The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[jon_c]

Just now, Risso said:

I like Departugal and Czechout.

Departugal. That's brilliant.

[mjmooney]

Good piece by Mark Mardell on the BBC website:

Quote

Brexit: The story of an island apart

Our little archipelago of isles on the outer edges of a huge land mass has often thought of itself as rather special, even before it was the centre of an empire that changed the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As so often, Shakespeare put it best: "This precious stone set in the silver sea/ Which serves it in the office of a wall/ Or as a moat defensive to a house,/ Against the envy of less happier lands,/ This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

It is that silver sea that helps define our relationship with the rest of Europe.

These isles have very rarely been in isolation from it, whether splendid or otherwise. How could it be, as one historian recently argued, when the Magna Carta was signed by French nobles and the Bill of Rights designed for a Dutch prince?

But it has always kept a beady eye on other powers across the water.

It has been often concerned with stopping other European powers dominating the continent, playing one off against another.

 out from the white cliffs of Dover across the English Channel

But from that physical separation flows a psychological distance too.

As the BBC's first Europe editor, I spent a lot of time thinking about our tricky relationship. After all, in my previous incarnation as a political journalist based at Westminster I had seen how some politicians' profound distaste for the evolving project of the European Union had blown back into British politics with profound and startling consequences.

I had watched as Margaret Thatcher's attitude towards the EU's nascent plans for a single currency, summed up by "no, no, no", had her own side bringing her down. It was the defenestration of a prime minister deeply beloved by most of her party.

I had reported for Newsnight as John Major's government was harried and hamstrung by those who rebelled against the Maastricht treaty. Europe meant it could do nothing. Blair's government was much friendlier, with any tensions buried by his own project.

Now Europe has claimed another scalp, that of a man who told his party to stop banging on about it. It will be the thing that David Cameron is remembered for - banging on about Europe, and losing the argument.

Now I know the European Union is not Europe. But those who stress that are missing the point. No, it is not the same as European culture. No it is not a geographically exact expression. But there are only a couple of European countries who are "out", and firmly intend to stay out. All the others, or at least their leaders, want a share in this deeply political expression of a dream.

MAGES

By the end of my time based in Brussels I was convinced that I had understood the key difference. To many in the UK being part of the EU was a hard-headed economic relationship, about free markets, selling and buying stuff. It was a sort of second best, a consolation prize after the loss of empire, but not one that had a similar place in patriots' hearts.

But for nearly all the other countries it was a refuge. It was a home they were constructing as a bulwark against history, against horror.

Germany was fleeing its role in spreading death and destruction to every corner of the continent, fleeing its own political ambitions. France was running away from defeat and occupation, from humiliation and powerlessness.

So were many other countries. Greece, Portugal and Spain found refuge - in an imagined future - from the real past of right-wing dictatorships. The countries of the East were replacing communist tyranny with a new attempt to create peace and democracy.

tly changed their stance as the years passed

The thought that war could once again ravage a continent, so risible to David Cameron's detractors, do not seem so funny to many on the continent.

For many Britons, World War Two was our finest hour, standing alone, and putting those Europeans to shame, withstanding Hitler and beating him. Some realised the Russians and the Americans helped a little bit too. But we were still better than the rest of the Quislings and dictators.

The European Union, for all its bureaucracy, is a deeply romantic project, a desire to forge something new, something different. A new relationship binding nation states in a way that will exorcise forever the ghosts of the inglorious past.

I sat in a cafe next to some fairly senior people who work in the commission in Brussels. They were despairing of Brexit, making desperate, rather hysterical jokes about it and the future in Britain. But then one by one they confessed when they got up on Friday morning, switched on the news, checked their phones, they cried. Few in the UK would say that if another country left the EU.

But the irritations of these dozen or so people of different nationalities, with the UK - comments about British pride, warm beer and arrogant politicians - underlined a more fundamental frustration with British attitudes.

