UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[parochial boy]

Time to rename the country "Weimar Britain"?

[parochial boy]

If you think Brexit is being handled badly now , wait till you see it handled by Corbyn.

Not really, the Labour party is far less internally divided, and obsessed, over the EU issue. The radical Eurosceptics like Hoey as basically irrelevant, and the division between the likes of Corbyn one one end and Umunna on the other is far less than between Tory Remainers and hard Brexiters..

Seeing as it is the Tories who have created this by themselves, it is pretty reasonable to assume Labour would do better simply by the fact of being less divided.

[parochial boy]

And EU regional funding, funnilly enough, was one of the few things making up for the government's London-centrism.

And like Blair said, it wasn't the EU who made the Major government privatise British rail (ie SNCF, DeutcheBahn and the like still exist), and it didn't stop Blair from renationalising Network Rail. The rules about tendering for government contracts are, you know, not the same thing.

[parochial boy]

But it was always obvious that a Brexit driven by the likes of Farage, Gove, Banks and Dominic Raab never going to be one driven by the genuine concern for the lives of working class people? I mean, many of us believe that the only hope you have of defending people against the global business elite is through supranational entities that have the clout to enforce rules at the international level.

But that is almost beside the point, even if you think that the nation state is still able to protect people's rights, it was clear that the ideological motivation behind Brexit absolutely wasn't to do this. I mean, what Lexiters wanted was very evidently never going to be on offer

As for the Norwegian or Swiss deal, both were already patently not acceptable to the extremists; and the Swiss one is one that has been painstakingly pieced together over 25 years, and essentially ensures that angst over EU relations are never off the table as a political issue (and ensure that Switzerland has no actual voice at the table, which surely would have been the best option as concerns reforming the CFP)

And in any case, both the farming and fishing (yes it does exist...) industries are undergoing near existential crises in Switzerland despite not being subject to EU rules.

And as for the source or effectiveness of EU funding,it doesn't change the fact that the EU actually cared about what was going on in the regions - unlike the Conservative party

[parochial boy]

It may shock you to discover that London does, in fact, extend beyond Canary Wharf and Hampstead. London actually has many of the worst extremes of poverty in the UK, a huge structural crisis over housring etc, etc... In that context, the remain vote in places like Lewisham or Waltham Forest was really not what you seem to be claiming it was.

In any case, where people did vote to leave, there were a multitude of reasons why - and a feeling of resentment towards the financial elite/London, which is probably fair enough, was just one of those. But fundamentally, what you can't do is deny that 1) Brexit as an ideological project was one driven by the right 2) The outcome of Brexit was always going to, regardless of what exact Brexit you got, hurt working class people the most

[parochial boy]

I know I'm one to talk, but it appears that this board must follow the moon or something, because you can guarantee that over the course of a month we will argue first about "are refugees all rapists?", followed by "Is Corbyn an anti-semite?" and finishing of with "but yeah, Corbyn will never win an election" before starting all over again.

So I'm personally very much looking forward to this time next week when tender posts a thread about something some refugee did in Cologne which gets a 100 replies all making exactly the same posts they did in the last argument.

[parochial boy]

I know I'm one to talk, but it appears that this board must follow the moon or something, because you can guarantee that over the course of a month we will argue first about "are refugees all rapists?", followed by "Is Corbyn an anti-semite?" and finishing of with "but yeah, Corbyn will never win an election" before starting all over again.

So I'm personally very much looking forward to this time next week when tender posts a thread about something some refugee did in Cologne which gets a 100 replies all making exactly the same posts they did in the last argument.

Sorry you feel that way, you are respected by me as a constructive generator of positive externalities. But I do operate "no first strike": I always refrain from pointing out that Corbyn lost the last election to Theresa May, by a Gordon Brown-like margin of defeat, unless his "electoral" "success" is first raised by someone. What I don't get is saying he is morally unfit to serve as Labour leader, but supporting his election as Prime Minister of the UK. That seems to get the moral priorities utterly reversed to me as it seems to put a political party of moderate importance ahead of the governance of a world power.

It's mostly that all we are doing at the moment is speculating, and given the last 12-18 months of stasis, we've been reduced to making the same points - maybe will change now we are coming to Brexit crunchtime though.

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I mean, presumably, most of her constituents don't actually know what her views actually are (although, on the one hand the Lib Dems got a pretty solid swing in 2017, but on the other, they got pretty solid swings across SW London).

And, without wanting to play the deranged momentum type, I genuinely don't understand why Vauxhall CLP hasn't you know, seriously thought about deselecting her. How exactly does a fox hunt supporting Brexiteer fit Vauxhall of all places? Presumably even the Progress types wouldn't be too devastated at her being replaced by a Corbyn fan.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, she has the advantage that literally any one else taking over would basically lead to the Conservative party imploding

[parochial boy]

Well, if all we're going to do is trade anecdotes ...

