Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Writes off 80 million people.....
A thank you to Brexiteers.
- Thread starter MrSki
- Start date
Writes off 80 million people.....
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
I'd certainly agree that there would inevitably be some spill-over, but do you think the sneering et al has had no impact on it's depth/persistence?
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
Politically unsuccessful you say?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Absolutely it does, but to cast the Waitrosers as the main driving force behind the persistence of this divide clearly overlooks the tory electoral agenda to maintain it.
bimble
floofy
My idea of things turning out ok includes that, i think. Not talking about things being pretty or easier, I mean in a long term probably generational timescale I reckon maybe brexit will help with the long overdue digestion of the loss of empire etc.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
While I would absolutely agree that the R/L divide suits the Tories, I also think it's true that post-16 Remain gifted them this huge, open goal.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
I very much doubt whether tackling unauthorised traveller sites was a key motivating issue, consciously or unconsciously in that election tbh . However what undoubtedly was the attempts to stop Parliament from carrying out the referendum decision and the bizarre second referendum campaign by the LabDem opposition.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
The Tory manifesto in 2019 was a big sign saying 'GET BREXIT DONE', that's what people voted for not ' Foreigners, the disabled, BLM, ungrateful Europe, save the statues, screw the travellers.'
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Hard to see the constituency the approach is likely to appeal to: ‘You are all flag shagging wankers, now give my politics a hearing’
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Not important when the principle is not to build or make any political headway within the working class but simply to pose as being somehow 'on the left'
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
It was and that's certainly what post-polling found.
But it's also true that voting Tory ensured that the party's wider agenda was realised.
Sure. But they didn't all explicitly vote for the wider agenda, they just put a cross in the 'brexit' box. Lots of the same people voted for the most radical Labour Party manifesto in decades two years before.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
This is a significant point. I’ve always taken as a given that the starting place is a necessity to get a hearing for your politics in the community, workplace, ale house or wherever you are. To take people as they are and start from there. To establish the fact that you are on the same side.
It seems others on this thread don’t attach much or any importance to this. The problem with that approach is that those dismissed (in this case the entire country) are likely to return the sentiment with interest in my experience.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Its a bit like saying that those who voted for the Labour manifesto in 1997 , which included
are somehow complicit in deindustrialisation, the decline of trade unions and bargaining rights and the ushering of the low wage economy and only have themselves to blame, rather as their vote being seen as getting the Tories out.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
I agree with that. It is largely why I don't like the sneering at people being 'liberals' or 'progressives'. Liberal establishment fair enough it's a good description, but calling people liberals as an insult just seems divisive, particularly when it seems to be applied to anyone who doesn't have revolutionary politics.
Or people who would indeed like to see a revolution (depending of course on who takes over
) as better than what we have now, but in the meantime believes in engaging with the admittedly laughable democratic process. I think the left needs to be more inclusive - it's the only way I see any progress against the far right.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I agree with that. It is largely why I don't like the sneering at people being 'liberals' or 'progressives'. Liberal establishment fair enough it's a good description, but calling people liberals as an insult just seems divisive, particularly when it seems to be applied to anyone who doesn't have revolutionary politics.
Or people who would indeed like to see a revolution (depending of course on who takes over
I’ve got two problems with what you’ve said here:
1. I think the current situation can be briefly summarised thus: a concerted attempt is being waged by elite liberalism to reassert itself (against right “populists”) and in doing so to re-establish its moral authority to lead and to re-embed third way style neo-liberalism or the technocratic management of late capitalism by the PMC. At the same time a ‘culture war’ is being waged between two sides both committed to neo-liberalism but who want to establish their leadership of it. The old elite v the new elite. Old money v transatlantic celebrity/big tech/‘woke PLC’ etc
My view is that sections of the left - whom I characterise as liberals - have collapsed into participating in this and choosing sides. This speaks to the class composition of much of the left but also a profound disorientation that manifests itself in myriad ways
Conversely, I don’t believe that my class has a dog in the fight and needs to re-remember that our interests are best served by challenging both sides and building our own politics, demands for economic democracy and forms of representation and then fighting for them.
2. You are right that the cleavage between the working class and liberalism is growing and has deepened. But you need to look historically about how that situation has come about. It’s was elite liberals who wrote the working class off. Not the other around. It was they who privileged other movements and ideas. It was they who wanted to detach the moorings and go it alone. And, unlike their opponents who think it but are better at not saying it, they are also responsible for some of the most grotesque stereotyping and demonisation of the abandoned communities that their technocratic accommodation with capital has produced.
My conclusion is that you are likely to be disappointed - not because of the reasons you fear - but because liberalism thinks the working class is defeated/reactionary/a basket of deplorables/stupid/white/all of the above and no longer values the uneasy alliance that briefly emerged in the 1950’s.
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gosub
~#
Ah but if you were still voting New Labour by 2001 then it wasn't tory policy you had a problem with, just people who called themselves tory
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Yeh after operation desert fox and the precipitation of massacres in Kosovo, after the terrorism act 2000, after the introduction of tuition fees...
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Reluctantly, and after years of not voting for Labour , I did vote that year for New Labour. Aside from wanting to get the Tories out I also wanted to prove to my friends who voted New Labour , with whom I spent the election night with in the Manchester Press Club, that getting the Tories out was only the first battle and that there would be others to fight against the very people we’d voted for . I never voted again for Labour until Corbyn who I had known for years and to be honest thought he meant well but was weak and tied up in the ‘isms ‘ of the 1980s.
gosub
~#
Ah yes, New Labour's triple priorty pledge of education, education, education.
Was an intersting column by William Hague last week Like the Tories in 1997, Labour is in a far worse position than it realises (telegraph.co.uk) where he seems to think the problem was and is tanks on lawns....Its a factor but, UK politics produces more consensus against rather than for. Any party, over time burns through its 'talent' and its goodwill
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i would be glad to light the fire if i thought you were speaking other than metaphorically
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Absolutely.
sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
The end of the transition period itself only happened a few months ago and already the UK is trying to rewrite what it signed up to, and the effects are still happening. Of course it should be talked about.
andysays
Love and solidarity
That still gives 1/4 of the Leave vote which didn't contribute to the Tory victory (and an unknown % of the Remain vote which did).
And of course it's in the Tories' interests to maintain the division on those terms, but that doesn't excuse anyone (however they voted in 2016) who claims to be anti-Tory for continuing to perpetuate it five years later.
December 2019 has only fixed that Leave/Remain dynamic if we accept that it's fixed, and if our arguments and actions continue to fix it.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
butcher
boner at the ready
And Australia, luckily it all turned out well in those Countries.......apart for those people who already lived there. No story is as simple as it seems.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
no one is in full control of their lives at other times either.
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