 

These Spanish, and Swedes, a Belgian and a Hungarian, were all emoting and swearing and arguing in English. One said (in French) "maybe we can all go back to speaking French now". She was shouted down - in English - "that will never happen. English is the language of the European Union now."

I remember Neil Kinnock joking that the EU changed forever when the Swedes arrived and started saying "good morning" in the lift.

One might think that is trivial. But maybe it highlights something we rarely realise in our desire for hard power - the extent of our soft power. It also underscores a real frustration with the British that has been growing. Many in Europe think we've won. While readers of some British newspapers have been treated to stories of little Britain being bullied by the big commission, that is not how you see it if you are, say, Portuguese or Latvian.

Then you would see, time after time, Britain being given a special deal, treated with kid gloves and washed with buckets of soft soap.

They say we've won. We won and turned Europe on to a free-market, anti-statist, liberal economic agenda.

 

Edited June 25, 2016 by mjmooney

[Davkaus]

Is leaving the EU going to do anything about zero hour contracts, or workers' rights in general?

[Davkaus]

 

Quote

 

These Spanish, and Swedes, a Belgian and a Hungarian, were all emoting and swearing and arguing in English. One said (in French) "maybe we can all go back to speaking French now". She was shouted down - in English - "that will never happen. English is the language of the European Union now."

I remember Neil Kinnock joking that the EU changed forever when the Swedes arrived and started saying "good morning" in the lift.

 

I think this is nothing to do with England, we're just fortunate that English is the language of the USA. We don't have billions of people learning English to talk to a tiny island with 65 million people, they learn English to deal with the most influential country in the world, we just ride their coat tails.

[OutByEaster?]

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Is leaving the EU going to do anything about zero hour contracts, or workers' rights in general?

It's going to mean that we no longer have to follow the EU working time regulations - so protections on break between shifts, maximum working weeks and so on will disappear - a great deal of the law protecting the rights of workers is European and will need to be re-written - thankfully we have the compassion and care for ordinary people that Boris Johnson and co exude to help us through this.

it's interesting that Cameron spent a good part of his term as PM in pulling the teeth out of the unions - ordinarily in this sort of situation I'd expect a huge push from the Unions to fill the coming void with something they find acceptable - but I'm not sure they still have the ability to do so.

Expect a return to traditional values - traditional Victorian values at least.

[OutByEaster?]

This popped up on my FB feed almost the second I typed that.

https://campaign.goingtowork.org.uk/petitions/don-t-cut-a-single-workers-right-in-uk-law?source=fbads

Quote

 

Many vital rights at work in the UK are derived from EU law, guaranteeing things like paid leave entitlements, protections from being forced to work excessive hours, discrimination protections and rights for working mums to be.

Following the UK vote to leave the European Union, Parliament will decide what happens to these rights.

 

it's a massive issue - and there are companies all over the country desperately trying to figure out what happens next - it's a lottery win for corporate lawyers.

 

[jon_c]

3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

- it's a lottery win for corporate lawyers.

 

Isn't Boris' other half a human rights lawyer?

[MikeMcKenna]

26 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

As Janice Turner writes in the Times: "Why are we surprised the working class gave two fingers to a future of uncontrolled migration and zero-hours shifts?"

With all other channels of protest removed by Thatcher and Blair, this is the first time the working class have had a chance to protest, and while the rest of us dismiss them as racists, what we are really saying is that they should like it or lump it.

Having another reason for despising the working class, is the perfect excuse for not doing anything about their plight.

The ignorant, racist Chav bastards!

I really don't get your point. Do you think really that Johnson, Farage, Gove etc will really do "anything about their plight"? 

[OutByEaster?]

I read a lovely quote this morning "Voting Leave as a protest against inequality and the treatment of ordinary people is like wiping dog shit off your shoe.....and rubbing it in your face."

I think it's true that a lot of people voted Leave in part because it was seen as sticking two fingers up at the establishment - not realising of course that those in charge of Leave are even further to the right in their support of that establishment. I think it's correct to say people have had enough, but also correct to say they're too stupid to realise they've just asked for more.

