A thank you to Brexiteers.

[The39thStep]

How it played out in reality is one thing but there is detail of the position Lab wouldve taken in the 2017 manifesto.

I also was 'happy' for a rule-taking/alignment Norway outcome

Also at the time there was a brief and short lived remain but reform position by some on the left . Of course that attempt at some critical thinking just evaporated into hot air leaving the liberal FBPE obsessives to fly the flag .

 

[bimble]

It's why I voted leave. Genuinely a once in a generation opportunity to chuck a spanner in the works of a key ruling class project eta simply by voting. The technocratic project really is greater threat over the longer term to democratic interests than the short term ascendancy of the worst of our worst governing party.

i do understand that, in principle. Maybe my main problem is i'm too pessimistic but also impatient as well. So the amount of IFs involved in a good outcome from brexit are far too many and stretch too far from anything here and now to seem important.

Do you think within your own lifetime you'll see the UK having become a better place to live in than it would have been had it stayed inside the project?

 

[JimW]

i do understand that, in principle. Maybe my main problem is i'm too pessimistic but also impatient as well. So the amount of IFs involved in a good outcome from brexit are far too many and stretch too far from anything here and now to seem important.

Do you think within your own lifetime you'll see the UK having become a better place to live in than it would have been had it stayed inside the project?

I don't know, I'm also pessimistic as I think external factors from the climate/environmental crisis are going to create a really unpleasant and dangerous situation, but genuinely feel that the technocratic style both undermines democracy over the long run - world now too complex for us little folk to understand - and has an active part in making that complexity and remoteness (and thus ultimate fragility) in its push for the current global trade framework, which is after all what its initial remit was (trading bloc), then it followed the logic of that, which included abrogating all sorts of powers that popular actors like unions could no longer be trusted to wield.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

i do understand that, in principle. Maybe my main problem is i'm too pessimistic but also impatient as well. So the amount of IFs involved in a good outcome from brexit are far too many and stretch too far from anything here and now to seem important.

Do you think within your own lifetime you'll see the UK having become a better place to live in than it would have been had it stayed inside the project?

When we were in the EU there was already a steady decline in living standards happening year on year for most people in the UK. Brexit has disrupted that in a bunch of quite complicated ways, some of them postive and some of them negative.

Brexit was an indicator that a lot of people had had enough. So not Brexit itself, but what it indicated, shows that there is the potential to reset "business as usual". These things are messy though, so I can't offer any utopian visions or even a certaintly that things will get better.

 

[bimble]

Similar to JimW i'm much more worried about environmental collapse & its consequences right now, here and very soon i mean not in the future or elsewhere. I think that's made it even harder to have any kind of long term hopes for this or any other one country going its own way, just cant seem to do it, it feels almost frivolous tbh.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Remain and reform was my position. I was really surprised there wasn't some sort of fudge deal that more or less pleased everyone or something like Norway. That would've been my vote. I really wasn't expecting it to be a completely hard Brexit, even with Johnson leading because he's always been in favour of the EU until he realised he could become PM by campaigning for leave.

 

[existentialist]

I'm reminded of that Harry Enfield character who went on about being considerably richer than you. Only on here it's 'I'm considerably more working class than you'

"Prolier than thou"

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It's why I voted leave. Genuinely a once in a generation opportunity to chuck a spanner in the works of a key ruling class project eta simply by voting. The technocratic project really is greater threat over the longer term to democratic interests than the short term ascendancy of the worst of our worst governing party.

Spot on. Perfectly put

 

[MrSki]

Mrs Carrot is from your part of the world.

Any relation to Jasper?

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Any relation to Jasper?

Yes

 

[Ax^]

It's why I voted leave. Genuinely a once in a generation opportunity to chuck a spanner in the works of a key ruling class project eta simply by voting. The technocratic project really is greater threat over the longer term to democratic interests than the short term ascendancy of the worst of our worst governing party.

