If Brexit goes ahead, say goodbye to radical redistribution

The big assumption here seems to be that they (Labour) have a chance of doing something that has a reasonable chance of ‘stopping Brexit’ and that consequences of being identified as having ‘enabled Remain’ are any more benign.

I mean you can run this sentence around in the opposite direction (leaving aside the fact that we are where we are because middle-class ‘liberal’ voters voted the way they did in 2010/2015):

“Here’s where that goes badly wrong. A redistributionist politics needs the support of millions of middle-class “liberal” Remain voters to succeed. What those who say we’ll-take-the-hit-and-redistribute are asking us to imagine is that those people will, in sufficient numbers, support redistribution to those whom they identify as having, by voting for Brexit, just made them and their families worse off. “

Chris,

Your piece is perceptive and painful. As it should be. I know I certainly feel this way here in the US, about the residents of East Bumf**k, TX, where I grew up, and they voted for Kaiser Quisling. I know they hate people like me, and I feel no good reason to want to make their lives easier. If they died off faster, it’d make the lives of people of color that much easier. That’s pretty awful to contemplate. But OTOH, even though these people of my generation are (to my mind, and from the evidence) mostly irredeemable racists, misogynists, and homophobes, their children are *not* [or at least, might be salvageable]. And we need to recruit those kids, if only for self-preservation — a bigger vote for our policies is a good thing, right?

Why doesn’t that sort of calculus apply in the UK? Sure, we have little love and even less caring for the old codger assholes. But their kids — they’re hopefully future Labour voters, no?

I confess that I myself have all kind of funny thoughts as a result of the Brexit experience.
Like why I am not bothered as much about that bunch of British racist idiots as about my American or my German ones?

Or better said:
Why am I not bothered about all of these efforts of a bunch of narrow-minded British idiots to exit from something they can’t ”exit” from – BE-cause they never ever will be able to ”do it” – as it already has been proven that any possibility for them to succeed in our openminded reality is a few (hundred) years too late.

So it’s a lot more fun watching them – than for example Baron von Clownstick trying to get funding for his wall – as my British friends try to do it with such a lot of… may I say ”Charming Folkloric Vigor”?

– and what I’m tremendously thankful for is – that our British friends show the world that all of these funny ideas about ”Splendid Isolation” or ”If we just built a Wall everything will be Okee-dokee” (again) – are just unrealistic illusions.

As it seems to be that people really need to get these ideas out of their system -(even if there already was that very infamous ”wall”) – and of all people some (pretty racist??) Anglo-Saxons helped to tear it down.

But isn’t that the funniest thought of this funny ”Brexit-effort”?

I might also play Devil’s Advocate here and ask: to those who claim to be oh-so-pro-EU….why on Earth do you want the UK to stay in for?

‘For anyone rooting for a stronger EU, there should be nothing more terrifying than the U.K. overturning its Brexit decision and simply staying in.

If the result of the second referendum goes against the first, millions of bitter Brexiteers will feel betrayed by an elite who promised them their initial vote would settle the Europe question for good.

Given the passions a second referendum would unleash — reigniting deep divisions between poorer and richer parts of the country — the U.K. would resume its EU membership as a nation — or, rather, a collective of nations — recovering from a profound sense of disruption, even trauma.

The last thing any British leader would do in a house so divided is contemplate any deeper entanglement with Europe. The U.K. would slow down or block essential EU reforms, seek to extract special favors, and ruthlessly use any available alliance within the bloc to protect a narrowly defined national interest.

And, of course, the U.K. would always be teetering on the brink of a new Brexit process. Brexit believers would not give up….

Looking for levers to stop closer EU-wide cooperation has shaped British policy for the best part of 30 years. Until 2016, this was an element of its strategic calculus, or an act of self-preservation for the ruling party of the day. But after the trauma of two bitterly fought referendums, shaped by visceral distrust of Europe, it would become an existential national priority.

Past performance of both Labour and Tory governments suggests that London would look for allies not just in Copenhagen or The Hague, but would seek them in Warsaw, Rome and Budapest as well.

Old EU hands will remember how former Labour prime minister Tony Blair traveled to Sardinia to cozy up to Silvio Berlusconi recovering from his latest hair transplant. Recently, the Tories have sought to shield Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán from EU measures challenging his ability to govern as he pleases.’

In other words, the UK voting to remain in the EU, would provide a huge fillip for the rising forces of the radical right who want to destroy the EU, just immediately after a time when the Blairite Remainy left chose to support austerity and therefore commit suicide.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-eu-should-fear-a-second-uk-referendum/

Goodbye to Radical Redistribution is a feature, not a bug.

However, the reply that “minimal level of common identification with that collective” will be killed by Brexit is just … willful blindness, to put it kindly. The very idea of Brexit is to restore that common identification with the collective and a sense of meaningful collective self-governance which is required to make mutual support a possibility.

It’s hard enough for labour to win on redistribution policies at the best of times but if they lose a bunch of young remain voters through their failure to fight this brexit it seems impossible to me.

I think labour’s current trajectory will also encourage cynicism – if they wouldn’t stop brexit, which was the single biggest thing affecting a lot of peoples economic fortunes, why should I vote for their redistribution policies now that it’s done? I’ll vote for tax cuts and my own narrow interests, will be the cynical view of many.

I also agree with the impulse Chris describes in the op. Especially for those of us who have spent a lot of time working to try and encourage a more inclusive and equitable politics, brexit is a real kick in the teeth. For those of us who grew up in brexit Britain we know how the brexit voters think and feel, know how the eu has benefited them and know how much of their decision was driven by racism. But now we’re supposed to fight one more time for the social services these aging racists need, after this? It’s very tempting to just think screw you, you made this bed you can lie in it until you get bed sores. It’s especially easy to think that if labour is going to stand by and let it happen in order to pander to these old dickheads.

But I don’t agree with the last sentence. The left hasn’t stuffed itself. This whole disaster is entirely the Tory’s fault, and we should never let anyone say otherwise.

Fallen behind here, forgot when the UK said hello to redistributionist policies. Had been under the distinct impression that the UK said goodbye decades ago, you know, Thatcher/Blair.

Also, forgot when the EU didn’t stand for hard money, limited public debt, free movement of capital, repudiation of industrial policy, and all those other great left wing ideals. Thought redistribution in the EU was exemplified by German policy towards Greece, the pressure on Italy’s current government and, well, basically, Macronism here and everywhere, now and forever!

Also forgot when the EU was the designated standard bearer for antiracism. It always seemed to me to have something to do with reuniting Christendom, which is why no Turkey, never, never, never.

As an admitted outsider here, posts like Mitchell’s above mystify me. Yes, it’s entirely possible to imagine a world where the UK (possibly allied with like-minded forces in Italy and Greece) forced the EU to institute major reforms in the aftermath of the obvious disastrous failure of the post-2008 austerity regime, but that world would necessarily have required a reform-minded government in place, negotiating behind the threat of withdrawal (and better yet the creation of an alternate arrangement between countries that found the status quo untenable). And this process would have needed to have begun years ago.

But the actual reality appears to be that you are mere months away from reverting to WTO rules, are incapable of dislodging the May government in that timeline (or indeed at any plausible time in the future), and have already fired the one bullet in your chamber (A50) that anyone in the EU cared about. Varoufakis occupies no position of power in Greece or the EU higher than “man on a book tour”. As Mr. Davies has repeatedly pointed out here, your negotiating position is very, very weak and it is not getting stronger as the clock counts down.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

‘I think Corbyn is correct to say, vote in Labour, and let’s negotiate with the EU.’

This would be after the exit, right? Because it has been my impression from reading this and other material that the referendum is over and the negotiations are essentially over and the UK will go out one way or the other, neither being beneficial and either possibly catastrophic. Fulminating about the inevitable racists and other tribalists is beside the point; the die is cast, if not de jure then certainly de facto. I don’t see what Corbyn is supposed to do about this now, other than try to make the best of a bad situation.

@16
”…Corbyn wants to have a chance at negotiation with the EU, and help reform the EU as part of the negotiation”.

That’s it!
Corbyn is one of these guys who wants to change the EU and doesn’t understand -(like the Brexiters) that if you are a member of such a ”great and awesome club” – it’s YOU (Corbyn) who has to ”reform” himself.

My prediction is that they will get scarily close to No Deal, postpone A50 with the promise that they’ll negotiate a great deal very soon, and return approximately to the status quo of early 2017.

@17
– and please stop always giving the EU such a bad name – as everything you mention happens to be far – faaar worst outside of the EU –
and it just doesn’t help if on top of racist idiots also so many ”not racist idiots” for whatever reason -(because they are in love with a Varoufakis-dude?) – badmouth the EU – while at the same time – as @16 wrote – they pretend like ”Corbyn and Varoufakis to recognize and support what is best about the very idea and existence of the EU”.

So what is ”best about the very idea and existence of the EU”?

PEACE and that racist idiots are in the minority and narrow-minded nationalists -(in their majority) are a thing of the past?

For that alone Corbyn should be willing to stay in the EU unconditionally!

and about @21
”the die is cast, if not de jure then certainly de facto”.

Yes! –
de facto London -(which lies in the UK) is the ”Europe Mini-Me” -(with the utmost diverse and inclusive ”European” populace) – and no ”de jure acrobats” or politicians coming up with the craziest ideas of pretending that this ”de facto” isn’t ”de-facto” will change that – fact.

And so the whole deal is and will be a lot like Von Clownsticks ”Wall”.
Just there in pretension.

There never will – and can be anymore the real ”Wall” the racist and nationalistic idiots are dreaming about – as there never will – and can be – a real ”Brexit” – as reality -(and not only Ireland) – always makes it ”de facto” impossible.

And some idiots still may call whatever – ”a Wall” or a ”Brexit” – but WE (Europeans) will eat our Fry-ups together!

Hidari:

“If the result of the second referendum goes against the first, millions of bitter Brexiteers will feel betrayed by an elite who promised them their initial vote would settle the Europe question for good.

Given the passions a second referendum would unleash — reigniting deep divisions between poorer and richer parts of the country — the U.K. would resume its EU membership as a nation — or, rather, a collective of nations — recovering from a profound sense of disruption, even trauma.”

In the end, this is what Chris described (in the US, we call it ‘concern trolling’), the attitude that ‘we must let them win, because otherwise they will get mad and win’.

One mistake that liberals make a lot is to pre-concede sole legitimacy to the right. Instead of calling them liars and traitors, too many liberals want to understand the right, where ‘understanding’ means ‘excusing’.

I don’t know what Corbyn is thinking, but it’s clear that Labour is ineffectual. It looks like the leadership are banking on the Tories screwing things up catastrophically *and* not being able to pin the blame on ‘The Left’. The first is a decent bet, but IMHO the latter is much less so, and is also dependent on a successful propaganda campaign basted on hitting back first.

What do I care if some elderly xenophobe can’t find a nurse or a doctor because too few EU nationals have stayed to look after the people who voted to take their rights away?

Commendable honesty.

Corbynite tweeters will rail against the selfishness of middle-class people who won’t vote Labour any more. Maybe they’ll have a point. But the fact is they need the targets of their anger to vote with them rather than for an individualistic set of policies that abandon the worst off.

Actually we tried giving them what they want and appealing to their better nature for two decades. It doesn’t work.

The thought is that people need to be committed to the idea of an inclusive national community if they are going to be motivated to make sacrifices on behalf of others in the form of economic transfers [… ] The post simply argues that the politics of (in country) redistribution depend on a minimal level of common identification with that collective

Read some effing Shelley.

First off, I’ll plead guilty to finding most of her comments mostly incomprehensible. Still, 18’s reply to the question, why on Earth do you want the UK to stay in? seems to me to trivialize what I’d take to be a serious question. But then, or again so it seems to me, that is a question which much of the discussion of Brexit has trivialized. Response 23—same person— seems to assert that it is up to those who have issues with the EU to reform themselves in order to fit in with what she calls, perhaps ironically, a “great and awesome club.” Comment 29 is worse. It goes on to badmouth as “not racist idiots” those who “badmouth the EU,” as if the EU was some sacred object which is beyond criticism. Surely there are some among those who wish to Remain who can countenance that the EU as presently constituted and as it presently acts is in need of some significant reform. (Varoufakis has, in fact, been one such.) But comments such as these I’ve listed do nothing to encourage serious, mutually respectful exploration of the issues.