 

[HanoiVillan]

10 hours ago, villa4europe said:

he's a man who thinks that voting to leave the EU will stop muslims from africa and iraq coming to live in the UK, so the statement that he's very wrong isn't really up to debate in my head, he's a man living in barnsley who sees a couple of asians around him and is convinced they're taking over, i can honestly say ive never been to barnsley so i dont know what the demographic up there is

but issues like the governments policy on syrians, on integration between asian communities and traditional english communities, if you want to throw in terrorism and the muslim scaremongering to the melting pot, all of those issues should have been identified and clarified during and after the general election and isolated from this debate but because of the way politics now is in this country where they dont ever actually address any issues they just wrap them up in something else push it to the side hoping they'll go away it means that they are still still relevant concerns and people are confusing the real issues

the shambolic campaigning from both sides hasnt helped in the slightest, there is unfortunate a quantifiable number of people in this country who believe that thousands of syrian men are landing in greece, no women or children, and they've all got iphones so they arent poor, and the greeks are giving them passports on the spot which means they're now using our nhs and have a council house in which they can start planning their terrorism...and if we vote to leave they'll never make it here

that belief should have been addressed and put to bed long before we ever got near a polling station, that shouldnt be part of this referendum but quite obviously is

I think this is an exceptionally naive view of how politics works. 

You can't just 'identify and clarify' issues and then they're done forever. What would identifying them and clarifying them looked like? Is it a speech from David Cameron? That wouldn't have solved anything. Or is it a new law? In which case we're barely one year into a new Parliament where the Conservatives had their first majority for nearly 20 years, isn't it a bit presumptive to just go ahead and assume they wouldn't create a law to your satisfaction? And how does 'isolating' them work as well? How could immigration be isolated from the EU to your, or anyone's, satisfaction?

And why would anybody have accepted the 'identifying and clarifying' stage you ask for, when all we've heard for the last six months is how 'experts don't know anything/we've heard quite enough from experts thank you' etc?

[snowychap]

Edited June 25, 2016 by snowychap

[Dr_Pangloss]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

The press have embraced the phrase "Post factual democracy" following the referendum. 

Facts and evidence now play no part in attempts to influence voters - influence rather than education is the aim, and voters are presented with so many wildly opposing 'facts' that they stop using them as a guide to how to react and vote in situations. Politics has successfully removed the need for evidence from its responsibilities. 

The rather shameful way that Farage backed out of the £350m claim is the way forward, not an isolated incident. 

The £350m claim is a total, complete and utter lie in the first place, and has been refuted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The fact that the media failed to quote this every time it was mentioned, shows what a **** lousy job they have done. 

The media really poured gasoline on the flames of the Leave campaign precisely because it generated more views, more clicks and more revenue for them. I personally think that the BBC acted in absolutely shocking manner. 

[mjmooney]

Quote

I want my country back

This was never a referendum on the EU. It was a referendum on the modern world.

This morning, I woke up in a country I do not recognise. David Cameron’s big gamble – the future of Britain against his personal political ambitions – has backfired so badly that we’ve blasted clean out of the EU. By the time I’d put the kettle on, the stock markets were in free fall, Scotland was debating a new independence referendum, Sinn Fein was making secession noises, and the prime minister had resigned.

There’s not enough tea in the entire nation to help us Keep Calm and Carry On today. Not on a day when prejudice, propaganda, naked xenophobia and callous fear-mongering have won out over the common sense we British like to pride ourselves on. Not on a day when we’re being congratulated by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and nobody else. Well done, turkeys. Santa’s on his way.

Nigel Farage, the rich, racist cartoon demagogue, boasts that this victory was won “without a single shot being fired”. Tell that to the grieving family of Jo Cox, the campaigning Labour MP gunned down last week. Farage promised that unless something was done to halt immigration, “violence will be the next step”. It looks like we’ve got a two-for-one deal on that one.

