Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

I guess that the 'vague please everyone benefit-of-the-country' was an attempt to counter the fact that pre-Blair, loony-left council era Labour were seen as being too in thrall to "interest groups" (as in ethnic minorities, feminists, gay lib ppl, guardianista do-gooders with supposedly esoteric concerns), and that trade unionism had declined to the point that it was seen as another interest group rather than representing a broad enough swathe of the electorate to enable Labour to win elections by appealing to it? like at one point a 'Labour will help YOU!' message aimed at unionised industrial workers covered enough people that it could simultaneously a "benefit-of-the-country" message rather than an appeal to an "interest group"?

thinking about it, isn't "very overt 'Labour will help YOU!' aimed at specific groups" specifically what David Axelrod criticised Ed Miliband era Labour for when he was brought on board to help with the election campaign? (I think he characterised it as "vote Labour and get a free microwave" or something) like, Labour had this checklist of particular interest groups to appeal to with transnational promises of what they would do for them, whereas the Conservatives had this narrative about how they were taking tough decisions in the national interest, and the latter proved more compelling to a lot of people, even some of the people who were getting screwed over as a result of those "tough decisions"

once they reached "Labour basically agrees with the Tories about how the economy should be run and for whose benefit" there probably weren't a lot of specific messages left in the tank that anybody was excited for

RW media going proper gonzo at the strikes, isn't it? Though maybe the "RW" is redundant.

I think that there is merit to the Blue Labour argument that says Labour has a serious problem wrt white, employed working or lower middle class voters whose position is "Labour only cares about immigrants, minorities, benefit scroungers, snobby guardianista liberals, militant trade unionists etc, it doesn't care about ppl like me" as that group is big enough that Labour needs its support to win elections. but obviously the answer isn't for Labour to go "ok then, screw anyone who isn't part of this white, employed working or lower middle class group", which seems to be the only answer Blue Lab has to the problem.

sort of agree that Corbyn is absolutely not the person to win over those voters, even if all the alternatives in the last two leadership elections were far worse

The idea of 'the people we need to appeal to' seems to have changed since c.1995 and Blair.

Then, it was, say: 'afflent, aspirational, optimistic people who need to be convinced that Labour won't take their money away and will make society better' (to some extent, it did).

Now, it seems to be: 'poorer, angry, distrustful people who have been convinced that leaving the EU is the most important issue'.

Both groups must have coexisted extensively, and still do, but it does seem as though the 'political narrative' has gone from the need to placate the one, to the need to placate the other.

Something about the extent of this shift feels a bit phoney to me. I feel sure that there are still tons of the first group of people.

It is really curious to realize how far the idea of 'immigration' just wasn't an electoral issue immediately prior to Blair's first victory, compared to what it is now.

That is one of the biggest changes in the political landscape in 20 years.

I'm not sure how far this is down to actual increased immigration (cf Blair supposedly presiding over lots of East Europeans coming to UK), how far just to media discourse, scapegoating, disproportionate focus on the issue, etc.

Back then (c.20 years ago) there was talk of 'crime', 'the NHS', 'education' ... those were the main issues. There were Eurosceptics but there was no serious talk of the UK leaving European union. There was the possibility of Scottish devolution, maybe, but only if enough Scots would vote for it. There was Northern Ireland to focus the mind a little.

'Immigration' in its current discursive form wasn't really a factor.

Then, it was, say: 'afflent, aspirational, optimistic people who need to be convinced that Labour won't take their money away and will make society better' (to some extent, it did).

Now, it seems to be: 'poorer, angry, distrustful people who have been convinced that leaving the EU is the most important issue'.

in the current moment it seems to be 'poorer, angry, distrustful people who need to be convinced that Labour won't take their money away and give it to immigrants, benefit scroungers etc' (i.e. even poorer ppl for the most part). The idea that immigrants and/or BAME ppl get preferential treatment over working class white ppl is so widespread, wish this could be acknowledged when they're having these arguments over whether saying that racism was a factor in the brexit vote makes you a liberal elitist who has contempt for ordinary ppl or whatever.

like, it seems to me that there are a huge number of ppl who are not hate filled bnp thug types and don't think of themselves as racist, but absolutely buy into this "non-white ppl are privileged over white ppl" idea. Kinnock brought this up in his terrible identity politics speech, with the "may ppl feel that" caveat, but if a politician brings this up without explicitly saying it's not true then they're basically endorsing the idea, surely?

"The huge mistake we’ve made, we have played the game of identity politics and identified groups, whether it is by ethnicity or sexuality or whatever you might want to call it, rather than say, ‘we stand up for everyone in this country and that includes you, the white working class’....It doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is or what your background is. What matters is that you’re poor and you’re disadvantaged and we’ve got to be there to help and engage with every single one of you - not just those who seem to have been taken priority over others.”

he really should never be allowed to forget this, despite his efforts to weasel out of it and say that he was misunderstood

pinefox, the shift came in 2004 when Poland joined the EU then other eastern countries joined. French, German, Italian people didn't want to live in the UK in sufficient numbers to change the cultural make-up of the country. Eastern Europeans did.