It is, I imagine, a forlorn hope. But I would have liked to see some discussion—amidst all the passionate, mostly pointless discussion of the last couple of years—some critical discussion of the political criticisms of the EU as raised by, e.g., John Gillingham in his “The EU: An Obituary”; in the debate between Habermas (a Remainer of sorts, I suppose) and Streeck ( Leaver); by Perry Anderson in his The New Old World; and maybe even by implication in Peter Mair’s “Ruling the Void.”

And for those in the US who want to go on trying to view Brexit through the lens of trump (e.g., comment 5), there’s an interesting piece here

https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump

Be clear, I’m not claiming that any of those to whom I’ve referred are the last word on these difficult, consequence-laden matters. But it would have helped and it will be a help in the future to acknowledge that those you disagree with aren’t all racists, xenophobes, narrow tribalists, stupid populists, demented geriatrics, and the like.

But to close on a positive note, I like comment 24.

‘It looks like the leadership are banking on the Tories screwing things up catastrophically *and* not being able to pin the blame on ‘The Left’. The first is a decent bet, but IMHO the latter is much less so, and is also dependent on a successful propaganda campaign basted on hitting back first.’

Every single thing bad that happens in the UK is pinned on ‘the left’ in the UK, by the right wing press (almost all the relevant newspapers and magazines), the state broadcaster, that takes its editorial cues from the right wing press, and a barely liberal ‘liberal’ media that can scarcely conceal its contempt for the Labour Party project (under Corbyn). There is nothing the Labour Party could or would do that would not result in its being excoriated in all forms of print media (literally, all) all forms of televisual media (again, literally all) and most forms of internet media. This is the environment in which the Labour Party must function. It simply does not matter what the Tories do, they will be supported and when they are attacked (as Cameron was) they will be attacked from the perspective of the radical right.

This is the reality, and to deny it, or to pretend that there is something that Corbyn could do that would not involve him being blamed by the UK media for all evils committed by everyone, everywhere, is to live in a fantasy land.

@ Phil “It’s hard to respond to being so comprehensively misunderstood.”, well, welcome to Brexit. Two sets of people talking right past each other, neither understanding what the other is going on about. In particular, as a Leaver, I’d say Remainers simply don’t get it. They haven’t understood the basic problem from the outset, and so construct narratives that they can understand but no Leaver will recognise or accept, and in so doing, simply dig a bigger hole.

Hidari is firmly on the case. “it appears to be the Labour leader who has picked the position that is most likely to keep the party together and alienate the fewest voters.” Whilst I think Corbyn is completely useless, it is clearly Seamus Milne who is pulling his strings and has diagnosed the situation most clearly. The issue is that Labour is now clearly two parties in one; Starmer, Reeves, Umunna, Hilary Benn all have one single policy, which is to rejoin the EU at the first opportunity. McDonnell and the left have a set of hard left economic policies that cannot be implemented if the UK is in the EU. There is not a single policy objective the two group shave in common. Corbyn’s silence, whilst frustrating for many, is the only policy which doesn’t blow the party up.

As for the future, and I’m talking the next four weeks, No-one knows anything. The deeper you look, the less clear it is. Lenin allegedly said ““There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.””. We are in those weeks.

After reading #44 I suppose my own interpretation of Chris Bertram’s post is not as crazy as I had feared.

I’m not sure I’m relieved.

“The post simply argues that the politics of (in country) redistribution depend on a minimal level of common identification with that collective and can’t be sustained without it, and that Brexit is going to destroy that. Do you disagree with that factual assessment?…

But beyond that, to have reasons to prefer to making things better for other co-operators in a common project (rather than for people in the world quite generally) you have to actually be in a common project with them. The divisions fostered by Brexit make any sense of that pretty difficult to achieve and mutual indifference will lead to less support for taxation to pay for things like decent hospitals.”

Take it one step further back and you might be able to see a little empathy with the Brexiters. The project of the EU has been sold as an ever deeper union which is supposed to make those joining it better off. The fact of the matter is that the fruits of the EU/globalization project have been already been distributed very unequally for decades. A very good position for Corbyn/Labour would be something like “we understand that many of you haven’t done as well under the EU/globalization project. Leaving the project is going to be worse than staying, but we will commit to really pushing redistribution of the fruits of the EU/globalization project before going further into an even deeper union”.

The problem is that he can’t credibly commit to that because Labour has, throughout our lifetimes, put the deeper union side of things above the distribution side of things. Politics is about priorities. Whenever ‘deeper union’ comes into conflict with ‘redistribution of the fruits of deeper union’, the former wins. So at this point, Remainers can’t credibly promise to prioritize the redistribution side because they have spent 20-30 year prioritizing the deeper union side.

From the point of view of the Leavers, they have been committing to the common EU project for decades. They have been asked again and again to bear the costs of deeper union, while people in London get the fruits of deeper union. While the large cities price them out (which they can do because they get the fruits of deeper union) they see a constantly dwindling set of work options.

So when you say “…and that Brexit is going to destroy that” (minimal level of common identification) you are failing to understand the basic Brexit problem, which is that Labour Leavers feel that the ever deeper union policies which the Remainers always prioritize over the redistribution policies HAVE ALREADY DESTROYED THAT.

If you really want to stop Brexit, you need to be asking yourself questions more like “what part of the EU project am I willing to put on hold in order to prioritize the redistribution side of things?” So far the answer appears to be “no part is worth putting on hold for that” so it isn’t surprising that Leavers don’t feel listened to.

@39

and@Dipper

”Two sets of people talking right past each other, neither understanding what the other is going on about”.

Let’s not limit that to some ”Labour Leaders”?

In particular, as a Remainer, I’d say Leavers simply don’t get it. They haven’t understood the basic problem from the outset, and so construct narratives that they can understand but no Remainer will recognise or accept, and in so doing, simply dig a bigger hole.

ME is firmly on the case. “it appears to be the Brits who have picked the position that is most likely to keep Britain together and alienate the fewest Brits.”
The issue is that Great Britain is now clearly two countries in one;
There is not a single policy objective the two group shave in common.

As for the future, and I’m talking about ”THE future”- everybody knows that sooner or later Great Britain will be (again) as much as an integrated part of the EU as Great Britain always was – and all the silly ”moves” -(to kind of quote again my favorite British Philosophers) the Dippers show US right now will be NOT forgotten but forgiven.
-(especially by every Italian – but by Greeks only – if Great Britain agrees to pay as much for Greece as the Germans)

@
”the way people will think about their social obligations in the future”.

I’m guessing that Mr. B is guessing right: ”that their political attitudes will be more individualist and indifferent than we need them to be if we want to make a better society”

As a very ”individualist” and anti-political attitude has been… ”established” everywhere – understandably and regrettably though – as a backlash to the backlash of racist idiots against the so-called ”establishment”.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Pt.2:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale

I spent Xmas in the Mosell Valley, on a coaching holiday with other rich, retired, white people. The dining-room arrangements lumbered us with two brexican couples ( and they may consider themselves to have been lumbered with us). When the topic came up in conversation, we made clear our position, but tempered it with a platitudinous acknowledgement the democratic process. Five us around the table were beneficiaries of public sector pensions. All of us are of the luckiest generation of our demographic, living the life of Larry— thanks, mostly, to Attlee’s Labour Party. It became clear that what motivates the anti-EU sentiments— of those temporary companions of ours—is not concern for local victims of neoliberalism. In fact the plight of the latter group gave rise to schadenfreude: “Serves ‘em right! Should have put in 40 years like we all did!” and “ If you can’t afford to keep your kids— stop having them!”
I reckon that there is a strong connection between such people and their Trumpian peers.
One of the blokes had definitely been radicalised online:
“We may need more coppers, but there’ll never be enough money to pay for ‘em. What we need in this country (UK) is a second amendment. Give everybody a gun and see how that sorts out all these foreigners doing knife crime.”
The same bloke had recently decided never to set foot in Spain again. He has come to that decision as a result of an American Facebook friend explaining to him who Hispanics are, and how they are all criminals:
“Times I’ve been in that country— and I never realised they are all Hispanics! It explains a lot. Many a time things gone missing from the room . I always thought they looked a bit funny. Same goes for Portugal, brother chips”.
On possible consequences of travel, after Brexit:
“ I tell thee, if they start closing up to us, if they start treating us as if we’re foreigners! Well, I’ll just stop coming!”
His explanation for the fall in value of the pound against the euro: “They are just being spiteful because the UK’s going our own way”.
His explanation for the pounds fall against the dollar:
“Governments doing it deliberate! Ten years ago we had a blinding holiday in Las Vegas. For every pound we took they gave us two dollars back! No need to go to Venice, you can see it in Vegas— same goes for Paris, Eiffel Tower, the lot! That’s why’t governments put pound down against dollar— trying to keep us in Europe!”
Happy holidays.

The age divide thing is not as salient as people think.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45098550

tl;dr

Yes young people are more pro-immigrant, yes young people are more likely to vote remain, yes young people are more likely to want a second referendum.

BUT.

‘only half of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they would be certain to vote in a second EU referendum, according to recent polls by Survation. This compares with 84% of those aged 65 and over.
So if there were another ballot, it is far from certain that young people would necessarily take the opportunity to register their distinctive views.’

Moreover: https://www.statista.com/statistics/692470/labour-party-voting-intention-of-public-age/

Tl;dr

As I pointed out (and no one has responded to this) the OP posits a hypothesis: that young people think that staying in the EU is so important that they will ditch Labour (why? who knows) for a more pro-EU party, like the LibDems. Now as I also pointed out, this might be true. But equally one can clearly state that at the moment there is no evidence of it happening.

There is no mystery about why. Young people are pro-EU, yes, but it’s by no means the only thing they think about. They also think about immigration (and see, correctly, that the Labour party are more pro-immigrant that the Tories: young people are not dumb enough to believe the lies of the Liberal ‘we won’t raise tuition fees’ Democrats). They also think about tuition fees, austerity, imperialism, pointless foreign wars, Donald Trump, etc. etc. etc. And balancing all these things together, young people will probably vote for Corbyn en masse, despite the fact that his EU policy is not wholly satisfactory (i.e. to them).

A much bigger threat for Corbyn is young people not voting at all, which has traditionally been the case. In that case, he has been well advised to try and keep the working class Leave vote onside.

‘ are going to have to think harder about the fact that it is hard to sell a politics of reciprocity to people who’ve just been fucked over by the very people they’re now being asked to care about.’

What a bizarre statement! Generally speaking, old people have more money than young people in the UK. It certainly used to be the case that young people worked hard and ended up wealthy, but that won’t happen any more. Young people work on zero hours contracts in shit McJobs for no money, and this will not change. Young people are less likely to want to be taxed because they want less money to be taken off their miserable pittance of a salary. And this will not change, regardless of whether the UK stays in the EU or not. The good jobs are gone, and they’re not coming back.

So it’s the old people with money who will have to (and are currently) bailing out the younger generation, who will never have meaningful jobs or careers. Not the other way round.

Incidentally there is no politics of reciprocity in the ‘United’ Kingdom and there never has been. The United Kingdom is deeply divided by age, yes (with the young overwhelmingly pro-Corbyn, a point you neglect). But it’s also extraordinarily divided by religion, by gender, by sexuality, by ‘culture’ and by region. The very idea that British people have ever given a toss about anybody in the North of Ireland is ludicrous, and may I remind you that there are still ambitious nationalists in both Scotland and Wales (and the North of Ireland) who are willing Brexit onwards because they see this as a once in a lifetime chance to break up the union (they are not wrong). Brexit is shining a hard light on vicious and long-standing differences that have their origins, in many instances, in the ‘United’ Kingdom’s imperial history. It has not created these differences. Nor will they go away if ‘Great’ Britain is persuaded to remain in the EU (an event which will greatly expedite the EU’s dissolution).