So, here’s the thing. This was never a referendum on the EU. It was a referendum on the modern world, and yesterday the frightened, parochial lizard-brain of Britain voted out, out, out, and today we've all woken up still strapped onto this ghost-train as it hurtles off the tracks. Leave voters are finding they care less about immigration now that their pension pots are under threat. Maybe one of the gurning pundits promising them pride and sovereignty should have mentioned that, but they were too busy lying about the NHS. The curtain has been torn away and now we all have to look at the men behind it. They are not good men.

Anyone feel like they’ve got their country back yet? No? That, after all, was the rallying cry of the Leave campaign – the transatlantic echo of "Make America Great Again". There’s a precedent for what happens when svengalis with aggressively terrible haircuts are allowed to appeal to parochialism and fear in the teeth of a global recession, and it isn’t pretty.

It says something about this campaign that I’m no longer at all worried about risking hyperbole or unoriginality when referencing all that Nazi history they made us study in school. I’m just frightened. I’m frightened that those who wanted "their" country back will get their wish, and it will turn out to be a hostile, inhospitable place for immigrants, ethnic minorities, queer people – everyone and anyone who wasn’t included when Farage proclaimed victory for "ordinary, decent people" this morning in front of a posse formed entirely of angry-looking, whey-faced blokes in suits.

But the thing is – I want my country back too.

I want to wake up tomorrow in a country where people are kind, and tolerant, and decent to one another. A country where people – all people – can feel at least a little bit safe. I want to rub the sleep of neofascist nightmares from my eyes and find myself in a country where we do not respond to the killing of a politician by voting against everything she stood for. A country where we are polite to our neighbors. A country where we have dealt like adults with the embarrassing fact that we once conquered half the world, instead of yearning for a time when our glory was stolen from enslaved people a convenient ocean away and large parts of the map were the gentle pink of blood in the water. I want to go back to a Britain where hope conquers hate; where crabbed, cowed racism and xenophobia don’t win the day; where people feel they have options and choices in life and are less likely to press the big red button to bring the house down on top of us. I want my country back.

That country, of course, is fictional. But it’s no less so than the biscuit-tin, curtain-twitching, tea-on-the-lawn-with-your-white-friends-from-the-Rotary-Club fantasy Britain the other side have been plugging for years, editing out all the ugly parts of the past and photoshopping it into the backdrop for an image smeared indelibly across the back of all our sickened eyeballs this morning, an image of fists raised and boots marching in step. If they’re allowed their fantasy, can I have mine, too?

The Welsh have a word for this feeling. The word is "hiraeth". It means a longing for a home you can never return to, a home which may never have existed at all. The Welsh, incidentally, voted to leave the EU after decades of being ungently screwed by government after conniving Tory government; cackling and tearing the heart out of towns which were once famous for something other than teen suicide. Finally, someone gave them the opportunity to vote for change, for any change at all. When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like David Cameron’s face.

Cameron, who today must be longing for the morning when all he had to deal with was the papers claiming he once had sex with a dead pig in university, sold us all up the river that runs through the chasm of British culture. In a sop to the eurosceptic wing of his own party, he gambled the future of the nation and the political stability of the continent for his own career.

The whole mess started because of a disagreement between rival factions of a right-wing government which is still tearing itself apart and taking the rest of us with it. The fractured Left, unable to unite behind a leader with a popular mandate, was nowhere in this conversation until it was far too late. Cameron promised a referendum in order to pander to the rise of a xenophobic far right and secure his own power: he got his wish, was duly re-elected, and now his career is over, and so are the life chances of millions of young British people. He gets to slink off back to Oxfordshire and live off his family money. Don't weep for Hameron. He'll be fine.

If only the same were true of the rest of us. As it stands, tens of millions are going to suffer. Real people are going to hurt. Real people are going to die. That is David Cameron's fault, more than anyone's. It was right for him to resign, but he will surely be replaced by any one of a rogues' gallery of gurning ideologues who have been decrying “experts” and “elites” to people so desperate for change that they didn’t care that those elites are people their wisecracking white knights literally went to school with.

