Brexit or Bremain - Urban votes

[two sheds]

i corrected it in between you replying

 

[ViolentPanda]

ah the usual snide comment from the usual cunt

Projection.

 

[ViolentPanda]

so what... my point was just because some arseholes are voting for the same side doesn't mean you change your view... this issues haven't changed

if the BNP suddenly supported a rise in the minimum wage should people campaign for the opposite?

How come you always use hyperbole as a first rather than a last resort.

I don't blame it on your politics, by the way. I blame it on your proven inability to actually engage in reasoned debate with anyone who doesn't agree with you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Interestingly, or not, my part of Reading is a Green Party stronghold with Labour a fighting second. It's a mixed area. Where I live is tiny terraces and is w/c and lower middle families. Across the main road are the large semis worth half a million plus full of solidly m/c liberals. During elections Green and Labour posters appear all over. In this referendum there's been very few posters. Till now. Suddenly almost every house in the large semi area has a Remain poster in their window. But absolutely nothing in the streets around me.

Says something I think.

Fuck all on the windows round here (inner London council estate that's still more than 2/3rds tenants), in terms of the referendum.

 

[killer b]

Projected votes in Manchester show the three most wealthiest boroughs will vote Remain , the poorest Exit
EU poll: How will Greater Manchester vote in the referendum?

That seems to be reflected by the national polls - the wealthy are overwhelmingly favouring remain, the poor favour leave. I saw a very revealing article in the liberal press last week going on about how all is not lost 'cause the poor don't vote and the wealthy do, as if that's a good thing, and there's been regular idiocy from the remain camp going on about how the lower your education level, the more likely you are to vote leave: and the reason for this is intelligence rather than class. It's been quite an eye opener.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Partly leaving these here so I can come back to them later, partly because others may be interested in reading them.

Brexit is a fake revolt – working-class culture is being hijacked to help the elite | Paul Mason

Leaving the EU will not free us from TTIP | Another Europe is Possible

 

[Pickman's model]

How come you always use hyperbole as a first rather than a last resort.

I don't blame it on your politics, by the way. I blame it on your proven inability to actually engage in reasoned debate with anyone who doesn't agree with you.

To be fair he's not so good with the oddballs who agree with him either

 

[Pickman's model]

That seems to be reflected by the national polls - the wealthy are overwhelmingly favouring remain, the poor favour leave. I saw a very revealing article in the liberal press last week going on about how all is not lost 'cause the poor don't vote and the wealthy do, as if that's a good thing, and there's been regular idiocy from the remain camp going on about how the lower your education level, the more likely you are to vote leave: and the reason for this is intelligence rather than class. It's been quite an eye opener.

Yeh, anyone daring to suggest departing has been fingered by the 'liberal' press as an uneducated thick racist oik.

 

[two sheds]

has been fingered by the 'liberal' press

Good point well made.

 

[The39thStep]

Partly leaving these here so I can come back to them later, partly because others may be interested in reading them.

Brexit is a fake revolt – working-class culture is being hijacked to help the elite | Paul Mason

Leaving the EU will not free us from TTIP | Another Europe is Possible

I generally like Paul Mason, his book post capitalism was very useful and I admire his attempt at describing a future society that is not some re-run of Russia 1917 or a barter led anarchist commune but something actually might just be possible. However this article is primarlythere to serve his most recently held belief that the EU might be reformable if we have a left labour govt backed up by radical Scottish nationalism and similar allies in Europe.
It's also I feel partly a response to an article a few days before Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Does a Leave vote have to lead to an increase in unemployment? What is it about the markets that, supposedly, necessitate that Leave equals job losses? Could it be the same factors that supposedly necessitate higher business taxes equal less productivity/job losses?

Given the market instability that the referendum has caused - a cynic might even say "engineered" - either Remain or Leave could have an adverse effect on employment, employment rights, wages etc. The market can always find justifications for screwing workers over.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I generally like Paul Mason, his book post capitalism was very useful and I admire his attempt at describing a future society that is not some re-run of Russia 1917 or a barter led anarchist commune but something actually might just be possible. However this article is primarlythere to serve his most recently held belief that the EU might be reformable if we have a left labour give backed up by radical Scottish nationalism and similar allies in Europe.
It's also I feel partly a response to an article a few days before Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris.

Thanks, I will have a look at that too.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I generally like Paul Mason, his book post capitalism was very useful and I admire his attempt at describing a future society that is not some re-run of Russia 1917 or a barter led anarchist commune but something actually might just be possible. However this article is primarlythere to serve his most recently held belief that the EU might be reformable if we have a left labour give backed up by radical Scottish nationalism and similar allies in Europe.
It's also I feel partly a response to an article a few days before Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris.