The class framing was in the post (‘A redistributionist politics needs the support of millions of middle-class “liberal” Remain voters to succeed…’). I don’t personally think Leave vs Remain is a class divide, hence why I broadly support Corbyn’s ecumenical approach. Now if the argument is the Bressentiment will eat away the fraternal ties that bind Our Nationâ„¢ together generally I’d cautiously suggest you might have missed four decades of non-stop dismemberment of all material expressions of such sentiments together with a relentless barrage of individualist ideology. The reason young working class people may not feel much fraternity towards their elders is that they’ve never been shown any.

On reflection, I do think there’s a grain of truth in the post somewhere in that post-Brexit the favoured liberal 10%er pretext for looking after number one (while caring deeply, deeply about the plight of the less fortunate) may go from ‘Corbyn is a horrible sexist/racist/IRA supporter’ to ‘Corbyn stuffed Brexit’. But it will remain just that: a pretext.

@ Faustusnotes “Dipper, we aren’t talking past each other. We who are right are telling you how dangerous and stupid your plans are, and you are ignoring us because you think you’re smart.”

Okay lets talk immigration. In the early 2000s Blair opened up immigration from Eastern Europe. Immigration Watch famously stated that the government forecast of between 5,000 and 13,000 per year was too low and forecast about 40,000 per year. We now know that the Migration Watch number massively underestimated the scale of the migration.

Where does that leave me as a voter? If probably the most significant cultural change in the UK this century happens despite the public being assured it won’t, then I’m not sure what the point of my voting is. If political parties and governments are either unwilling or unable to exercise control over whether or not the population is going to increase by 25% in a generation then I don’t see how, come the election, I’m meant to make a choice between those putting themselves up for election given nothing they say matters.

And if a major issue such as who lives here is unable to be controlled, what next? Can I believe any political who says we won’t enter the Euro? Or we won’t have our armed forces directly controlled by European governments?

What the Remain faction is asking us to believe is that if we give up political control over massive parts of the government then by some magical process we are going to become better off. How? How do we extract benefits as a nation if as a nation we have no power? For a peripheral European nation such as the UK to be drawn into a Federal Europe with no means of control over events is, to borrow a phrase, dangerous and stupid.

I’ve got a few minutes spare, so I’ll have one more crack at this.

Chris @66:
a kernel of solidaristic sentiment, focused on institutions like the NHS and broadly national in scope and egalitarian in character … My fear is that this is what Brexit kills

Chris @54:
it is hard to sell a politics of reciprocity to people who’ve just been fucked over by the very people they’re now being asked to care about.

The thing is, it has never occurred to me to think of the taxes I pay as a transfer from hard-working well-to-do me to The Undeserving Poor, let alone The Undeserving Poor Who Vote The Wrong Way. It’s never occurred to me that what I’m doing is subsidising other people – as distinct from paying into institutions like the NHS in a spirit of solidaristic sentiment … egalitarian in character: remember Ben Elton’s line, “I want the full resources of a hospital to be available to me free of charge whenever I need it – but I don’t mind if they’re available to other people when I’m not using them”. Come to that, it has never occurred to me that any significant proportion of the Poor are Undeserving – certainly not on the grounds of their political views.

OP: What do I care if some elderly xenophobe can’t find a nurse or a doctor because too few EU nationals have stayed to look after the people who voted to take their rights away?

Those three framings – tax as a transfer from rich people to poor people; poor people as either deserving or undeserving; political views qualifying some people as undeserving – are fundamentally anti-solidaristic, anti-democratic and anti-socialist in themselves. Just like the “very real concerns” uncovered by the Good Brothers*, these attitudes should be combated – countered with better, more emancipatory framings – rather than our taking them as social realities which we should structure our politics around, let alone welcoming them in a spirit of schadenfreude at their effects on our political rivals.

*Win and Hart

@65
”if we give up political control over massive parts of the government then by some magical process we are going to become better off. How”?

As we -(the people) – always give up political control over massive parts of the government to our elected governments – we are always going to become better off if our governments -(Achtung – ”trivial”) – ”Do a good job”.

And that’s ”the thing” –

Are you really sure that the ”National(istic) UK government will make you -(and your fellow citizens) ”going to become better off” without the EU helping??!

@56 and @57 somebody posted some information about ”what have the EU ever done for U” – and if WE have to explain the Brexit to a Californian -(or an Italian) – WE always show them the Monty Python Sketch about ”What have the Romans ever done for us” – first.

And if you have missed it – perhaps you finally should take a look at it?

How”?

When you say, Chris (at 67),

@Dipper You want to know what having no control is like? It is becoming a rule-taker with no chance of influencing the rules.

you surely are aware that that’s precisely why at least some of those-who-want-to-Leave want to leave.

Maybe these Leavers err in thinking that the EU’s political and economic arrangements for making the rules are beyond reconstitution and that–just maybe!–the UK’s own such arrangements are bit more, and with an awful lot of hard political work, amenable to being reconstituted. But maybe many Remainers err in not–seemingly from what I’ve been reading–countenancing that the EU is now a quite problematical regime. As, certainly, is the UK itself–something I do see a lot of Remainers emphasizing. But it still remains a matter of political judgement how we might get to a better place than where we all are now. I take your passionate concern for the future of the young and for redistribution to be an expression of your desire and commitment to get to a better place. But, as some others have also indicated, it’s disturbing to see you being so dismissive of those who also have other concerns which surely have played some part in their arriving at their political judgements respecting the EU and Brexit. (Being of a certain age myself, I’ll insert paraphrastically that surely the oldest person that is in the UK has a right to live as much as the youngest person–though certainly will not in most cases continue to do so for so long. And so too does the poorest as well.) Someone above, as I recall, simply asserted that he, a Remainer, was just “right.” Maybe were we ALL to start proclaiming, “I think I’m right, but maybe I’m wrong,” some way into the future, whether Britain remains in or exits from the EU, might be fashioned in a way which did not begin from the notion that politics is just war by other means between irreconcilable opposites. Of course, I see that could be a dangerous course. After all, Cromwell did go ahead and massacre the inhabitants of Dunbar when they ignored his admonition, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think that you might be mistaken.

good luck with getting enough votes to form a government without getting the votes of the many people you despise

I am definitely stealing that (perhaps paraphrased to “enough votes to govern” for the U.S. context) .

Thanks for understanding how politics actually works!

Chris Bertram

The politics people have in the future is often conditioned by how things look when they are about 20, …

I don’t know how things will look in two, three, or five years time (there is more than one possibility, and I don’t know which to expect), but it is practically certain to be drastically different from the way things look now. Therefore, to the extent of the truth in your observation, and if ‘about 20’ is a critical period, the effects on people now in their teens will be radically different (although in what direction I have no idea) from the effects on people now in their early twenties. It’s likely that many politically aware people now in their early twenties are thinking, among other things, ‘What does Corbyn think he’s been playing at?’, and it’s reasonable to suppose that this will have some degree of lasting effect on their attitudes to Corbyn’s favoured political projects; but there’s a probably larger cohort of people just slightly younger most of whom are not yet politically aware and who will have their attention differently focussed when they do become so.

Chris Bertram

As for the dismissiveness: well, these are people who out of spite or ignorance voted the throw the EU nationals who live amongst us under the bus, together with the Irish peace process. My feelings towards people who did that are ones of revulsion, basically.

My reaction to spite is also one of revulsion, but my feelings about ignorance are different. We’re all ignorant, even if to different degrees. Small children are the most ignorant of all, but should we feel revulsion when they do harm through their ignorance?

Anyway, whenever you do feel revulsion, what should you do with that revulsion?

The belief that the uk elites want to promote the rights of labour as agaisnt an EU who’s out to subject us to the will of the capitalist is utterly out of sync with reality. The EU has been ahead of the UK on labour rights at almost every single turn, from holidays to working hours to consumer protections to human rights. Every single one of these will revert to the lowest common denominator post Brexit as we race for cmpetitive advantage over our neighbours.

You’re replacing the real but uneven wins EU rules and regulations have given to labour with an imagined utopia where Britain set free from the EU can valiantly fend off rapacious international capitalism. If Britain had a political system characterised by more independance from corporate power than the EU this might work but it doesn’t.

Many middle class remainers understand this and I think the political apathy towards Labour will have less to do with spite than with despair at a party which seems incapable of expressing the nature of the problems well face, let alone a political strategy which is even vaguely capable of addressing them.

@ J-D “but it reads to me very much as if you are asking: ‘If voters can’t stop increases in immigration, what’s the point of voting?’ “

No. The issue is that voters never had the chance to stop it. Government introduced a policy which they explicitly said would not have a particular result, it then had that result, and now the parties say well that all worked out okay so that justifies the original policy. I think implementing major policies without any public involvement and then marking your own homework and telling the people you’ve been successful is a rotten way to do democracy.

And now MPs are apparently working out how they can prevent any meaningful Brexit, having collectively voted 6:1 to have the referendum and then voted to trigger article 50. As Douglas Murray wrote, Will it ever be worth voting again?

‘Senior Tory and Labour MPs are planning to force the government to delay Brexit by several months to avoid a no-deal outcome if Theresa May fails to get her deal through parliament in January, the Observer has been told.

Cross-party talks have been under way for several weeks to ensure the 29 March date is put back – probably until July at the latest – if the government does not push for a delay itself. It is also understood that cabinet ministers have discussed the option of a delay with senior backbench MPs in both the main parties and that Downing Street is considering scenarios in which a delay might have to be requested from Brussels….

Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said that parliament would need to discuss all options, including a possible delay, if and when May failed to get her blueprint through the Commons. “If the prime minister’s deal is voted down in early January, then we will be just nine weeks away from the date we are due to leave the EU,” Starmer said.

“If the deal is rejected, parliament will need to have a very serious debate about how to protect the economy from a no-deal scenario and at this stage nothing should be ruled out.”…

In an interview with the Sunday Times, the trade minister, Liam Fox, put the chances of Brexit being cancelled altogether at about “50-50” if parliament votes down Theresa May’s deal. “If we were not to vote for that, I’m not sure I would give it [Brexit] much more than 50-50,” Fox, a leading supporter of leaving the EU, told the newspaper.’

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/29/cross-party-stop-the-clock-hard-brexit-no-deal-29-march

…tick. tick. tick…

Surely no set of modern, well-informed european leaders would ever sleepwalk directly into a catastrophe!

@Hidari

I think HMG will revoke the Art 50 notification because there is insufficient time to enact nine Brexit bills[*] and pass 700+ Statutory Instruments before 29 March 2019.

[*] https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/charts/parliamentary-progress-legislation-introduced-implement-brexit

@88
”What has the EU ever done for us”

The belief of UK workers that the EU hasn’t done anything for them might be the most tragic… may I say -”twist”? in the ”Drama of Brexit” –

As @83 says it like IT IS:

”The EU has been ahead of the UK on labour rights at almost every single turn, from holidays to working hours to consumer protections to human rights”.

And in the very confused and misinformed tweeter-thread you quoted – one – supposedly ”worker” – after another blamed the EU for ”the de-industrialization of Great Britain” and thusly the downfall of ”Great Britain’s Workers” –

While every minimal informed European knows – that the sellout of British Industries and thusly ”the workers plight” was as voluntarily confused and stupid as in the US -where so called ”experts” and economists -(of all political sides) – ALSO thought that an ”advanced country of the future” only could keep on making money by cgetting out of manufacturing and production and changing to a more ”Service” and ”Finance’ dominated economy –

What a self-defeating ”Trumpish Idiocy”?