Fair point would be happeir if the governing party was not having a firesale of working class right and appear they still be in power for a decade

 

[Artaxerxes]

Remain and reform was my position. I was really surprised there wasn't some sort of fudge deal that more or less pleased everyone or something like Norway. That would've been my vote. I really wasn't expecting it to be a completely hard Brexit, even with Johnson leading because he's always been in favour of the EU until he realised he could become PM by campaigning for leave.

Other Leaves were available (indeed at one point the MPs from all parties spent a day voting down half a dozen options while the fbpe Twitter cheered them on)


What we got is the worst of leaves and the only leave that we were likely to get while the conservatives let the lunatics dictate policy and into cabinet.

 

[Yossarian]

It's why I voted leave. Genuinely a once in a generation opportunity to chuck a spanner in the works of a key ruling class project eta simply by voting. The technocratic project really is greater threat over the longer term to democratic interests than the short term ascendancy of the worst of our worst governing party.

Well said - the vote was, as usual, essentially a choice between flavours of shit sandwich and I don't know why the discussion so often goes back to how and why people voted in 2016, who the fuck cares anymore?

There was a period when other Brexits were possible but unless Dr. Strange has zapped us into the multiverse, the Brexit that ended up happening was the only Brexit, and people who voted Leave six long and strange years ago shouldn't feel personally wounded when people criticise how badly the Tory government has fucked it up.

The whole marching around with EU flags and calling for a second referendum thing seemed kind of stupid to me at the time, Britain appears doomed to an elliptical orbit around the more enthusiastic EU members and the issue's never going to go away.

And there is one definite benefit of Brexit - the British experience has set an example other countries seem disinclined to follow, making it easier to present a united front against China and Russia.

 

[brogdale]

It's why I voted leave. Genuinely a once in a generation opportunity to chuck a spanner in the works of a key ruling class project eta simply by voting. The technocratic project really is greater threat over the longer term to democratic interests than the short term ascendancy of the worst of our worst governing party.

A well argued and expressed position.

Although I accept that for some Leave voters the 'spanner in the works' of the "ruling class" idea was foremost, I still feel unconvinced about this line of argument. In the neoliberal context there has to be reductive risks to identifying politicians as a "ruling class". Globalised and finnancialised capital with no perceived regional, let alone national, obligations appeared and continue to appear comfortable with the UK's withdrawal from the European trading and regulatory project. After all the 'choice' put before the UK electorate was alternative visions of how best to accommodate or accelerate neoliberal capital's interests.

 

[bimble]

Deregulation, “liberating businesses to maximise on the opportunities of brexit” etc etc is the only thing that is a clear next step so far, as in an actually happening result of brexit, that and a weak currency. How that impacts people who live here we don’t really know yet but seems very unlikely to hurt the bosses more than it hurts everyone else.

 

[philosophical]

Leave voters voted for a land border between the UK and the EU.
All speculation beyond this about aspiration and motivation of voters is simply that, speculation.
Leavers voted for a controlled border between the UK and the EU on the island of Ireland. A border that has provoked terrible terrorism and bloodshed which has been to the fore in my lifetime.
Until the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

 

[Duncan2]

Fair point would be happeir if the governing party was not having a firesale of working class right and appear they still be in power for a decade

I have to say the thing about Tories still being in power for a decade looks a bit shakier now they have been obliged to jettison their poster boy for Brexit notwithstanding the current disorientation of the Labour Party.

 

[JimW]

A well argued and expressed position.

Although I accept that for some Leave voters the 'spanner in the works' of the "ruling class" idea was foremost, I still feel unconvinced about this line of argument. In the neoliberal context there has to be reductive risks to identifying politicians as a "ruling class". Globalised and finnancialised capital with no perceived regional, let alone national, obligations appeared and continue to appear comfortable with the UK's withdrawal from the European trading and regulatory project. After all the 'choice' put before the UK electorate was alternative visions of how best to accommodate or accelerate neoliberal capital's interests.