This morning it looked like Britain had shot itself in the foot. By lunch time, with two political parties imploding and the stock markets crashing, it appears our aim was higher above the knee. This was not just a vote against Europe, but a vote against Westminster and the entirety of mainstream politics. Every political party campaigned hard for a "Remain" vote – but Britain still chose to Leave, even if we’re regretting it this morning.

There are huge areas of post-industrial decline and neglect where people are more furious than Cameron and his ilk could possibly understand, areas where any kind of antiestablishment rabble-rousing sounds like a clarion call. In depressed mountain villages and knackered seaside towns and burned-out former factory heartlands across the country, ordinary people were promised that for once, their vote would matter, that they could give the powers that be a poke in the eye. Westminster may have underestimated how very much it is hated by those to whom mainstream politics have not spoken in generations.

In desperation, the Remain camp begged us to think of the markets. Unfortunately, everyone here hates the markets. Fear-mongering over "the economy" was never going to work when the most deprived areas of the country have already suffered years of savage right-wing austerity in the name of safeguarding "the economy". Those parts of the country clearly felt that things were bad enough already, that they had little enough to lose that they could gamble the rest on the possibility of being lied to. British people are used to being lied to by incompetent spivs in the name of "protecting the economy". Unfortunately, this time the spivs were dead right.

As the tattered remains of the government try to work out what Brexit will actually mean in practice, more damage has already been done to our economy, to our prospects and to the job market than years of open borders ever could have.

In the meantime, the cackling clown-car drivers rolling this catastrophe over the wreckage of civil society are already cheerfully admitting that they lied about their key campaign statements. No, there won’t be £350m more to spend on the NHS, whatever Farage wrote on his battle bus. It turns out that the reason you can’t get a GP appointment isn’t because of immigration, but because the Conservatives have spent six years systematically defunding the health service and cutting public spending to the bone. Brexit will mean more of that, not less.

This was a working-class revolt, but it is not a working-class victory. That’s the tragedy here. The collective howl of rage from depressed, deindustrialised parts of the country bled white and reckless by Thatcher, Blair and Cameron has turned into a triumph for another set of elites. Another banking crisis, another old Etonian in power – that’s what we’ve got to look forward to as Scotland decides when to let go of the rope and the union splinters into jagged shards and we all realise we’re stuck on a rainy rock with Michael Gove, forever.

I wish I could tell you that we’re about to turn this around. I wish I could tell you that we’re about to collectively realise, even at this late hour, the magnitude of our mistake – that we will discover a new capacity for tolerance, a new resilience, a way to recover ourselves and remember our common humanity. I wish I could tell you that the cannibalistic, scattered Left will rally. Today, I don’t want to make any promises. All I see is a lot of racist crowing on the internet and campaigners being told to go back where they came from. I’ve already had people telling me it won’t be long before a new Kristallnacht, and people like me had better go back – where? I was born in London. Perhaps the city can secede. That’ll do wonders for house prices.

This Britain is not my Britain. I want my country back. I want my scrappy, tolerant, forward-thinking, creative country, the country of David Bowie, not Paul Daniels; the country of Sadiq Khan, not Boris Johnson; the country of  J K Rowling, not Enid Blyton; the country not of Nigel Farage, but Jo Cox. That country never existed, not on its own, no more than the country the Leave campaign promised to take us to in their tin-foil time machine. Britain, like everywhere else, has always had its cringing, fearful side, its cruel delusions, its racist fringe movements, its demagogues preying on the dispossessed. Those things are part of us as much as beef wellington and bad dentistry. But in happier times, those things do not overwhelm us. We do not let bad actors reading bad lines in bad faith walk us across the stage to the scaffold. We are better than this.

I believe we can still be better than this. I want my country back, and it’s a country I’ve never known, and getting there will take more strength, more kindness, more resilience than this divided nation has mustered in living memory. Meanwhile, I’m putting the kettle on again. Today is a day for mourning, for retweeting sick memes and holding our loved ones close. Tomorrow – well. Tomorrow, we get to work. 