Which had and had NOTHING to do with the EU either –
as everybody in the EU who kept the industrial base – AND it’s well payed workers is doing ”GREAT” – and Von Clownstick is so full of envy that he tries everything to get all of these jobs back to US.
And for the UK and British workers – to blame the guys – who for example bought nearly all of the UK’s car industry – the UK ”desperately” tried to get rid off – is a true tragedy – and now – of all people ”Germans” are selling ”Mini’s” and ”Bentley’s” and even the Rolls – as mainly ”Made in Germany” – keeping German workers -(and still a lot of workers in the UK) – very, very happy…

That’s even absurder than the ”Roman” Monthy Python sketch?

@Faustusnotes – I’ve no idea where you get this stuff from, but … this bit “so that the EU can’t uncover their history of money-laundering for Putin”.

I love this Russian Money Laundering stuff, because a major source of laundering has already been found – Danske Bank ‘s branch in Estonia, which laundered at least €200,000,000,000. So that’s right there, in the EU but not London, under these fantastic EU regulations. Of particular interest is the innovative use of SLPs – Scottish Limited Partnerships – which hide the beneficial owners. Perhaps Scotland wants independence so it can continue to benefit from Russian Money Laundering?

@91

One of the problems of dealing with the (now) ‘slow moving’ blogosphere as opposed to Twitter, is you just lose links to what people said (i.e. on Twitter). So you’re just going to have to take my word for this.

But a few months ago, someone on Twitter pointed out that No Deal simply could not happen, as the requisite planning had not been done. As it stands, if No Deal went ahead, there would literally be people starving in the streets in the UK within a fortnight. Britain, PLC, would simply collapse. That’s why it is not going to happen. No how, no way. There is not enough time, so to speak, for it to happen.

And now it seems we are encroaching on the same territory with Brexit ‘proper’, even with a deal. If we move towards February 2019 with no ‘progress’ on Brexit (and with the wrangling and bickering of May’s doomed deal still going on that’s highly plausible)……by that time there will simply not be enough time to ‘do’ Brexit, as you point out and it will have to be postponed.

For how long? Well that’s an interesting question isn’t it?

Due to the intense hostility to Corbyn by almost all of the corporate media, the extent to which May’s, so to speak, de facto defeat at the last election, was a disaster for the Tories (which is now, let’s not forget, the party of Brexit inheriting this mantle from UKIP) has been greatly downplayed. But since May’s party is now essentially dead in the water (to mix metaphors, it’s currently dying a thousand deaths over Brexit), then whither Brexit? None of other parties really want it (not even Corbyn’s Labour Party, whatever he says….the PLP remains implacably opposed), No Deal is impossible, May can’t put together an ‘acceptable’ Brexit….so…where do we go from here?

Ergo, the likeliest possibility at this juncture is that if Brexit doesn’t get ‘passed’ in January 2019 it will get ‘booted into the long grass’, for….well how long? Interesting question. Possibly this won’t get sorted until the next election. Maybe not till after then. Maybe not till long after then.

In any case, the cancellation (either de facto or de jure) of Brexit is a real possibility now, in a way it just wasn’t a few months ago. Liberals who are tempted to heave a big sigh of relief about this and think ‘well thank goodness! I can’t wait till that happens and we can put all this nonsense behind us” should wake up and smell the coffee.

Phil @69: you write: “those three framings – tax as a transfer from rich people to poor people; poor people as either deserving or undeserving; political views qualifying some people as undeserving – are fundamentally anti-solidaristic, anti-democratic and anti-socialist in themselves.”

I would agree with this. However, you start with Distribution A and you want to move to Distribution B; ideally this is done by addressing the institutional underpinnings of Distribution A (i.e. workplace governance, rights). This is difficult task, so you also introduce a tax system that gets you closer to Distribution B. This can be described as a transfer, or a subsidy (and often is) without thinking of it as ‘the rich paying for the poor’.

That said, the idea of desert won’t go away as easily as all that, and ‘undeserving’ is a label that also gets flung around in left politics. For example, I’ve seen it in talk of ‘greedy developers’. The idea of desert tends to tag along with any thought concerning ‘what should go where’.

All that aside, I think the contours of Lexit are a teeny tiny bit clearer to me after seeing this comments thread unfold. If you’re Eurosceptic on leftist grounds – i.e. you see it as, on balance, a regressive institution – then maybe you should just come out and say that, rather than all this stuff about honouring the result of the referendum. I see at least a hint of this in JC and it’s mealy-mouthed, tbh.

What those who say we’ll-take-the-hit-and-redistribute are asking us to imagine is that those people will […] support redistribution to those whom they identify as having, by voting for Brexit, just made them and their families worse off.

What I have said is that in a deeply divided (by Brexit) society people will come to see themselves as paying for people who’ve brought a mess on themselves and will think “why should I” and that this psychological shift will undermine the possibility of a solidaristic left politics.

Chris, I really wish you would unpack the moral and political logic behind these statements. If I understand them correctly, they seem to state two things: first, that people find it hard to imagine themselves part of a unified political community in which people are deserving of mutual help when they have been harmed by the policies chosen in a majoritarian way and that in, in fact, the opposite psychological reaction ensues – the common decision-taking process, far from bringing the polity together, elicits feelings of despise on part of the losers directed to those perceived as having supported the winning side; second, that this was specifically caused by Brexit (hence my emphasis twice).

If I understood correctly, then my reactions are as follows:
-If it is true that when commonly agreed political decisions are taken, then the psychological reaction among losers is that of hostility against the winners and move to secession, then it is not only leftwing redistributionist policies which are impossible, it is democracy itself. Of course, that unfortunate conclusion does not mean the premise is wrong.
-A 4% hit in economic standards are nothing exceptional in the usual functioning of a democratic country. Anecdotally, that’s just about what my household experienced in just 18 months of Macron presidency (to be renewed in the next 18 months ad. lib., contrary to the impact of Brexit). More generally, we might not like it, but it does not help to pretend that the negative impact of Brexit is somehow statistically anormal (the main victims of the hit are arguably statistically anormal). If such negative impacts are in itself enough to fracture political communities, then (again) democracy is impossible. Of course, that unfortunate conclusion does not mean…
-Purely empirically, if it is indeed true that the British political community has been fractured in the way you described (a statement I would personally find quite credible), I very, very much doubt that Brexit was a cause rather than a symptom, and my reasons for thinking this is the usual international comparison: similar fractures are easily discernible in the US, in France (a particularly good example, as the population there also cast a decisive anti-EU vote by referendum, though of course not to leave, only to see the results of the referendum cancelled, and did it help one bit in terms of cohesion of the community?), in Italy, in the Netherlands, to some extent in Austria etc… I think no good can come in confusing causes and consequences.

My impression is that the fracture in the British society runs through educative lines, that the two-sides of the fracture have gone different social trajectories for quite a while now and in fact that they have been in open socio-political warfare for some time already (with Brexit one of the most spectacular win for the less educated camp in terms of political preference*, I admit even I would not have anticipated such a spectacular correlation). Same in the US, with Trump**. Same in France with Macron, but in the opposite direction***, with the current Gilets Jaunes movement being the other camp striking back.

But whatever your preferred political analysis of the underlying causes of the political and social fracture, anyone who believes in it and who values democracy should, it seems to me, do their best to evaluate which political forces are trying to reduce the fracture and which are trying to tear the two groups apart, and put their energy behind the formers. It is not my place to conduct this analysis for the United Kingdom, but I wish I would be so lucky, as the answer seems to me particularly easy in that country.

*https://public.tableau.com/profile/eva8220#!/vizhome/2_3_6/2_3ScatterHE

**http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/

***https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/files-fr-fr/doc_associe/ipsos_sopra_steria_sociologie_des_electorats_7_mai_20h15_0.pdf

104: it’s the pointlessness of the Brexit sacrifice that marks it out as special. Nothing is achieved by it that couldn’t have been done while remaining an EU member, afaict. And a lot is lost. Normal politics / democracy isn’t like Brexit, to my mind anyway.

Z if you want to understand the sentiment Chris describes, witness dipper, who is deeply butthurt that the electorate voted for the party he believes increased immigration, to the point he thinks his vote doesn’t count, and pushed to have his country leave the eu in response. Now he refuses to consider the possibility of a second vote to chose whether to brexit now we know the conditions, because he doesn’t want to have others in his polity have a say. And he sniffs petulantly at all the young people who have benefited from the eu. That spirit has been circulating amongst the brexit era for twenty years. Why shouldn’t their victims have the same view now?

Dipper you said let’s talk about immigration and again you refuse to provide a serious response. Is there any point talking to you?

Why My Christmas Dinner Table Conversation With A Couple Of Racist Affluent Northerners Means We Must Support My Politics

It seems to me that the most likely outcome is a last-minute revocation of Article 50, when it’s too late for anything else. Alternatively, the EU would probably give an extension of time for a second referendum, if the system could get its act together for this,

On the implications for democracy, I don’t see why a referendum should be seen much differently than an election. A majority voted for the Brexit “party”, which ran on some vague and contradictory promises. The Brexit party got a term of several years in which they tried and failed to deliver anything resembling those promises. They weren’t constrained in any significant way by the courts, Parliamentary obstruction etc. Just by reality.

So, just like a government that hasn’t delivered on its promises they should go back to the people and see if a majority still backs them.

John Quiggin:
“On the implications for democracy, I don’t see why a referendum should be seen much differently than an election. A majority voted for the Brexit “party”, which ran on some vague and contradictory promises.”

Exactly this. The original campaign for Brexit seemed to involve substantial misunderstandings, false promises, and poor information on both sides. There were completely novel political negotiations that needed to occur, with no precedent to guide expectations for reasonable outcome, and the original question was vague in the extreme as there was no concrete scenario on either side of “Remain” or “Leave” (though the former was more of a devil-you-know).

What we embarked on over these past two years was an extensive fact-finding mission and negotiation, cutting through the bluster by politicians and industry to see what terms would actually come to pass, how thorough the changes to the UK government would need to be, and how life might actually be affected for the broad array of communities in this country. And now that we have more information on the potential outcomes and how they might affect us, it’s possible to make a more informed decision.

That fact finding should have occurred before such a monumentous decision was submitted to a referendum, but the failed gambit of a past government shouldn’t prevent us from making a more informed decision as a body politic now.

“On the implications for democracy, I don’t see why a referendum should be seen much differently than an election. ”

Largely because of the wording on the ballot, which for a number of people who were voting for the first time or voting after a long hiatus took on the status of a absolute promise.

With or without Brexit, you can say goodbye to radical redistribution. What would make anybody believe it’s in the cards absent some sort of calamity that would even the playing field by destroying wealth on a planetary scale as happened in the wars of the first half of the 20th Century?

So much frankly jaw-dropping stuff on here from people who should know better. One of the revelations of Brexit has been the number of people who, when push comes to shove, feel they are entitled to overturn democracy to get their way.

Firstly, as soon as the referendum was called (and passed 6:1) there were roughly speaking three outcomes possible: Vote to Remain, in which case we have called our own bluff and now have no reasonable means of stopping the slide to Federalism, Vote to Leave and negotiate an exit deal with the EU on the way out, which as we have seen is basically remaining without a vote, or else walking away and negotiating a FTA from outside. So, No deal is implicit in the vote. If we can’t do No Deal, then just don’t have a referendum.

Secondly, the horrors of No Deal. We are told that No Deal would be so dreadful people will die, and so we cannot contemplate it. Now, pretty much the #1 responsibility of any government is the security and independence of the nation. And here we are with a government that triggered Article 50 with a two-year time limit, gets to the end of that time limit, and publicly announces that because it has failed to make the necessary preparations we have no choice but to accept foreign rule. Quite simply it is hard to imagine a worse performance. This is surely the most shameful achievement in history. Far worse than Suez.

I should also point out in passing that the flow of critical medicines is two way, so if without a deal people will die in the UK, they will also die on the continent. Yet I don’t see any EU representatives saying we must give the UIK whatever they want or people will die. Somehow in the hands of the UK Remain establishment every two-way interdependence is a weakness for us only which means we must submit. It has been a masterclass in how not to negotiate.