It's not about personifying a ruling class - the driving logic is the set of economic arrangements it serves and further embeds - and of course capital is never a monolith, but the current most dangerous strand in terms of presenting a plausible stable system is this democracy lite technocratic strand; it has much in common with the Chinese state in its direction of travel despite the different history.
Thatcher famously said economics is the method, and that's the purpose of a suprastate that can take various aspects of the economy out of reach of electorates in member states, not because it's some dastardly scheme, because that's the vision. An horrible historical error.

 

[brogdale]

It's not about personifying a ruling class - the driving logic is the set of economic arrangements it serves and further embeds - and of course capital is never a monolith, but the current most dangerous strand in terms of presenting a plausible stable system is this democracy lite technocratic strand; it has much in common with the Chinese state in its direction of travel despite the different history.
Thatcher famously said economics is the method, and that's the purpose of a suprastate that can take various aspects of the economy out of reach of electorates in member states, not because it's some dastardly scheme, because that's the vision. An horrible historical error.

Yep, that's certainly a coherent rationale for engaging with the Tory referendum and it was pretty much Streeck's view as well. The thing I struggle with is that it seems like it's necessary to have faith/belief in the capacity for 1 national polity (sat between technocratic, de-democratised blocs) to impose any democratic influence on neoliberal capital. Personally, I can't see any players within what passes for our representative democracy with any political will to do that, let alone ability. We may be invited to choose different sets of sub-contracted managers of the scaffolding around the neoliberal project, but 'the economy' remains out of reach to the electorate whether we're in to out of the supra state.

 

[JimW]

Yep, that's certainly a coherent rationale for engaging with the Tory referendum and it was pretty much Streeck's view as well. The thing I struggle with is that it seems like it's necessary to have faith/belief in the capacity for 1 national polity (sat between technocratic, de-democratised blocs) to impose any democratic influence on neoliberal capital. Personally, I can't see any players within what passes for our representative democracy with any political will to do that, let alone ability. We may be invited to choose different sets of sub-contracted managers of the scaffolding around the neoliberal project, but 'the economy' remains out of reach to the electorate whether we're in to out of the supra state.

Why does it imply faith? It just means that of the two shit options you have a somewhat better chance here, plus the hiatus in the glorious roll to a new dispensation. Again, don't think anyone thought it was sufficient to deliver much of anything, it was just the correct choice of the binary. All the work is still left to do.

 

[philosophical]

Do the work of sorting out the land border.

 

[brogdale]

Why does it imply faith? It just means that of the two shit options you have a somewhat better chance here, plus the hiatus in the glorious roll to a new dispensation. Again, don't think anyone thought it was sufficient to deliver much of anything, it was just the correct choice of the binary. All the work is still left to do.

Yep, maybe 'faith' is too value-laden a term to use, but I think I'm reading you right that you do believe the Lexit position that exiting the supra state has improved the chance of working towards a democratic challenge to neoliberal capital. I suppose where we diverge is that I don't think that I ever real bought into the Lexit belief that being in or out of the Union made any real difference to the prospect of democratic socialism in the UK capable of challenging the neoliberal order.

My perception is that there were significant numbers of voters who did believe that Brexit, in and of itself, would be sufficient to deliver real change, and some still do. To that extent the Tories' ongoing framing of the spectacle as an 'insurgent' triumph of national liberation was and is, IMO, a damaging distraction from the realities of the neoliberal base that impoverishes our class.

I'm yet to hear any convincing argument explaining what exiting the trading arrangements with the supra state did to enhance the chances of challenge to neoliberal capital.

 

[Chilli.s]

It doesnt matter what was voted for and what the outcome was when such a complicated event is reduced to an in/out decision. The failure in all this lies squarely at the feet of the people who instigated it. It aint a binary choice by any stretch of anyones imagination

 

[not a trot]

This, this is what really fucks me off about this thread. Several posters on here think they're some sort of spokes persons for the working class as if the entire working class all think one way and that if you think Brexit wasn't exactly a great idea you're some how not working class enough, don't know anybody who's working class or aren't really working class at all and that you only voted remain because you're some sort of wet liberal who thinks the EU is a flawless institution.

