drinking was a well-established behavior in the UK even in the 18th century” all sorts of behaviours that were well established are not regarded as appropriate now.

@ Collin Street “The real lesson is that right-wingers are all thick.” as this is a reference to Brexit I assume what is really meant is all Brexiteers are thick. Smarter than David Deutsch are you? I doubt that’s true in this universe

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Jim Buck 09.02.19 at 7:33 am

86

engels 09.02.19 at 9:34 am

87

Tim Worstall 09.02.19 at 11:11 am

@69 “I’m not sure what point you are making.”

Sometimes people do stuff – like leaving a political construct – for reasons other than immediate economic gain or even at the cost of immediate economic loss.

Nothing more.

Ditto to @76.

“As for Ireland, if you think the Irish who left on the coffin ships for the USA were deliberately choosing a poorer and more uncertain future on some point of political principle, you are, well, mistaken.”

A century ago takes us to 1919, close enough to 1921/2 I thought for it to be a fair comparison. Rather than the 1845 you seem to be talking about.

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PeteW 09.02.19 at 12:04 pm

Tim Worstall

“Sometimes people do stuff – like leaving a political construct – for reasons other than immediate economic gain or even at the cost of immediate economic loss.”

But the two examples you give don’t support you assertion.

The colonists who left the UK for America may primarily have been escaping religious persecution but they were also going to a new world where their economic prospects were ultimately better, with immeasurable tracts of ‘unowned’ land, weren’t they?

And the Irish diaspora was almost always a product of economic betterment, sometimes literally in the face of certain death otherwise.

Re Ireland, I assumed when you said “a century” you were not meaning to be precise, as I could not see why you should choose 1919 in particular as a year to make a point about Irish emigration.

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Barry 09.02.19 at 9:05 pm

Tim: “Sometimes people do stuff – like leaving a political construct – for reasons other than immediate economic gain or even at the cost of immediate economic loss.”

Looks like ‘sunlit uplands’, ‘easiest trade deal’, ‘pick and choose’, …. have been tossed down the memory hole.

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Barry 09.02.19 at 9:07 pm

09.01.19 at 5:55 pm

@ can “Also the idea that the UK could separate itself entirely from a huge trading block on it’s doorstep, or be anything other than an order taker once outside, was always a bizarre fantasy.”

Dipper: ” Canada seems to exist as a separate nation alongside its nearest partner and huge trading block. If you’re wondering what my preferred future is for the UK, think Canada. Works as the answer to most EU-related questions.”

I’m sill looking for an honest Brexiter, still hoping, dreaming, peering into the fog……

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Tim Worstall 09.03.19 at 9:33 am

“Re Ireland, I assumed when you said “a century” you were not meaning to be precise, as I could not see why you should choose 1919 in particular as a year to make a point about Irish emigration.”

Because it wasn’t a point about emigration. Rather, a goodly part of Ireland left the political organisation it was part of around that time. Eire left the UK then, recall? (Actually, 1921 agreed, 1922 actually happens).

Which is not the same thing but is usefully analagous to the UK leaving the EU.

And the actual point from this was that perhaps Eire leaving had a detrimental economic effect – and perhaps it didn’t, not a point I want to argue – but the decision was about something other than pure economics.

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PeteW 09.03.19 at 1:35 pm

@Tim Worstall: “.. a goodly part of Ireland left the political organisation it was part of …”

That’s one way of putting it. Another way would be to say it fought a successful war to finally rid itself of the foreign power that had invaded and occupied some or all of its territory for 750 years and variously slaughtered, maltreated and/or impoverished its people.

To claim that this is somehow “usefully analogous to the UK leaving the EU” is to depart the realm of sanity.

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Z 09.03.19 at 2:03 pm

@Harry Typically politicians – and actually vox pops – simply evade the idea that policies involve the trade offs that we agree they always involve.

Yeah, that is true. Infuriating of self-centeredness surely, but true. My own conception of politics is that a democracy works well when these trade offs are systematically emphasized, rather than concealed, so your point sadly implies that politicians, the media and vox pops are anti-democratic in their typical functioning.

In this case she admitted there was a trade off. So.

Fair enough.

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