Thirdly, Laws. Having told us during the campaign that the claim by Leave that the EU makes lots of our law was rubbish, we are now told we should Remain in the EU because the EU makes lots of our Laws. Apparently, the EU makes better laws then the UK does. the British people should be denied the right to elect their own lawmakers because they would choose the wrong ones.

Fourthly a “people’s vote”. We were promised that this was a once in a generation vote, and that whatever the country voted would be enacted. A “people’s vote” is a break of this promise. A second vote represents a clear moral hazard to so screw up the negotiations so that the original vote can be forcibly overturned. If there is a second vote now, No one will ever take any referendum again seriously.

Fifthly, the Irish Troubles. Both sides have said they will not increase border checks. Varadkar himself said at the point of leaving the regulations are the same and so there need be no initial concerns, but love time as the EU and the UK regulate there will be divergence. If only there were some arrangements that could be put in place to enable bi-partisan discussions to take place that allow such matters to be managed. And there is – The Good Friday Agreement. Threats of terrorism if people don’t get what they want should have no place in democracies. The GFA appears to have made bombings and assassinations legitimate political activity in some people’s minds the great of which can be used to overturn votes. Frankly this is a disgrace.

Sixthly, “reaching out to Remainers”. From 24th June a large portion of the political establishment made overturning the vote the primary aim. They even have been negotiating directly with the EU to achieve this against the interests of the elected government. I’m not sure that reaching out is the appropriate response here.

And all you overseas folks chipping in. Do you have protestors in your capitals waving flags of foreign nations demanding they make your laws? Do you expect, when you sign Free trade Agreements, that you will pay to allow other nations to export their goods to you? That other nations will demand the right for all their citizens to settle in your country? That their courts should overrule yours? That you should ultimately accept their currency and allow your armed forces to be subsumed in their armed forces? No, so why do you think it reasonable I should accept that?

You lot don’t own democracy. It isn’t your personal play thing to be tweaked and twisted until you get the results you want. You may be convincing each other that you are right, but you aren’t convincing any Leavers.

I’d also like to virtually raise my eyebrows at the suggestion that the Danny Boyle circus show, lavishly funded with public bread which Tory/LibDem austerity cuts had already been taking out of the poor’s mouths for two years, was really symbolic of anything more than phoney middle-class self-congratulation: nationalism with a bobo face.

Dipper

@ J-D “but it reads to me very much as if you are asking: ‘If voters can’t stop increases in immigration, what’s the point of voting?’ “

No. The issue is that voters never had the chance to stop it.

I’m not clear on what the difference is supposed to be between ‘voters couldn’t stop it’ and ‘voters never had the chance to stop it’, but in any case it seems to me that the two responses I gave still apply, as follows: even if there are some things that voters never had the chance to stop, there may still be other things that voters do have the chance to stop; and there’s no reason to think that leaving the EU will give UK voters more chances to stop things, because the problem you indicate of things happening without voters having the chance to stop them is a global complaint, not an EU-specific one.

engels

Surprise: there are a lot of really angry working-class people who never turned out for tepid Blairite triangulation but will for socialism.

I am generally suspicious of assertions which seem like approximate equivalents of ‘if only politicians would advance the policy proposals that I favour, lots of people would vote for them’. I have always felt that very few people would vote for the kind of policy proposals that I would favour.

How do you get ” the top 10% of the housing stock to fall in value” without crashing other sectors of the housing market, and/or the economy in general?

I’m no expert on any of this, but in my area (San Francisco Bay Area) one effect of the Great American Recession was that real estate speculators bought up a lot of foreclosed homes (condos as well as houses), held them til the market revived, and then sold them at high prices. There was nothing redistributive about it.

Dipper

Firstly, ‘what is a possible outcome?’ and ‘what is a preferable outcome?’ are two different questions. People can disagree with you about whether leaving the EU with no withdrawal agreement is a preferable outcome without denying that it is a possible outcome.

Secondly, as far as I can tell the majority of the people who disagree with you about the preferable outcome agree that the Conservative Government has made a terrible mess of handling this issue over the last two years. If you tell Chris Bertram, for example, that (in your words) ‘it is hard to imagine a worse performance’ and that it was ‘a masterclass in how not to negotiate’, I suspect you will find him in furious agreement.

And all you overseas folks chipping in. Do you have protestors in your capitals waving flags of foreign nations demanding they make your laws? Do you expect, when you sign Free trade Agreements, that you will pay to allow other nations to export their goods to you? That other nations will demand the right for all their citizens to settle in your country?

There’s no particular reason why you should ever have heard of this, which is why I’m drawing it to your attention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Tasman_Travel_Arrangement

I am generally suspicious of assertions which seem like approximate equivalents of ‘if only politicians would advance the policy proposals that I favour, lots of people would vote for them’.

This is a fascinating insight into your psychology but I was referring to the 2017 election, not making a prediction.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-election-result-vote-share-increased-1945-clement-attlee-a7781706.html

engels

In an earlier comment you wrote

Surprise: there are a lot of really angry working-class people who never turned out for tepid Blairite triangulation but will for socialism.

In 1997, 13.5m people voted for Labour under the leadership of Tony Blair. In 2017, 12.9m people voted for Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Given only that information, it is mathematically possible that all of the people who voted Labour in 2017 were people who did not vote Labour in 1997; it is mathematically possible that all of the people who voted Labour in 2017 were people who did vote Labour in 1997; or it could be anywhere in-between. In the article from the Independent which you linked to there is nothing to narrow it down any further. We don’t know how many of the people who voted for Labour in 2017 are people who would not have voted for Labour under Blair (and we also don’t know how many of those people are working class, or angry, or both).

I think the people who are going to get the nasty surprise will be the comfortable Leadsom-supporting Tories living near Theresa May’s constituency, who think everything would have been fine if their preferred candidate had won in 2016. They think a “short-term hit” is fine because it will jolly well shake the country and shift the layabouts and deadwood. It will… but it’ll people like them suddenly surprised by the contracts and “consultancy” jobs vanishing, the big companies pulling out and moving to the continent. The miserable Northern housing estates won’t notice things being any worse than they already are, but the Daily Telegraph will be filling up with heartbreaking human interest stories about how school fees are unaffordable nowadays.

Let them have it.

@132
That article in the New Statesman is ok, as far as it goes, but it labours (sic) under the misapprehension that Labour could stop Brexit (this is stated above using the ambiguous phrase of Labour ‘enabling Brexit’ whatever that means) but for some mysterious reason are choosing not to do so.

It’s not so. Labour can NOT stop Brexit. Ipso facto, they cannot enable it either. As I pointed out above, the numbers are simply not there. There are no ‘moderate Tories’. There was no (at the last election, which is the only time it might have mattered) a LibDem ‘surge’. Nor was there a ‘surge’ in the other Remainer parties. The only conceivable way that Labour could stop Brexit would be if there was a general election between now and March, but every day that passes, that seems less and less likely.

Ergo, we move towards March. Now, whatever deal the Tories put on the table, Labour will vote against it (as has been pointed out, Keir Starmer’s ‘6 tests’ are openly modeled on Gordon Brown’s ‘5 tests’ to decide on whether or not the UK joined the Euro: criteria which were ‘covertly’ written so they could never be met). Labour will obviously do all in their power to prevent ‘No Deal’. If No Deal goes through (highly unlikely) Britain will collapse and the Tories will be out of power for a generation: a point that is sometimes missed.

Will Labour’s vote be enough? Who knows: it’s all to do with the Tories. This was their game, their project, their referendum (which they lost) it’s the Tories who have been in the driving set 100 percent of the time. The right-wing press and their enablers in the ‘liberal’ media (the Guardian etc.) have been desperate to try and blame Corbyn for this clusterfuck. But it is simply not true.

In any case, No Deal will not happen*, May’s Deal will (probably) not happen, and there’s not enough time to renegotiate. So the likelihood is, as I said above, that Brexit will be postponed, possibly for a loooooooong period of time.

So to ask Corbyn to make a principled moral stand (or whatever) on Brexit is to ask him to make a stand on something he has no control over and which probably won’t happen. (or at least probably won’t happen in March).

Me and Faustnotes have been continually making this point on this thread, and some people who posit themselves as being ‘liberal’ are willfully not understanding it. At what point are we allowed to question their real motives?

*Don’t be fooled by Tories and their enablers in the ‘liberal’ media bigging up the possibility of No Deal. May has a vested interest in stating that it’s much more likely than it in fact is, to scare MPs into voting for her own worthless deal.

I fear that Brexit may be a step in the wrong direction. It is downsizing, but the way into the future is to accelerate increasing returns, in order to produce goods and services to satiety for everyone (i.e. no longer subject to scarcity), thus to create enough surplus for public goods and other fiscal eases. One way to do that is by increasing the gains from specialization-and-trade, by greater globalization. That still leaves us with the problems of economic and social distress in localities and nations, but these should be handled in another way. The way to reassert local control and to support those workers disemployed by trade is to promote public sector monopsonies in specific goods and services in order to create the increasing returns of the myriad of positive externalities that are non-monetized and hardly calculable, e.g. goods and services such as healthcare, education, old-age provisions, etc. which improve the standard of living in countless ways. Basically create focused public corporations with Ostrom-style, very simple rule sets, and which still preserve individual initiative in cost-saving by being private on the provider-side. In other words, treat capitalism as so successful in cost-saving that it has begun to mandate the slow elimination of labor costs globally, and we should all welcome that and deal with it by public monopsonies that make up the shortfalls to labor locally. Taxation to pay for this should come out of international trade and be mandated by new policy for all who are subject to multilateral trade agreements. (E.g. the EU should become realistic about the need for a supra-fiscal policy.) Brexit & Trump-style nationalism etc. are all retrenchments to less increasing returns, and there is going to be a crunch, and the crunch in some goods, and for some people, may be profound, but without local fiscal ability to make up the shortfalls without eventually devaluing the home currency. Essentially it will be a return to the enslavements of international finance at the local level but without the people having an opposing voice in multilateral agreements with the forward momentum to change the whole understanding. At the same time, the developing countries must continue to emerge in trade to compete everybody else down to the same low wages, phony shortages, financial crises and unemployment episodes as before, and as always. So, over the long term: less redistribution, more hatred and wars.

I’m professionally obliged to say this, but I would sincerely recommend reading Thucydides’ account of the ‘civil war’ in Corcyra, 3.82-3. Part of his genius was writing scenes and narratives that are simultaneously specific to their historical context (which is one reason why Graham Allison’s idea of ‘The Thucydides Trap’ as a means of understanding US-China relations is largely twaddle) and yet at the same time invite comparison with the present; he is ‘good to think with’, as the cliché has it, exactly as the US Naval War College in the 1970s used his work to talk about what went wrong in Vietnam without ever mentioning Vietnam. The above discussion has tended on the whole to reinforce my feeling that we haven’t a hope of understanding Brexit, or the wider context, so long as we keep talking about Brexit.

What Thucydides offers is a portrait of a society in which any sort of consensus has collapsed (and he hints at a range of reasons why, both internal and external, both long- and short-term); politics becomes ever more factionalised, shared values and culture are replaced by partisanship, the ‘sensible centrists’ are the first to get squashed because they fail to understand that reason is no longer playing a significant role, and moderation becomes a form of cowardice. Thucydides implies questions rather than offering answers: how does one restore any sort of consensus, except by one faction triumphing over the other? Is the best model we can hope for Athens, which eventually restored democracy only after a series of terrible decisions and military disasters and a couple of oligarchic coups? How can we even talk about political issues when each of our perspectives is intimately bound up with our partisan positions – unless we adopt the external position of the elitist technocrat, who is incapable of effective action within what’s left of the democratic institutions?

There is no universal right answer to the question “are EU state aid & competition rules problematic?” This is because the answer depends on your political standpoint. Broadly: EU state aid & competition rules are accommodating of social democracy, but not democratic socialism
https://mobile.twitter.com/L__Macfarlane/status/1078359247816179712?p=v

I want to put forward the possibly untimely thought, that those of us who value democracy should actually be welcoming the vigorous discussion now, as evidenced here, going on in Britain respecting Brexit and that we should simultaneously be dismayed that—am I wrong?—no remotely similar debate is going on in the rest of the EU.