He's spot on here "They are right, too, to worry about the cultural impact. In a big, multi-ethnic city, absorbing a lot of migrants is easy. In small towns, where social capital is already meagre, the migrant population can feel unabsorbed. The structure of temporary migration from Europe means many of those who come don’t vote, or don’t have the right to – which feels unsettling if you understand that it is only by voting that the workforce ever achieved progress. It feels as if, through migration, the establishment got to create the kind of working class it always wanted: fragmented, dislocated, politically distant, weak".

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck all on the windows round here (inner London council estate that's still more than 2/3rds tenants), in terms of the referendum.

Tbh I've never seen election posters on council estates.

 

[chilango]

Tbh I've never seen election posters on council estates.

Is that cos you never go on council estates?

 

[Pickman's model]

Is that cos you never go on council estates?

No

The only ones I recall seeing were for auld communist monty goldman in Hackney years ago, and those were on the side of a community centre.

 

[hot air baboon]

Fuck all on the windows round here (inner London council estate that's still more than 2/3rds tenants), in terms of the referendum.

...isn't that Lambeth ? ...supposedly the most pro EU place in England





whilst Havering should get together for a re-worked version of Stalin wasn't Stallin'

The most Eurosceptic and pro-EU places in Britain are revealed

 

[ViolentPanda]

I am wavering a bit as the vote approaches. I guess that's the way it goes with such a big decision.

Even if "Leave" wins, especially if it is by a small margin, there is no guarantee that we will actually Leave, as the referendum is advisory rather than legally binding. Ultimately, the decision lies with the government. I can see them arguing that a small Leave win is not mandate enough to leave (not that a narrow remain win would be interpreted in such a way).

I was disgusted by UKIP recycling Nazi propaganda last week, on the same day Jo Cox was murdered; though trying not to let symptoms of right wing fuckwittery overwrite the many decent non right-wing reasons for a leave vote.

I seriously think people need to step away from calling UKIP "Nazi". Quasi-fascist without a doubt; racist certainly; with a membership that includes some former and current neo-Nazis almost definitely, but "Nazi"?

The trouble is, no outcome really is very palatable. If Remain wins we are shackled to a neoliberal happy-clappers outfit who in an ideal world would impose TTIP and all kinds of other free-market crap, whilst at the same time sitting and shuffling awkwardly as Hungary and Bulgaria put up razor wire fences and beat up /arrest defenceless and desperate people; as Austria, Croatia and France flirt with electing fascists and neo-Nazis. And, some of our taxpayers cash goes to a rising despot in Turkey who feels so emboldened by our unelected leaders' moral squeamishness that he shoots unarmed migrants on his border and is engaged in an all out war against Kurds in Syria.

All the countries you've named above, have more that "flirted" with electing fascists and neo-Nazis, although I'd argue that you'd have to analyse the post-war political history of each country from 1945 to now, in order to appreciate why they might be doing so. None of it comes out of a vacuum.

If Leave wins, Putin is happy, Farage will be filmed laughing half cut in the pub with Gove and Johnson, and who knows what kind of libertarian fantasists playground the UK will come in a very short space of time. This for me is the trouble with the Lexit platform. There is simply no thinking whatsoever on how to resist the plans of the Farages and Goves of this world, and by what means many of the neoliberal gains of the last thirty years could be reversed in a non-EU Britain. Indeed, it seems likely that those two have a plan to turn the UK into some kind of Singapore off the coast of Europe.

Why do you think there's "no thinking"?
It seems to me that if a government - as ours have done since the 1970s - constantly piles the pressure onto the working class, eroding terms and conditions, housing security etc, that leaves very little room for organising except through traditional routes such as unions, and they've spent much of the last 35 years protecting their assets, rather than their membership. "The people" have neither had the time or the means to formulate resistance. That's been left to dilettantes and think-tanks shilling for power.

 

[8den]

I seriously think people need to step away from calling UKIP "Nazi". Quasi-fascist without a doubt; racist certainly; with a membership that includes some former and current neo-Nazis almost definitely, but "Nazi"?

Say what you like about the Nazis but it's unfair to tarnish their reputation by associated them with UKIP members?

 

[Red O]

He's spot on here "They are right, too, to worry about the cultural impact. In a big, multi-ethnic city, absorbing a lot of migrants is easy. In small towns, where social capital is already meagre, the migrant population can feel unabsorbed. The structure of temporary migration from Europe means many of those who come don’t vote, or don’t have the right to – which feels unsettling if you understand that it is only by voting that the workforce ever achieved progress. It feels as if, through migration, the establishment got to create the kind of working class it always wanted: fragmented, dislocated, politically distant, weak".