New Statesman

 

[villa4europe]

55 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think this is an exceptionally naive view of how politics works. 

You can't just 'identify and clarify' issues and then they're done forever. What would identifying them and clarifying them looked like? Is it a speech from David Cameron? That wouldn't have solved anything. Or is it a new law? In which case we're barely one year into a new Parliament where the Conservatives had their first majority for nearly 20 years, isn't it a bit presumptive to just go ahead and assume they wouldn't create a law to your satisfaction? And how does 'isolating' them work as well? How could immigration be isolated from the EU to your, or anyone's, satisfaction?

And why would anybody have accepted the 'identifying and clarifying' stage you ask for, when all we've heard for the last six months is how 'experts don't know anything/we've heard quite enough from experts thank you' etc?

That's the thing if people can't distinguish between the two types of immigration in this country and are confused about what they are actually voting on then you either 1) shouldn't be calling a referendum or 2) haven't gotten your points clearly across during your campaign

either way it's a massive failing

if you are letting discontent with the current government influence this referendum then it is a massive failing too

I voted leave and I'm still relatively happy that I did, apart from the fact that well now suffer from an incredibly weak and indecisive government, but Im not of the opinion that leave won because of likeminded people, leave won because people don't like the perceived number of foreigners living here, not Europeans, foreigners in general and people don't like Cameron 

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Is leaving the EU going to do anything about zero hour contracts, or workers' rights in general?

No to the first, and will lead to the removal of the second. 

Once again, despite what a lot of people on here seem to think, the furthest right-wing, most Thatcherite parts of the Conservative party are now in charge. 

The only people I have less respect for than the xenophobes are the people voting for 'Lexit'. At least the xenophobes got what they wanted out of the process. 

[HanoiVillan]

17 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

That's the thing if people can't distinguish between the two types of immigration in this country and are confused about what they are actually voting on then you either 1) shouldn't be calling a referendum or 2) haven't gotten your points clearly across during your campaign

either way it's a massive failing

if you are letting discontent with the current government influence this referendum then it is a massive failing too

I voted leave and I'm still relatively happy that I did, apart from the fact that well now suffer from an incredibly weak and indecisive government, but Im not of the opinion that leave won because of likeminded people, leave won because people don't like the perceived number of foreigners living here, not Europeans, foreigners in general and people don't like Cameron 

I agree with most of your conclusion and not at all with how you voted, but I enjoy discussing things with you because you always make me think. 

I certainly agree with 'you shouldn't be calling a referendum' - obviously I think it was a terrible mistake, and I doubt Cameron would disagree with me - but I have some doubts about the second point, 'you haven't gotten your points across clearly'. I mean, I don't disagree with the analysis, I disagree with the cause. It's very difficult to tell people things when they've got their fingers in their ears and they're shouting 'na na na I'm not listening'. 

All of this stuff - that we'll still need immigration, that the £350m figure was a total dishonest lie - it was all pointed out repeatedly before the election, but once again it was just dismissed as coming from 'experts', the new dirty word du jour. 

On your final point, I also agree. I don't think you're a typical Leave voter at all. Most Leave voters seem to have decided they dislike foreigners more than they value their own jobs. 

[Nicho]

Nearly 2 million signatures on the revote petition. Will we really have a revote? I can see the result being strongly in favor of in of cast again.

[Davkaus]

I think there's a case for it, with prominent leave politicians basically admitting deception. It'll have a strong whiff of the "elite" just voting until they get the result they want though, so I can't see it. 

[HanoiVillan]

I'd be totally against doing it again. 

[OutByEaster?]

There are too many hurdles - a petition that gets debated in Parliament, then a Parliament that decides to say lets vote again, then the various barriers to acceptance of those conditions, even if it went through smoothly, we'd have to have invoked the big fiddy before the next referendum, which means that remain would't be an option on the ballot - it'd be re-apply and re-apply comes with the Euro, not to mention the very real prospect of the EU telling us to bugger off.