In his essay on “fugitive democracy” Sheldon Wolin puts forward a couple of propositions:
(1) “the political [is] an expression of the idea that a free society composed of diversities can nonetheless enjoy moments of commonality when, through public deliberations, collective power is used to promote or protect the well-being of the collectivity,”
(2) “democracy is a project concerned with the political potentialities of ordinary citizens, that is with their possibilities of becoming political beings through the self-discovery of common concerns and of modes of action for realizing them.”

I take these to be somewhat in line with Peter Mair’s assertion that “Political opposition gives voice. By losing opposition, we lose voice, and by losing voice we lose control of our political systems. It is not at all clear how that control might be regained, either in Europe or at home, or how we might eventually restore meaning to that great milestone on the road to building democratic institutions.”

I’d note, in passing, that Wolin’s propositions suggest that, as I think some have done here, to predicate democracy upon common feeling is to put the cart before the horse. But to continue:

Perhaps I’m just being fanciful, but it does appear to me that, just as in the debate over the Scottish independence referendum a few years back, now around Brexit a great many more people than usual have become involved in political debate and are learning an awful lot about collective responsibility. It would seem, in other words, that democracy has come alive again in Britain, that people are in the process of trying to discover “common concerns and of modes of action for realizing them.” What has become mere political routine evidently will not serve at this juncture, though I do realize that the dead hand of routine is still in a position to set tight limits on the debate’s consequentiality.

I won’t say more on the failure of a significant debate over Brexit—which would surely also have to be a debate over what sort of EU people wanted—to emerge in any significant fashion elsewhere among the EU countries, other than to ask whether that doesn’t point up that democracy within the EU is absent or gone missing (if it can reasonably be maintained that it ever existed) at a critical moment for that organization.

Scott P@122: “it’s precisely the existence of the EU that makes the continuing existence of countries like Luxembourg or Lithuania possible. Without it, they’d last about 10 seconds.”

Actually, the present State of Luxembourg dates from 1839, when the French-speaking parts seceded from the previous Duchy to join Belgium.by the Treaty of London, 1867, France and Prussia agreed to guarantee Luxembourg’s neutrality. Germany set that aside and invaded in 1914 and 1940, but was later expelled. Luxembourg joined the European Union when it was founded, in 1993. Previous EU-independent existence rather longer than 10 seconds, I think: possible threats to current existence, surely not Germany again or France? But if not those, who is threatening Luxembourg?

Lithuania was independent without the assistance of the EU from 1918 to i940, after which it was invaded by the USSR, then Germany, then the USSR again. It declared independence again in 1990, and remained free with no EU assistance through a Soviet economic blockade and attempted coup. It did not join the EU till 2004, and its current strong position might be thought due to having a little earlier joined NATO, which has effective armed forces to oppose the obvious threat, though the EU does not.

There are some good things to be said about the EU. Fact-free rants don’t reinforce them.

J-D, targeting the relatively happy and comfortable swing voter is not ‘how politics works’ in 2019.

It does if your turnout is high enough. Compulsory voting probably adds at least 1% average annual growth to australian GDP growth over the long term, by significantly reducing the amount of time the country is run by the lunatic right.

I’m very sympathetic to the idea that high levels of migration have made certain communities *much* poorer. Conventional economic analysis says certain jobs have either seen a small amount of wage reduction or worse caused wage stagnation. Not so bad! But what this analysis misses is the impact on social capital of no longer knowing your community. Want an informal loan for a medical bill? There’s no whip-around anymore. Take your chances with Wonga instead. You feel lonely because all your mates live miles away. Toughen up buttercup: catch the bus. I hate this reality. I’m pro-EU. But I see no recognition of the fact that all some communities have is social capital, and endless inward migration threatens this.

That said, I agree with the premise of the blog post. Young people will abandon the social contract when Brexit has flipped the bird to the quid pro quo. Those communities fucked by immigration will be further fucked by the end of the redistributive welfare state. It’s heads they lose, tails Rees Mogg wins. The cvnt.

One point here where I disagree with hidari is I don’t think that Brexit will be delayed or cancelled by the Tories, because the Brexit “leader”ship (BoJo, moggy, etc) are hellbent on a no deal brexit. They want Britain out of the EU before the new tax evasion and money laundering rules are introduced, and are happy to burn it all down to avoid being caught by those rules. So I think they will turn up the pressure in the next few months to make sure the worst outcome happens. These are nasty, treacherous people!

[aeiou] Yes, Chris, perpetrators of serious crimes may not be successful in their application for settled status. So technically they may have their rights taken away from them. Although the scheme hasn’t actually properly opened yet, so I stand by my point that nobody’s rights have been taken away from them.

As for the requirement for people to be able to provide proof of their identity (and thus nationality), are you suggesting that someone who was not able to establish that they are an EU national would be allowed to stay now? A passport is required only for the pilot phase of the settlement scheme. Other forms of identification will be permitted once the scheme formally opens in March.

@151 ‘One point here where I disagree with hidari is I don’t think that Brexit will be delayed or cancelled by the Tories, because the Brexit “leader”ship (BoJo, moggy, etc) are hellbent on a no deal brexit. ‘

Oh I don’t deny for a second that Bojo and the rest want No Deal…or at least are prepared to tolerate it.

But, again, it’s the same situation with Corbyn….ultimately it’s a numbers game. I”m just not convinced that the Tory ‘hardliners’ have the numbers to push it through. Although I’m sure they’ll try.

Here’s a good article on why ‘No Deal’ (probably) won’t happen.

‘The biggest clamour for a no-deal Brexit is coming from the hard Brexiters led by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. They have the microphone, when it comes to media exposure, but they do not have the numbers. Despite a disproportionately large media profile, the core hard Brexiters in the Conservative Party number just 50 MPS. Every time UK Prime Minister Theresa May has pushed them, they have backed down.’

Don’t be fooled by Boris Johnson’s tough guy act. Like Gove he’s a serial liar and a serial quitter. When the going gets tough, BoJo invariably runs away. Rees-Mogg has no serious following in the country: and at the moment he is too extreme even for the DUP aligned Tory Party. So the ‘hardcore’ leavers have no leader, and are, in any case, too small to really influence events.

So either May will somehow be able to cobble together some new deal, which satisfies everyone (unlikely, and remember time is running out) or some kind of postponement seems inevitable.

As usual, don’t pay attention to the worthless mewlings in the media: everyone has a vested interest in pretending that ‘No Deal’ is much more likely than it, in fact, is.

https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/richard-curran-10-reasons-why-a-nodeal-brexit-wont-happen-37334383.html

BoJo has a tough guy act? I must have missed that …

@engels

“Surprise: there are a lot of really angry working-class people who never turned out for tepid Blairite triangulation but will for socialism”

Factually false: Corbyn’s Labour is more of a middle-class party than Blair’s Labour and the Tories actually took working class votes off Labour during Theresa May’s attempt to commit electoral suicide in 2017.

Of course the opposition doesn’t have the numbers to ensure that their policy preferences can be implemented – otherwise they would likely not be the opposition but form the government. But you’re saying the opposition shouldn’t oppose government policy because it’s futile or tactically inconvenient, never mind that the actual policy is disastrous – that’s a strange view of democratic politics.

And yes, Brexit is Tory government policy as has been repeatedly noted, not Labour policy. And Labour should oppose it wholeheartedly as a huge majority of its members (and supporters) are against it:

72% of Labour members back a second referendum
88% of Labour members would vote to remain

73% of Labour supporters think Brexit was a mistake
89% of Labour members think Brexit was a mistake

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/02/most-labour-members-believe-corbyn-should-back-second-brexit-vote

So not only are you saying that the opposition should not take a stand and just wait for better times, you’re also saying that the Labour leadership should ignore the overwhelming majority of its members and supporters. This is not how a democratic party should be run.

Furthermore it is becoming increasingly clear to even the most naive and sympathetic observers that the Labour leadership is in favour of Brexit, as they feel it gives them a shot at establishing “democratic socialism” – and they’re trying everything they can to hoodwink their members, but it’s not going to work and will instead ruin the party.

”a contraire” to all the ”Democratic Improvisation” – or actually BE-cause of it? the love for the EU get’s stronger every day – even in Great Britain!…And whoever came up with this silly narrative of an ”Undemocratic EU”…should HAVE to visit right away Brusssels or Strasbourg and watch ”Democracy in UTMOST process”

Lol

I’d like it to be implemented as promised.

What, precisely, were you promised?

Who, where, what were the words used. Exact quotes would be good, but implication and “I interpreted those words to mean” are fine: I’m after your beliefs, here.

‘Labour’s ambivalence towards Brexit is coming under attack from good people… Chris Bertram says Brexit could be “the end of Labour”. I fear such criticisms are too harsh….

I fear that Corbyn’s critics are are insufficiently sympathetic to the philosophical dilemma that Labour faces. On the one hand, Brexit is a stupid idea: escaping weak constraints upon state intervention in the economy is too small a gain to offset the cost of leaving the single market. But on the other, there is a clear mandate for it. As Phil says, seeing Brexit through is “the democratic thing to do.”

This dilemma has little force for technocrats who think voters are Putin’s dupes or for paternalistic centrists. But it is a problem for the left. A big part of our philosophy is the desire to give working people greater voice in work and in public services. It’s difficult to say people should have more voice in boardrooms whilst denying that voice in a referendum…

From this perspective, I suspect Paul Cotterill is right to interpret Corbyn’s now-notorious Guardian interview as a tactical gambit. His claim that he could negotiate a less-bad deal with the EU is necessary if Labour is to demand a vote of no confidence in the government; an opposition can only demand the fall of the government if it can claim to do a better job.

I don’t think such a claim means that a Corbyn government would take us out of the EU without a second referendum. The fact that most Labour members want one – and that Conference asked for the option to be kept open – must weigh heavily with the Labour leadership.

But as Paul says, timing is important. Demanding an early referendum would risk a no-deal Brexit, as this would be on the ballot paper if May set the referendum question whereas it probably wouldn’t be under a Labour government. Also, such demands could be presented as a way of thwarting “the will of the people.”

It would be better to call for such a referendum as a last resort. Under a Tory government, Labour should claim that as parliament and the government are unable to resolve the matter it should be put again to the people. And under a Labour government, the party should say: “this is the best deal we can do: do you want this or to remain?” Either approach has a chance of overcoming that fundamental dilemma, of how to reconcile staying in the EU with respecting the voice of the majority.’

https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2019/01/brexit-in-defence-of-corbyn.html

The Paul Cotterill article mentioned is here:

https://medium.com/@Bickerrecord/parliamentary-vs-public-process-a-defence-of-corbyns-strategy-cd12ed072d31

Chris @74:

I’ve not said anything about anyone being undeserving, nor have I advocated a politics where people think of taxation as being a matter of subsidizing the poor.

You have (repeatedly) articulated a view of taxation as a transfer from people with resources to others without, and suggested that some of group A are likely to start looking askance at some of group B, so I can’t imagine that the applicability of the concept of ‘undeserving poor’ is completely opaque to you.

But no, I don’t believe that you personally genuinely believe that anyone is undeserving, and I’m not suggesting that you’re advocating a view of taxation as subsidising the poor. Similarly, I don’t believe that the “very real concerns” crowd think that non-White immigration is inherently undesirable, or that they are advocating ethnic separatism. What both you and they are doing is articulating a politics of division and resentment, which (both you and they argue) is going to become more widely diffused in the near future, a development which (both you and they argue) we may deplore but cannot reverse, and which (…etc) high-minded left-wing idealists ignore at their peril. What you (and they) are not doing is dismissing this mentality as a destructive and self-destructive dead-end, denouncing any attempt to justify or naturalise it, and focusing on the articulation of alternative and more constructive ways of framing the social world*. We don’t buy this set of arguments – and tend to push back against them rather hard – when the resented others are Muslims, Travellers or people who have chosen to travel to Britain without any documents; I can’t see why our response should be any different when the people the other side of the line are people who chose to vote Leave.