Mason's own words: 'all over Britain, people have fallen for the scam. In the Brexit referendum, we’ve seen what happens when working-class culture gets hijacked'. Translation: the dumb proles don't know what they're doing. Never mind the fact that WC support for leave pre-dates the campaign.

 

[The39thStep]

...isn't that Lambeth ? ...supposedly the most pro EU place in England

View attachment 88652

View attachment 88653

whilst Havering should get together for a re-worked version of Stalin wasn't Stallin'

The most Eurosceptic and pro-EU places in Britain are revealed

Another attempt at this here

 

[Red O]

I generally like Paul Mason, his book post capitalism was very useful and I admire his attempt at describing a future society that is not some re-run of Russia 1917 or a barter led anarchist commune but something actually might just be possible. However this article is primarlythere to serve his most recently held belief that the EU might be reformable if we have a left labour govt backed up by radical Scottish nationalism and similar allies in Europe.
It's also I feel partly a response to an article a few days before Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris.

Mason's article seems to be there primarily to promote his apparent belief that the working class isn't the best judge of its own interests.

Edit: it's completely a response to Harris's infinitely better article.

 

[steeplejack]

I seriously think people need to step away from calling UKIP "Nazi". Quasi-fascist without a doubt; racist certainly; with a membership that includes some former and current neo-Nazis almost definitely, but "Nazi"?

I didn't call UKIP Nazi. However their latest poster appears to employ the same visual tropew as Nazi propaganda. I agree with you that they are more along the line of contemporary nationalist-populists.

All the countries you've named above, have more that "flirted" with electing fascists and neo-Nazis, although I'd argue that you'd have to analyse the post-war political history of each country from 1945 to now, in order to appreciate why they might be doing so. None of it comes out of a vacuum.

I'm well aware of that, I should have been clearer; I am talking about elections in the last twelve months; clerical fascists /populist nationalists in Croatia; Le Pen in France; narow squeak with Haider's successors in Austria.

Why do you think there's "no thinking"?
It seems to me that if a government - as ours have done since the 1970s - constantly piles the pressure onto the working class, eroding terms and conditions, housing security etc, that leaves very little room for organising except through traditional routes such as unions, and they've spent much of the last 35 years protecting their assets, rather than their membership. "The people" have neither had the time or the means to formulate resistance. That's been left to dilettantes and think-tanks shilling for power.

True again, I don't disagree. How does this very reasonable analysis help in charting a non-libertarian pro-working class post-Brexit path? In fact in the circumstances you outline you all but state that this is impossible, and therefore a Lexit is a leap in the dark.

 

[DotCommunist]

Lexit is a leap in the dark.

the devil you know is still the devil

 

[steeplejack]

yeah.

bleak, isn't it?

 

[steeplejack]

Brexit or not, this is an early piece of libertarian architecture amenable to either outcome. Sponsor: Letwin, O.

 

[treelover]

That seems to be reflected by the national polls - the wealthy are overwhelmingly favouring remain, the poor favour leave. I saw a very revealing article in the liberal press last week going on about how all is not lost 'cause the poor don't vote and the wealthy do, as if that's a good thing, and there's been regular idiocy from the remain camp going on about how the lower your education level, the more likely you are to vote leave: and the reason for this is intelligence rather than class. It's been quite an eye opener.

I'm a cautious remainer but its becoming clear that brexit for many poor working class people is a big FU to the comfortably off and a cry for help, sneering at them like many of the liberal left have done is counterproductive. If the result is remain, the wider left shouldn't feel vindicated, triumphalist, etc, but reorient itself, stop chasing every fashionable cause SWP style and take on basic issues: housing, social security, ZHC, rogue landlords, workfare, etc.

 

[killer b]

shut the fuck up about the SWP. you're the only person left in the country who even remembers who they were.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Mason's own words: 'all over Britain, people have fallen for the scam. In the Brexit referendum, we’ve seen what happens when working-class culture gets hijacked'. Translation: the dumb proles don't know what they're doing. Never mind the fact that WC support for leave pre-dates the campaign.

Yeah, the reason I highlighted the section was that Mason correctly identifies a list of genuine WC concerns and then dismises them with a demand that they line up behind the Party that abadoned them and helped create many of the problems in the first place.

 

[butchersapron]

I generally like Paul Mason, his book post capitalism was very useful and I admire his attempt at describing a future society that is not some re-run of Russia 1917 or a barter led anarchist commune but something actually might just be possible. However this article is primarlythere to serve his most recently held belief that the EU might be reformable if we have a left labour govt backed up by radical Scottish nationalism and similar allies in Europe.
It's also I feel partly a response to an article a few days before Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris.

It's also shit.