I canvassed for a by-election with my LibDem supporting husband a few weeks ago. In Raab's constituency our first respondent was a former construction worker (he had clearly made good!) and he swore he would leave the country if Corbyn was elected. FWIW, he also said he was fed up with all parties and refused to vote.

The ironic thing being that, once the UK leaves the EU he won't be able to...

FWIW, my money is on some sort of last minute agreement to extend the article 50 period, once the shear height of the cliff edge becomes obvious. Although, as EPG pointed out, the remainers are spineless whereas the fantical Brexiters are reckless, and seem to have May in their pocket for the time being

[parochial boy]

Yes the conservative party is an old party and have been in existence for centuries but labour came into power in the 1920s replacing the Liberal party.

Conservatives won seats like Stoke on Trent south, Mansfield, Walsall north, Derbyshire north east, those seats all been labour since the 1930s
They came close in Wakefield, penistone and Stockbridge, Ashfield, bishop Auckland, etc
 All those seats are tribal working class Labour seats been voting Labour since Stanley Baldwin was prime minister.

Nobody knows what will happen, or how voters will react, but if Labour continues to take white workings class voters for granted they'll be wiped out in the north and midland just like they've been wiped out in Scotland..

I mean look at the result in penistone and Stockbridge, it's a steel town with former minning communities Dodworth and west Barnsley
Results were :
Lab: 22,807
Con: 21,485
Labour won it by 1,322 votes, more then 16% swing to the conservatives, now where did swing come from ......
Mansfield is also a former minning area..

Some Labour mps like Caroline Lucas and Gareth Snell (representing leave constitutncies) both indicated we will not vote for a second refendum bill.

I think remaining in the EU via a second referendum or part of EEA plus customs union( basically the status quo) is what will ultimately happen.

That of course, ignores the special circumstances in Mansfield and Walsall, as well as the demographic change that is especially taking place in the likes of Penistone and Stocksbridge or Bishop Auckland. Those places are seeing a lot of new builds, property owners, reasonably affluent middle class types who work in Sheffield or Newcastle and vote Conservative like their exurban counterparts do all over the country. (Same with the working class Thames estuary constituencies in the Thames estuary, which simply aren't the places they used to be)

The counter argument to that is really the way in which other working class parts of the country (Stroud, Cornwall, South coast towns like Hastings, the whole of Merseyside) swung massively towards Labour.

Anyway, I would really recommend Gully Foyle's piece from earlier this year before making the point that Labour have some existential crisis with Working Class voters.

[parochial boy]

Sky Data poll: 78% think the government is doing a bad job on Brexit

The lede undersells this, actually. The data show what could be the start of a sea change in attitudes about leaving the EU in general and the Tory's haphazard methods of attempting to do so specifically.

59-41 in favour of remain and 50-40 in favour of another referendum... If accurate then it starts to look as if the whole thing ends up being called off, and the UK rejoins the fold with tail firmly between its legs.

Having said that, a "poll of Sky customers" rings alarm bells, since no matter what weighting you do for the normal factors, "Sky customers" are a demographic group in and of themselves that won't necessarily be representative of the country as whole (although, I would have expected them to lean to the right - once controlling for everything else - of the country as a whole)

[parochial boy]

There's a big difference between white working class voters in say Liverpool Walton (which has a Labour majority of something like 30K) and white working class voters in South Thanet.

The ones in South Thanet were born about 30 years earlier

And Labour actually did surprisingly well in a lot of those South Coast constituencies (ie not just Brighton) in 2017 as well

[parochial boy]

Remember this chart doing the rounds after the 2017 election? Some would say it's indicative... of something...

[parochial boy]

Remember this chart doing the rounds after the 2017 election? Some would say it's indicative... of something...

OK, accepting this line of argument is roughly true. But when people talk about the White Working Class, what's not usually meant is poor and deprived people, would you agree?
My impression of White Working Class is that the idea describes people who have something to lose, and are losing or fear they might lose it.
I think it has to include being White, Skilled manual workers or possibly non-professional service workers.
I think it may include people above low incomes, people with housing assets, self-employed people, non-members of a trade union, and even certain kinds of manager.
It probably doesn't include professionals or university graduates. Indeed, higher education might be the real phenomenon here.

The contradictions to the standard Marxian model of class struggle in democracy are why it's such an interesting category. It's certainly useful, but must be used with care. E.g., I think one would struggle to explain Brexitrump without this category.

I think what it boils down to, is a point that we've discussed before, in that in British class terminology, the "working class" label is so wide as to be entirely meaningless. It can include the sainsbury's security guard, the small town white van man, the call centre worker...who all have completely different lives, outlooks and voting habits. I mean in the above chart, Labour are winning in the 4th and 5th deciles, which is hardly "deprived" really. Likewise, those old colliery seats in Durham or South Wales very definitely fir the common perception of "working class" while being very different to, say, Boston, Lincolnshire or the Thames estuary.