*Not that you haven’t done this elsewhere – but then, if I didn’t value your perspective generally I wouldn’t have reacted to this post as strongly as I did.

@
”Do you realize what this does for our cuisine”?

That’s what I say! – as my parents -(and grandparents) always told me:
A generation ago you couldn’t go out in London or Great Britain – without – after every Lunch or Dinner – thinking about suicide – and this Italian I know – still thinks the EU never – ever should have let any Pub’s into EU without sending every Pub owner before to a eduction course about how to produce eatable food – but now you might be able to eat better ”Italian” at… – am I allowed to do some ”promotion” here?
Yes!
– well then – at TOZI -(close to Victoria Station) where Mellanzane Parmigiana -(which is really difficult t ”master”) than the Parmigiana at the Cangrande -(the BIG dog) in Verona.

Which could remind US all -(again) – that Great Britain without US – THE Europeans wouldn’t even have decent – cheese!

Doug@168: you have written a very clear and accurate answer to an argument that I never put forward.

You may remember that I responded to Scott P@122: “it’s precisely the existence of the EU that makes the continuing existence of countries like Luxembourg or Lithuania possible. Without it, they’d last about 10 seconds.” I regard that as not simply hyperbolic, but ridiculous nonsense that does something to discredit the pro-EU cause: don’t you?

You are quite right to say that after the accession process began, the EU was supportive towards Lithuania and other central and eastern European states recovering from the damage of Soviet socialism: as I said, the EU has done some good things. I am not at all claiming that “the EU did nothing for Lithuania between 1991 and 2004”.

But of the programs you mention, TACIS never applied to the Baltic states; PHARE was originally for Poland and Hungary only; and you will remember that actual EU engagement with Lithuania in the pre-accession period, as distinct from fine words, did not really get going till the SAPARD programme of 1999 and the ISPA programme of 2000.

Previously there had been a historically unusual period when the Moscow government had not been interested in intimidating or if possible annexing its neighbours. I suppose that you could argue that in the period when there was marginal EU support for Lithuania, nothing more was needed.

But as for the continuing existence of Lithuania, I’m not sure why you think that joining the EU and joining NATO were irretrievably linked. There are a significant number of European states that are a member of one but not the other. After all, Finland joined the EU but not NATO in 1995, as did Ireland with the EEC in 1973; Norway is a founder member of NATO without ever being in the EU; France withdrew from NATO in 1968 while remaining part of the EEC and subsequently the EU; Montenegro joined NATO in 2017 but not the EU.

What I am fairly sure of is that if Lithuania were a member of the EU but not of NATO, its survival with that of the other Baltic states would by now have ended. There are no significant EU armies.

I add “the other Baltic states” because the only direct Russian invasion route is via Kaliningrad, far less favourable than via Latvia. Incidentally, thinking about geography, Scott P added Luxembourg as a state dependent on the EU for survival. I suppose that if, as is wildly unlikely, Luxembourg were to attempt to withdraw from the EU, the avenging armies of France, Belgium and Germany could very rapidly subdue it: but I don’t think that’s what he meant.

@Chris: health costs are socialized to a degree. Good luck with those waiting lists to see a specialist, when you have to cough (literally) if you want to see someone quickly. But I think you take my wider point. And the whip-round could apply to funerals, losing your job, a Christmas hamper etc etc etc. Richer people don’t rely on social capital as much, because they are cash rich and have the financial capital to meet all these needs. Immigration may have weakened social capital. To a lot of people, they might not put it in those words, but that’s what they feel. Polite society feels uncomfortable acknowledging that. But it should, because then policy steps could be taken to offset the loss. When we hide from problems, they ultimately bite us on the backside and Brexit is an example of this,

“they’re also” … not going to value the new experience of having people of new and different cultures around them or not being able to &c&c&c.

Sorry.

@Neville Morley no. 152.
Thanks for your response. I’m interested in seeing the wording from a translation you think is a good one of the passage I quoted. I’m a bit restricted wrt what I have access to. Thanks.

@Nastywoman nos. 160, 162

Evidently we think about democracy in different ways. If I may be forgiven for another long quotation (again from Sheldon Wolin, this time from a critical essay on Rawl’s “Political Liberalism”):

“The idea of democracy that I employ runs roughly like this. Democracy should not depend on elites making a one-time gift to the demos of a predesigned framwework of equal rights. This does not mean that rights do not matter a great deal, but rights in a democracy depend on the demos winning them, extending them substantively, and, in the process, acquiring experience of the political, that is, of participating in power, reflecting on the consequences of its exercise, and struggling to sort out the common well-being amid cultural differences and socioeconomic disparities. The presence of democracy is not signified by paying deference to a formal principle of popular sovereignty but by ensuring continuing political education, nor is democracy nurtured by stipulating that reasonable principles of justice be in place from the beginning. Democracy requires that the experiences of justice and injustice serve as moments for the demos to think, to reflect, perchance to construct themselves as actors. Democracy is about the continuing self-fashioning of the demos.”

To clarify: his argument, scattered in many places throughout his writings, is that again and again waves of democratization eventually become enmeshed in institutions/constitutions which in actuality rein in the people and limit the activities just outlined. Institutionalised/constitutionalised democracy has, of course, its defenders. Often enough most of us will perceive some virtue in a settled order. But often, too, a settled order will (come to) be seen as inhibiting and unresponsive to genuine needs. If you don’t see this to be an aspect—for me, an important aspect—of the politics of Brexit and of trying to understand what is going on, I can’t imagine what else I might say.

Since a certain “von clownstick” is summoned up once more at no. 162 (although I hate to intrude American extraneousness), I’ll go on to say that I understand recent politics in the USA after the same fashion: both Sanders and Trump gained support from a great many who felt that institutionalised American democracy was unresponsive to their needs. The Democrats managed to bring the Sanders movement to a halt. The Republicans failed to contain those motivated to go in the Trump direction. And then the Democrats failed to contain Trump. Awful as Trump is, and ugly as is some of his support, it would simply be to stick one’s head in the sand to ignore that there were quite deep seated problems within the US political system contributing to his—and to Sanders’ —emergence as significant political leaders.

And so to end by flogging my dead horse, it is equally ostrich-like to simply go on ignoring that the EU has some deep seated problems. To my mind, the discussion between Leavers and Remainers would benefit from some acknowledgement of that. To ignore it is to talk past each other.

But I’ve said far too much on this matter anyway. rm

Stephen 01.02.19 at 7:52 pm @ 177:
‘What I am fairly sure of is that if Lithuania were a member of the EU but not of NATO, its survival with that of the other Baltic states would by now have ended….’

What would the strategic advantage for the Russians be in that, equal to the costs? Going down through the Baltic states doesn’t get you anywhere. Well, it gets you to Poland. If you want to invade central Europe from Russia/Belarus through Poland, you’d just start with Poland, not fool around up north. But you probably don’t want to invade central Europe anyway, seeing as how it would lead to a lot of unnecessary trouble and lose you customers.

and the final@183
”it would simply be to stick one’s head in the sand to ignore that there were quite deep seated problems within the US political system” –

How true – which doesn’t mean that the ”good democratic alternative” is choosing a racist idiot?
or ”the absolute horrific Fascism” which once was chosen in history –
or… may we even say ”an obvious racist and narrow-minded Brexit”?

So to say it even more ”trivial”:
This ”democracy-thing” may turn out ”real good” or real ”bad”!

Which – if I read it right – is kind of Mr. B’s point?

Me again Chris!

@steven t Johnson

It doesn’t affect the French-Swiss border. I send Chris a link to the UK-Swiss Agreement (including details of the position relating to “frontier workers”) .

He declined to publish my comment because, well, he’s a liar, and doesn’t accept facts that are contrary to his argument. And to think I bought a copy of his book to try an figure out where he was coming from. Still, I only paid £4.99. Go Blackwell!

[Actually Neal, you’re banned for being a twat. But I’m allowing this comment because of the claim it makes about the UK-Swiss agreement. From what I can see, it does indeed guarantee the position of frontier workers of Swiss or UK nationality living in the UK or Switzerland. Since it does not bind the French or other surrounding governments, it cannot guarantee the position of people working in Switzerland but living in those other states. Notice that your original claim was that nobody experience a loss or rights as a result of Brexit. That is obviously untrue and you refused to withdraw it, despite it being the case that all UK citizens lose their right to live and work in other EU states (a loss of rights) and those existingly resident in particular EU states may retain their rights of residence in those particular states, but lose the right to locate to other EU states. Again, a loss of rights thanks to Brexit. Your continuing insistence on a falsehood and refusal to correct your initial statement (and calling *me* a liar!) means that your comments will be auto-directed to the trash folder as this one was until I rescued it and the previous one was. Now go away. CB]

Collin Street

What, precisely, were you promised?

Who, where, what were the words used. Exact quotes would be good, but implication and “I interpreted those words to mean” are fine: I’m after your beliefs, here.

In the Conservative Party’s 2015 election manifesto I read:

We will legislate in the first session of the next Parliament for an in-out referendum to be held on Britain’s membership of the EU before the end of 2017. We will negotiate a new settlement for Britain in the EU. And then we will ask the British people whether they want to stay in on this basis, or leave. We will honour the result of the referendum, whatever the outcome.

To me it seems reasonable to interpret that as including the promise that if the majority vote in the referendum was to leave the EU, then the UK would leave the EU: therefore, it seems reasonable to me to say that if the UK’s departure from the EU is prevented or averted or forestalled or blocked by the Conservative Party, then the Conservative Party will be breaking its promise.

Obviously I don’t know for certain that’s exactly what Dipper means.

This thread is probably dead, but this European Commission report strongly suggests that anti-EU sentiment is most strongly correlated with local areas of economic and industrial decline (as opposed to racism/age/gender/class) . Which should be unsurprising but apparently isn’t.

Isn’t it? Do you know of people being surprised by it, or is that just one of your fantasies?

@don’t forget:

”The latest polling from the Eurobarometer survey, published in May, highlights the fact that two-thirds of Europeans believe their country has benefited from being a member of the EU; the highest number for 35 years. In addition 60 per cent consider EU membership a good thing. This includes Italy where more than twice as many view EU membership as a good thing than a bad thing. Likewise, in Brexit Britain, almost twice as many people view EU membership as a good thing, by 43 per cent to 23 per cent.

Despite the licking of lips by those who see every major issue facing a member state as heralding the breakup of the EU, the simple facts which highlight its popularity get in the way of this happening”.

Obviously I don’t know for certain that’s exactly what Dipper means.

It’s more that he keeps on talking about how staying within the single market would be a betrayal of what he was promised, &c… and I was kind of hoping he could show someone who, you know, promised to make the UK leave the single market.

I mean, I live in australia. I’m pretty well-informed, politically, but even ten years ago I knew that the EU and the single market had different borders. I didn’t know enough to know the difference between the single market and the customs union until after the brexit vote, but… the UK is part of the political systems of the EU, it’s as much a part of your structure of government as the scope of authority of local governments, and a citizen really should know how it all works in a general way. And it’s really hard to argue that the difference between the political and economic spheres of european unity is not part of “a general way”… so why does Dipper think what he thinks?

Sebastian, I keep having to say this here, but it seems to have no purchase with you, but I will say it again: we have no evidence that the victims of deindustrialization or economic decline are the same people who vote for leave. It’s perfectly possible but these studies (like the one you cite) that link area-level voting patterns with area-level economic issues don’t offer proof of anything, especially in low-turnout electorates. If 60% of voters turnout, and a study finds that an area has 20% unemployment, and 80% of the electorate voted to leave, it doesn’t tell us that there is any link between these things. It could be that the 60% who turned out were 95% employed, and that the 5% unemployed who voted were 100% remain. We just don’t know. It’s perfectly possible that an electorate can have 60% labour voters in 2015 and 60% leave voters in 2016, but due to turnout changes almost all the labour voters were remain voters.