The idea that those same people are now saying things like 'if only Labour got their act together we'd have a different Brexit' is comedy gold.

There is of course the beginngs of a fight back from unions but I don't see how Brexit has enabled that. Being in the EU hasn't exactly stunted France's Unions has it?

Immigration will have been the main reason most working class people voted leave.

Other Leaves were available (indeed at one point the MPs from all parties spent a day voting down half a dozen options while the fbpe Twitter cheered them on)


What we got is the worst of leaves and the only leave that we were likely to get while the conservatives let the lunatics dictate policy and into cabinet.

Bollocks. The lunatics were the ones who gave Johnson his thumping majority. And all because they believed Brexit would stop immigrants coming in. The thick cunts still don't understand the difference between, immigration and freedom of movement. And as for the neoliberalism bollocks, how many genuine working class people even know what that is, or even care.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Immigration will have been the main reason most working class people voted leave.

Bollocks. The lunatics were the ones who gave Johnson his thumping majority. And all because they believed Brexit would stop immigrants coming in. The thick cunts still don't understand the difference between, immigration and freedom of movement. And as for the neoliberalism bollocks, how many genuine working class people even know what that is, or even care.

I was referring to the ERG group that May went over and above to placate.

 

[brogdale]

It doesnt matter what was voted for and what the outcome was when such a complicated event is reduced to an in/out decision. The failure in all this lies squarely at the feet of the people who instigated it. It aint a binary choice by any stretch of anyones imagination

I dunno, it was perfectly legitimate for pressure groups to agitate and organise to instigate a withdrawal from the supra state even by means of a binary plebiscite. After all that's exactly what the UK electorate were offered in 1975 when asked to ratify the governmental decision to join. I suppose the key difference is that back then the 'change' option was pretty much 'remain', whereas 41 years later the 'change' option was out. If blame is to be attached to anyone it is surely to the Tory administration that drove the referendum for intra-party political purposes with little if any thought given to the chances of success for the 'change' option.

 

[Dystopiary]

Immigration will have been the main reason most working class people voted leave.

Not sure about that. Of course it was a reason for lots of people but most working class people aren't anti-immigrant. And surely there were at least as many middle class people who voted leave for that reason.

Bollocks. The lunatics were the ones who gave Johnson his thumping majority. And all because they believed Brexit would stop immigrants coming in. The thick cunts still don't understand the difference between, immigration and freedom of movement. And as for the neoliberalism bollocks, how many genuine working class people even know what that is, or even care.

Honestly not sure working class people - especially younger wc people - are any less likely to know what it is than mc.

 

[Duncan2]

Not sure about that. Of course it was a reason for lots of people but most working class people aren't anti-immigrant. And surely there were at least as many middle class people who voted leave for that reason.



Honestly not sure working class people - especially younger wc people - are any less likely to know what it is than mc.

This

 

[editor]

This does a good job of showing the very real damage that Brexit has done

In the face of Westminster’s mixture of silence and forced optimism, Brexit is having a measurably dire effect on just about all of us. A recent survey done by the opinion pollsters Ipsos showed that the proportion of Britons who think the UK’s exit from the EU has made their daily life worse has gone up from 30% in June 2021 to 45% now, a figure that includes just under a quarter of people who voted leave.

Spiralling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10 reasons Brexit has been disastrous for Britain

As small businesses crumble, shelves get emptier and the care-worker shortage intensifies, life outside the EU is having a dire effect on many of us. Why aren’t politicians talking about it?

www.theguardian.com

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

This does a good job of showing the very real damage that Brexit has done

Spiralling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10 reasons Brexit has been disastrous for Britain

As small businesses crumble, shelves get emptier and the care-worker shortage intensifies, life outside the EU is having a dire effect on many of us. Why aren’t politicians talking about it?

www.theguardian.com

I'm afraid your bias is showing through here. Your examples may well be true, but you fail to point out all the benefits of Brexit, like er, um, you know, thingy and suchlike.