Essentially - I am waffling but basically agreeing with you. The Working Class label as commonly used contains a set of contradictions as the label is so wide. Which is why sweeping statements about how the "white working class" is trending should rightfully be treated with suspicion.

(Also - could you not argue thar downwardly mobile asset poor young graduates in precious employment form a neo-working class of their own?)

[parochial boy]

I don't think that was Tony's point - more that the disappearance of social support structures leads to social atomisation and a sense of alienation and that, legacy of Thatcher, is something that in Britain is particularly acute.

I mean I'm not sad to see religion disappear, it's close to irrelevant in modern Europe, but there is a point about the decline of those rooted communities as a whole. it's obviously not just religion, you can ser it in the parts of France that have been secular for centuries, but where the support network offered by, among other things the Communist party, have disappeared and led to a sense of alienation that most strongly manifests itself in a strong Front National (sorry rassemblement national) vote

[parochial boy]

https://twitter.com/jamesmatesitv/status/1042498821262139393

^^ well the Island of Ireland was carved into two in a sectarian way ?!

Also, the Nazis did occupy the Channel Islands.

Neither Ireland nor Jersey and Guernsey would be part of Britain though...

[parochial boy]

Well you gotta admire the British right-wingers' apparent willingness to blow the whole country up just to show Jonny Foreigner eh?

[parochial boy]

So if the transition period is definitely on, why the hurry to get a deal agreed now?

[parochial boy]

Yep a right-wing think tank director and a right wing commentator think Brexit will be ok, so clearly the "experts" are wrong. Everybody in the world owes Britain a favour, which is why it's OK to support an ideologically right-wing project passed with the express aim of turning the country into a capitalist dystopia all while ensuring the the right-wing entitled posh boys, moving their assets off to Ireland or the Continent; will never have to pay the price.

What a good little load of Tommies the English are, bravely marching off to be slaughtered at the order of their betters.

[parochial boy]

So leaving the European Union a right wing project? Tell that to steel workers in Redcar, Stocksbridge and port Talbot (all whom voted leave overwhelmingly), or coalfield towns in the east midlands, north east and Yorkshire, or the fishing communities in Cornwall and hull 🤗🤔

The experts told us the day we vote for Brexit, the country will go into recession, there will be an emergency budget, 3 million jobs will be lost, Unilever leaving to the Netherlands, etc etc
It's getting old and boring, reminds of the whole we must join the euro or else England is doomed back in early 2000s

Yes it was a right wing project - look at who led the campaign, look at what Arron Banks, Jacob Rees-Mogg's, Boris Johnson's, Dominic Raab's, Andrea Leadsom's visions for society is - it's low taxes, low regulation, privatise, get rid of worker protections and so on. You can continue to stick your head in the sand and pretend otherwise, but that is what it is, and every indication so far is that is the policy line the UK is going to follow once/if it can.

The mere fact that working class people support something does not make it left wing. That is, let's be honest, pretty basic political analysis.

As for the economic side - well it's nice to see to see you parroting right wing talking points about unemployment and so on; but the UK is at the bottom of the pack as concerns economic growth rates within the EU; has seen a marked decline in economic indicators such as investment, which are generally an indicator of things to come; suffers from chronic underemployment (the drop in unemployment has been overwhelmingly driven by growth in, often precarious and lowly paid "self-employment"); real wages are still stagnant; inflation is increasing.... anyone can cherry pick the economic data they want - and this is before the UK actually leaves.

The leave campaign also declared that leaving would be the easiest thing on the world; that there would be untold millions for the NHS - both which were patent lies, and patent lies that you have decided to give them a pass on even now that the UK is in the midst of a political crisis due to precisely how difficult coming to a deal actually is.

[parochial boy]

Switzerland was never going to happen. It's taken thirty years to get to where we are, and the EU has (probably rightfully) realised when it was being taken for a ride, which is why we are currently having a massive internal debate about the accord cadre; which would have been so much more straightforward if it hadn't been for Britain's infernal "me me me"ism

[parochial boy]

London also has grotesque levels of poverty and inequality - some of the most deprived wards in the country are in places like Tottenham or Thamesfield.

Difference is that said poor people tend to have darker skin, which somehow means they can be badged in as "metropolitan elite"

[parochial boy]

Yeah the target should be a government that prioritises giving tax cuts to rich people at the expense of everyone else. Not stirring up resentment against a specific region that has it's own major problems

[parochial boy]

Or chaos with Ed Milliband...

[parochial boy]

At this point I am actively supporting whatever leads to the most chaos.

You can only admire the Conservative party for managing to turn the UK into a laughing stock over party management on an issue that nobody even cared about