When we see studies which actually link voting intention or voting action with measures of economic wellbeing, racial resentment and party affiliation, we don’t see the same clear relationship between economic discontent and leave voting.

In epidemiology this is called the ecological fallacy and studies of voting behavior are absolutely full of it.

@ Faustusnotes

“No doubt you would have considered the multiple debates on German aggression after that first 1938 debate to be disingenuous, right? I mean, parliament revisiting its own decisions!? Preposterous!!”

Parliament can do whatever it chooses. It can have a referendum every week if it so wishes. But Parliament gave me a vote on whether I wanted to be in or out of the EU, and promised to implement it. If Parliament then decides to have another referendum before leaving with an option not to implement the result of the previous referendum in breach of its own promise, it can do that too. But it has consequences, of which the two most obvious ones are that no-one will ever take a referendum seriously again, and that a lot of people will either turn away from politics or vote for extreme parties on the grounds that the mainstream parties cannot be trusted. Actions have consequences.

Dipper: “Parliament voted to hold a referendum and decided on the question. For Parliament to then come back and say there is ambiguity in the answer is disingenuous at best.”

And if the referendum had lost 48-52, would UKIP have dissolved itself?
Would Murdoch’s tabloids have stopped Operation Fear (the EU)?

@RobinM #183: sorry for delayed reply. Mynott’s 2013 translation for CUP, which I like, has the following:

“It was in Corcyra, then, that most of these outrages were first perpetrated. They were all the acts of retaliation you might expect men to commit when they see an opportunity for revenge on rulers who have shown them more arrogance than moderation. There were the deliberate crimes of those who were prepared to break the law to escape their familiar treadmill of poverty and who as a result of their hardships cast especially covetous eyes on their neighbours’ property. And there were acts of pitiless and savage aggression by people who were not in this case motivated by personal gain but who turned particularly on their equals in a frenzy of uncontrolled passion, At this crisis in the breakdown of civic life human nature, which is in any case conditioned to defy the laws in doing wrong, now triumphed over them and revelled in showing itself powerless against passion, too strong for justice and hostile to anything superior.”

I’d add two things. Firstly, Thucydides’ syntax tends to be complex and convoluted at the best of times, so that translation always involves a fair amount of interpretation and paraphrase to turn it into anything intelligible – I’ve always felt that he does this deliberately, to force his readers to work at understanding his meaning – but Crawley is generally considered to err too far on the side of imagination; there’s nothing at all in the original to justify his distinction between party and class hostilities, for example, but that’s a pretty obvious influence from his own times. Secondly, majority view is that this particular passage, 3.84, isn’t genuine, as the language is even rougher than normal and it repeats various ideas from the previous section; Mynott suggests that it might be a first draft that got included by mistake, others have suggested that it’s an interpolation by someone wanting to give a more explicitly anti-democratic spin.

@Neville Morley no. 207
Thanks for your very informative response. I take to heart your warning that the passage in question may not be Thucydides at his best, may not even be Thucydides at all.

But should it be Thucydides, perhaps even in rough draft, wouldn’t the words “They were all the acts of retaliation you might expect men to commit when they see an opportunity for revenge on rulers who have shown them more arrogance than moderation,” go counter to the notion of shared values and culture? And there remains the, to me still troubling, view on human nature.

I can see it might then become all very difficult, trying to figure out whether or not what someone put into a rough draft was a stray thought the writer came to think the better of, or whether the roughly drafted thought was one he didn’t want to be held publicly responsible for. Not only must I, but I’m happy to leave all that to those who go where I suppose one must go, into the language of the original.

Thanks again. rm

Also, even if the motivation of Leave voters was as you say Sebastian, their vote would still be based on ignorance and Brexit would still be a terrible idea:

http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/britain-is-on-brink-of-historic.html?m=1

Semi-Anecdotally: Hackney, Tower-Hamlets, Lewisham etc. are boroughs with widespread and severe deprivation and yet they overwhelmingly voted Remain – but yeah just label them arrogant, urban elite or something…

Thanks Sebastian for the link to this report. I found it quite excellent and recommend its reading highly. A minor quibble:

So if you’re open to studies on voter motivations, the most fashionable explanations (age and racism) have quite a bit less evidence than the less fashionable explanations. I would suggest that is because the more fashionable explanations fit into the dominant social science narratives, but that part is just speculation

I think what you call “the most fashionable explanation” is not, and by far, the most fashionable explanation in every country, and ditto symmetrically for “the least fashionable [ones]”. A fortiori, the idea that the one you call most fashionable are most fashionable because they fit into some “dominant social sciences narratives” seems ludicrous to me (there might be some truth to your statement in the US, but the US is an outlier in many respects and should always be considered as such). Case in point, France had a pretty important referendum on the ECT (European Constitutional Treaty) in 2005, the results were analyzed to death and the dominant narrative here (among social scientists as in the mainstream media or general discussion) has consistently been that described by the report, in my experience, not “age+racism” or anything else.

Dipper, Collin Street asked who promised you what. I referred, in response, to the Conservative Party’s 2015 election manifesto. A promise by the Conservative Party is not synonymous with a promise by Parliament; also, as Collin Street has already pointed out, a promise to leave the European Union is not synonymous with a promise to leave the single market or a promise to leave the customs union.

You are, obviously, correct to state that actions have consequences: if the United Kingdom’s notice of withdrawal is revoked, there will be consequences (although not necessarily the ones you predict). But that is true regardless of what promises have (or have not) been made in the past.

So let me get this straight Dipper. The will of the people is paramount, but if the government seeks to ask the will of the people a second time and they decide to do something you don’t like, you and your brexiteer buddies will turn fascist and override the will of the people? Why do you keep threatening to go fascist?

Sebastian, I think you don’t understand. There are lots of studies of people’s voting behavior and their personal beliefs (Z links to one above). There are books written based on these studies. These studies consistently find that when you use individual data that directly links people’s age and racial ideas to their vote, the older and more racist, less educated people vote for Trump/Brexit.

This is a really important point in understanding low turnout voluntary voting systems like the US and the UK, especially systems where the vote is during the week. Consider Barnsley East, for example, which had 55.5% turnout at the 2015 general election and voted 54.7% for Labour – that is about 25% of the electorate. In the EU Referendum it had 70% turnout and voted 61% for leave and 39% for remain. Since about 28% of the electorate voted remain, it is possible that remain and labour overlap 100%. There is a very wide range of possible combinations of these voting patterns, but the first and most obvious question is who were the extra 15% of the electorate who turned up, who never turn up to general elections? Were they the working poor affected by de-industrialization and austerity, voting to punish the government? Or were they lapsed Tories, retired people who don’t usually vote in Barnsley because they know labour will win, or don’t have a preference? We can’t say anything about these people until we study them individually.

This is called the ecological fallacy. Almost every pundit does it. The benefit of the ecological fallacy is it enables you to spin any bullshit yarn you want, since you’re talking without evidence. But when you actually do the tedious, detailed work of asking people individual questions about their personal beliefs and their vote you find that brexit and trump are driven by racism and age, not by the effects of deindustrialization.

Or to put it shorter: young working class people are not racist rubes. Old white middle class people are.

@
”But when you actually do the tedious, detailed work of asking people individual questions about their personal beliefs and their vote you find that brexit and trump are driven by racism and age, not by the effects of deindustrialization”.

For a film about ”US Rust Belt”a German-American TV Team did ”the tedious, detailed work” of asking hundreds of people individual questions about their personal beliefs and their vote they found that brexit and trump were driven by the effects of deindustrialization” -(unemployment etc.) AND by racism and age.

And I mentioned this fact in the first comments I posted on CT with all kind of hint’s that it is very difficult -(even for experiences Psychologists or Anthropologen) to ”divorce” the one –
(”the effects of deindustrialization”)
from the other –
(reacting in a racist or fascistic way)
which doesn’t mean that IT IS just ”the one or the other”.

Or to put it longer:
young working class people might not be as often ”racist rubes” as their older working class people – or even ”white middle class people” BUT if they -(young working class people) are suffering from the effects of deindustrialization – they can become as ”racist and fascistic as a German Neo Nazi or even as SOME young Italian or French working class people – which REALLY doesn’t deny that young British working class people are much more ”pro EU” than the older ones and as this thread is about ”Brexit” and the very disappointing ”racist” and ”narrow-minded attitude” of older ”Brexiters” – can’t we… focus on ”THAT”?

I think a first-order guess

Is this something you were promised?

[of course, even if it were it’s important to remember that nobody can break somebody else’s promise for them: promises only bind their maker. If Bob promises you something he can’t actually deliver it’s bob, and nobody else, who you’ve got a complaint with. “You’re making bob break the promise he made to me” is no valid complaint.]

I realise that I’m coming into this deplorably late, and from imperfect knowledge of economic history, but could;d somebody please explain (a) what is meant by “radical redistribution” as distinct from the moderately redistributionist policies currently used in the UK (b) given an accepted definition of r.d., when and where has it been achieved without serious drawbacks?

@Stephen, way to passive-aggressively form an argument in the form of a question! Try reading about Sweden’s tax rates. Use the google.

(a) what is meant by “radical redistribution” as distinct from the moderately redistributionist policies currently used in the UK

In the UK, and comparable countries, once you take into account the long term trends in education, redistribution is indeed going on, but upwards, so “radical redistribution” would simply mean going downwards (before you protest with economic numbers, note that upward and downward have to be defined dynamically and not solely in economic terms).

(b) given an accepted definition of r.d., when and where has it been achieved without serious drawbacks?

With the definition above (admittedly not widely accepted), redistribution – whether radical or moderate – indeed never occurred historically. What happened historically was downward economic redistribution in the context of massive educational improvements of the base catching up to the educated élite, whereas the current situation is the educative élite leaving the base behind. We don’t know how to “redistribute” in that case. Indeed, we mostly don’t know what redistribute might even mean.

“The political parties would like me to vote for them. Arguing about the small print of what they actually promised isn’t going to win me over. The ambiguity risk sits with them, not me.”

I think you’ve missed the point repeatedly. There are several different political parties, they promised different things and only one has been in position to deliver or renege. The Conservatives under Cameron promised to hold a referendum (which they did) and deliver Brexit in the event of a “Leave” vote (which Cameron didn’t, and May probably won’t). If you don’t like that, write Cameron a nasty letter, or vote against May next time. But don’t pretend that their promises bind “the political parties” in general.

Labour’s policy is to (attempt to) deliver an acceptable Brexit if it can, and if it can’t (which is almost certain) to support a second referendum. The Lib Dems have consistently opposed Brexit and would revoke it if they could. I can’t see how either of these positions breaks a promise to you.

Then of course, there’s UKIP.

Dipper you can easily get out of the backstop: you can break the Good Friday agreement and bring back the troubles, or you can relinquish your last colonial possession and finally give up your imperial nostalgia. Britain has lots of choices. The fact that those choices are all bad is simply a legacy of 100 years of empire and generations of bad Tory decisions. For the last 20 years your membership of the EU and the many economic benefits it brought you have staved off those nasty choices, but you and your traitor buddies wanted to “take back control”. Now you get to deal with the problems your incompetent leadership and blinkered electorate have been storing up over the past 50 years. That’s what taking back control means- enjoy!

The usual view of the British constitution is that Parliament cannot pass a law that binds in successors.

This makes referenda a bit problematic, as it is clear that a new incoming government is entitled to ignore any referenda that have taken place under its predecessor.

Any government that holds a referendum with the hope it will bind future parliaments is attempting to exceed its constitutional powers.

The voters have now had a learning experience in how the British constitution works, and if they are in future skeptical when a PM suggests a referendum to do something the MPs think is a stupid idea, then this might be for the best.

Bianca Steele @233: try applying your argument to the ROI and UK saying, “OK, after so many years together in the EU, we may as well be in the same country, why not?”

Or to France and Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, Spain and Portugal, Austria and Italy …

Probably, as you said, naive.