RW media going proper gonzo at the strikes, isn't it? Though maybe the "RW" is redundant.

― There shouldn't be a thread for Dennis Perrin tweets (stevie), Monday, 19 December 2016 14:36 (two hours ago) Permalink

Funny you should say that but I almost posted earlier on about the BBC's ongoing campaign to destroy what's left of the unions in this country. People Cunts are seriously talking about a 'conspiracy to bring down the government', if only.

my stepdad was on this tip yday, along with raving about populism and trump's secretary of state appointment and admitting "I'm to the right of Genghis Khan"

last week 5 Live had a panel discussion/phone-in about "should people be allowed to strike"

String 'em up. The BBC, Sky etc are going hammer and tongs on whether public service workers should people be allowed to strike.

Like a fucking postie going on strike is going to kill someone.

But but but Christmas cards might turn up late ;_;

many xposts I thought this report from September highlighted the issue as best as any could. Particularly quotes like "The thing is," he says, nodding up the street towards the African men who are still fiddling with their phones, "in their houses they get given microwaves and ovens and sofas and everything. I mean I had to take a loan to get that stuff." He shakes his head. "They get supermarket vouchers too - we don't get that. But lots more people round here have to go to food banks now."

It encapsulates everything people like Kinnock have alluded to (without providing adequate solutions to). Envy from 'born-heres' of people who seem to have been given things instead of working for them, regardless of whether they're even able to work for them, getting them sooner despite 'deserving' them less.

Jed: yes, that was a significant development with continuing consequences - perhaps especially for attitudes to the EU - but I'm not sure that it's _the_ shift. That shift I was getting at seems longer and deeper.

The kind of sub-humans that would begrudge someone having food and the means to cook it are expressing valid opinions according to the beeb on trash like brexit st.

Weetabix workers have also voted to strike in the new year.

The Breakfast of Discontent.

The kind of sub-humans that would begrudge someone having food and the means to cook it are expressing valid opinions according to the beeb on trash like brexit st.

How do you convince them they're wrong? This task is seemingly beyond anyone.

Let's not get carried away, I'm sure there's not that many people who would 'begrudge someone having food and the means to cook it'.

xp idk, but the Kinnock idea that can you recognise the 'legitimacy' of their opinion and then design a system suitably onerous enough that ppl will accept that it's "fair", rather than just increasing the resentment is a dead end

Strikes me that this lurch to the far right is at least partly propelled by a nostalgia for social democracy, coupled with a fatalism about it ever coming back. When I say 'social democracy' I don't believe that many of these people would even relate to the term, and a lot of them might be explicitly hostile to socialism, and most of the language that Corbyn uses. But the poor availability of both social housing and the kind of manual work that a less laissez-faire state might have been able to provide has almost certainly fuelled this.

The toxic picture of everyone *except* Wayne the landscape gardener and people who look and sound like him living a life of luxury off the state is one that Cameron and Osbourne explicitly encouraged in order to secure public support for austerity. Forces they were unable to control and that ended up destroying their careers. A significant number of the Labour MPs who complain that the leadership doesn't understand working class communities also carry on supporting austerity and don't seem to see the contradiction at all.

This should present an opportunity for left-wing populism that will only work if it's coupled with policies that are so attractive that they trump immigration concerns - this is where Kinnock and friends have nothing at all. But the electorate also has to actually believe that you are capable of delivering it, and this is where it falls down for Corbyn.

How you sell this vision to the kind of chattering classes idiots who think that things were basically peachy from 1997 up until the Iraq War, and whose votes you also need, is another problem entirely.

Some people, like me, think things were never uniformly 'peachy' but that some things were better, in some ways, at that time, and the direction of travel was better, in some ways, than now.

You're quite a long way from the sort of people I'm talking about, I mean the Centre Will Rise Again crew, who think that Labour's travails prove that 97-03 (or even 97-07) was the best of all possible worlds. The direction of intended travel might have been better under Blair, but they were also creating the conditions that led directly to this state of affairs - and you can't separate one from the other.

It's almost like they're not living in the real world or in touch with ordinary people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes, it's a good argument that Blair must have created some of the conditions for what is happening now - and thus, I suppose, undermined he legacy had wanted to leave.[*] But exactly how that works, how much is down to Blair and how much other things, would be very complicated to try seriously to work out.

For instance, if 'austerity' is partly blamed for Brexit, Blair cannot really be said to have presided over it. Maybe the claim is that his non-regulation of the City caused it?

[* Blair legacy a problematic idea in the first place, I realize]

I do have sympathy with the view that eg: 1997-2003 was the best UK political period since, say, 1979, as it is hard to point to a better one. The Tom Crewe LRB article on austerity and local government is a good reminder of how much damage Con governments have done since 2010, and how that issue has been occluded by the new problem of Brexit. I suppose by implication that again reminds me that whatever the problems, many things were better before Cameron took office.

The more I think about this, the more I don't blame Tony Blair, and do think he oversaw a lot of good things, as well as bad things. Getting into thinking this on a messageboard is probably opening Pandora's box or reaping the whirlwind.

But, though I may have some esteem or nostalgia for the period of c.17-18 years ago, I don't think I am terribly sympathetic to the current 'centrists' whoever they are exactly.

Let's not get carried away, I'm sure there's not that many people who would 'begrudge someone having food and the means to cook it'.

You would think there are not many people with such opinions, but the BBC didn't have any trouble locating them for that wretched Brexit St program where people were complaining in the same fashion as the quote in Nashwan's post about asylum seekers having basic household amenities and food vouchers.

Is Liz Truss the the thickest person who's ever held a high ranking post? Got to be up there.

Chris Grayling seems like a remarkably unintelligent man, it's not been a good few years for Lord Chancellors. (Gove's tenure as Lord Chancellor seems to have gained fairly positive reviews from legal types? afaict he spent most of his time unpicking the more egregiously stupid reforms put in place by Grayling)

ian duncan smith gotta be up near the top of the dum-dum politicians league table too

Priti Patel ftw

a friend of mine was subjected to a visit from priti patel at her workplace just after patel became secretary of state for international development. during a discussion on the effect of brexit on science funding, my friend realised that patel didn't seem to know that jo johnson was the minister of state for universities and science. if you can't keep your own fucking colleagues straight in your head i dunno that there'd be any extra room for all the stuff your job requires you to know and learn either...

I am surprised no one properly goes after Farage when he's barrelling in trying to score points off an attack before any information is confirmed. this goes with the time he got stuck in traffic and blamed it on immigrants. he's given you proof he doesn't know what he's talking about, why wouldn't you hammer him with these examples every time he opens his mouth?

because no-one who has a positive view of him and his politics gives a fuck about whether he's 'correct' or not

as entertaining as that shellacking that farage got from james o'brien on lbc a couple of years back was, it had no impact at all on his standing with his supporters

I think ppl *do* hit with this kind of stuff, but he's able to transmute it into "the political elite sneering at me, just like they sneer at YOU, ordinary ppl of Great Britain", and that plays well with enough voters that he's able to thrive

the man managed to persuade the uk to leave the eu armed only with fag, a pint and a transparent bag full of shit labelled as 'facts' so i think asking him to be held to account now is a little optimistic

5live broadcast Farage's response earlier, of course they maintained the famous bbc impartiality by not deriding any right wing demagogues.

just keep it simple, pose the question - can you trust someone who offers firm conclusions based on no evidence

the trick ofc is not that farage is credible really so much as he is persistent and sort of engaging. any opposition has to be similarly relentless. suspect constant media noise is a stronger influence on voters than their own material circumstances

can you trust someone who offers firm conclusions based on no evidence

do the conclusions fit your prejudices? then yes, you can.

who are you speaking for

my ukip-supporting straw man. his name is steve

I think socratic bullying can still be effective with some of people who listen to farage, especially the brexit voters who are more sceptical of him

he's useful as an embodiment of bad thinking, you don't need to put any emotional or moral weight into it, you can just show this ridiculous confirmation bias for what it is, and make people more aware of how it distorts things

can you trust someone who offers firm conclusions based on no evidence

You can do better than that, you can make him President of the United States and the most powerful individual in the world.

the trick ofc is not that farage is credible really so much as he is persistent and sort of engaging. any opposition has to be similarly relentless. suspect constant media noise is a stronger influence on voters than their own material circumstances

This is sort of what I was getting at with the left-wing populism thing upthread - when Nashwan asked 'who is not bad on TV?', the answer is 'Farage'. (Well, he is terrible on TV in all the obvious ways but he's also very good at playing the medium to his advantage). Labour needs to be prepared and able to beat these people at their own game - McDonnell and Abbott are pretty good at this, but Corbyn seems to disappear from mass media for weeks on end at times.

Gove's tenure as Lord Chancellor seems to have gained fairly positive reviews from legal types? afaict he spent most of his time unpicking the more egregiously stupid reforms put in place by Grayling

Call me old-fashioned but I think at least some legal background should be a prerequisite for that job, but Gove wasn't bad in that job. Certainly in comparison to education where he was one of the worst ministers I can remember in to be put in charge of a crucial department. But as Lord Chancellor he was a bulwark against the Home Office being able to do exactly what it wanted so it's no surprise that May put someone fairly weak in the role in his place. But we're back to Machiavelli vs Baldrick again here.

I guess on one hand I have always been more at ease with the idea that lots of politics is, in some sense at least, irrational, but on the other the idea that we've suddenly moved from a rational to post-rational world, and/or that rational arguments now have no chance of swaying anyone is not v compelling to me