Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[DotCommunist]

This liberal 'we need gas granddad to stop Brexit' intergenerational stuff is becoming more and more common isn't it.

ties in with a similar 'we'll outlive and breed conservatives' line of thought also favoured among liberals. Good luck with waiting for the other person to just die ennit, thats a philosophy of hope right there

 

[sealion]

<edited for rethink>

You contradicted your first reply. There is no rethink needed. It makes you look daft, give it up.

 

[William of Walworth]

I don't deny being daft, but I'm thoroughly fed up with pretty much all Brexit-related stuff at the moment.

 

[SaskiaJayne]

Of people I know that voted leave. Broadly their reasons were to stop us being ruled by The EU. To stop immigration for which they blame the crisis in the NHS & the housing crisis. None of them even considered trade & still don’t. You can call it an ideology. They voted leave & they want to leave. Listen to LBC & local radio phone ins. The leavers mostly have this anger in them. When questioned about trade they don’t really seem to care. They gloss over the nuts & bolts of actually leaving. Their worry now seems to be that they are being shafted by the government & that in the end we won’t actually leave.

If the above seems vague then it is. It’s not really a conclusion. Just an overall impression.

 

[redsquirrel]

Best retreat, Helen Back ... you'll only ever get abuse here on Lexit75

Us 'Remoaners' will only ever be accused of 'elitist' 'liberal' 'condescension' if 'we' even dream of suggesting that the Leave 52pc/Remain 48pc result might principally have been driven by differential turnout**

**Plus by a whole lot of completely justifiable anti-Tory/anti-Toryism anger, and by the thorough incompetence/complacency of the Cameron/Osbourne led Remain campaign ....

Absolute cobblers. People who come out with anti-democrtatic, patronising garbage like Helen Black will get pulled up on it though, rightly. In fact there was little/no abuse of Helen Black at all, some piss taking/dismissal of the crap they posted.

 

[MightyTibberton]

I don't think it should be considered controversial or condescending to say that we don't have an enormously politically engaged electorate with a fantastically sophisticated popular political culture. Politics is a bit of fringe interest, and to be interested to the point where you're discussing it on the likes of Urban 75...!

It is sad that the very nature of that fucking referendum has encouraged a lot of binary and broad-brush reaction but it's not too surprising.

It certainly does flow both ways. The people who disrupted Sadiq Khan's speech yesterday were described as pro-Brexit, and they brought along a model of a bloody gallows. 'Traitors', 'enemies of the people', 'pick up a rifle', 'ready for war'... and this Isn't from someone on some message board, it's on newspaper front pages and from political parties. Perhaps it'll wind down in time... but even yesterday I heard a pro-Brexit Tory MP say he thought that a second referendum would 'render the country ungovernable'! So maybe not...

 

[SaskiaJayne]

On LBC just now. Talking about whether Labour should be in favour of staying in single market & customs union. Caller saying he voted leave & “would crawl over broken glass to leave again” he said yes we should leave single market/customs union & let the government get the best deal possible. He couldn’t explain it any further than that. I doubt he cares about anything except leaving the EU. I think many leave voters just want their choice respected. That comes before anything else. They voted leave to stop paying into the EU & to stop immigration. Anything less than that & they will feel cheated.

 

[MightyTibberton]

I should say that I don't believe that I'm some sophisticated political genius... no no no nooooooo! I do think it'd be good if we did have a more engaged electorate and a more sophisticated popular political culture though and I wonder how you go about getting that. I think we'd have more left-wing politics if we did.

 

[J Ed]

If only voters had the sort of nous required to dismiss 52% of the country as either 'old people or white nationalists'.

 

[redsquirrel]

I don't think it should be considered controversial or condescending to say that we don't have an enormously politically engaged electorate with a fantastically sophisticated popular political culture. Politics is a bit of fringe interest, and to be interested to the point where you're discussing it on the likes of Urban 75...!

Helen Black talked about 'Old people and white nationalists', 'old people who have less of a future, some of whom remember WW2.' not about 'political engagement'.

But while it's less crude than the rubbish Helen Black came out with, your post actually has much of the same liberal condescension. What is 'political engagement' or a 'sophisticated popular political culture'? How are these measured?

It seems to mean little more than voting in elections and being a liberal. And again the unpolitical masses appear, they don't do what you want to restrict politics to so they aren't political.

 

[SaskiaJayne]

Perhaps see this in terms of those with opposing views at daggers drawn with each other with no common ground whatsoever? Remainers & leavers are equally dissmissive of each other’s views & many remainers & leavers are passionate about the views they hold. Leavers are at worst ignorant racists & remainers at worst are hand wringing liberal snobs who cannot accept they lost.

 

[redsquirrel]

The creation of 'leavers' and 'remainers' as political groups speaks volumes. The political reasoning for voting Remain or Leave, or to abstain, is washed away and we're just left with these two supposed groups.

I'm not a leaver I'm a communist. And I might be dismissive of 'remainers' but I'm not dismissive of comrades who voted remain.

 

[2hats]

a pro-Brexit Tory MP say he thought that a second referendum would 'render the country ungovernable'!

Where do I sign up for that?

If only voters had the sort of nous required to dismiss 52% of the country as either 'old people or white nationalists'.

Maybe they only have sufficient nous to dismiss 27% of the country?

 

[SaskiaJayne]

There is a whole internet full of intellectual views & reasoning for both leave & remain but it takes plenty of time to read, learn, inwardly digest & draw conclusions from all of this. Most probably do not have the time to do this so it just comes down to continuous leave/remain soundbites.

 

[DotCommunist]

you probably need to stop assuming your getting a representative sample from radio phone in callers m8

 

[DotCommunist]

What is 'political engagement' or a 'sophisticated popular political culture'? How are these measured?

regular watching of newsnight probably

 

[MightyTibberton]

There is a whole internet full of intellectual views & reasoning for both leave & remain but it takes plenty of time to read, learn, inwardly digest & draw conclusions from all of this. Most probably do not have the time to do this so it just comes down to continuous leave/remain soundbites.

I'd agree with that. I'd also say that someone committed enough to phone up a talk show to defend his views is probably an outlier too.

If committed remainders want a second referendum they should certainly lay off the simplistic caricatures and focus on people who weren't' that committed and who might have voted on the basis of the £350 million promise or the idea of prosperity via global trade. Also on the around 30% of people who didn't vote.

One of the biggest positives for them, I think, is the Brexiters who are coming out now with, 'well, we always said it was going to be hard...' because I don't think that that's how people will remember the Leave campaign.

FWIW I think Garage is just stirring it for personal and purely political means and I don't think there is a massive public outcry for a second vote. That said people on Twitter keep referencing very high numbers of Labour voters in favour of soft Brexit (stay in SM) and in favour of a vote on the deal, but I haven't actually seen the poll they reference.

 

[SaskiaJayne]

you probably need to stop assuming your getting a representative sample from radio phone in callers m8

I’m getting a representive sample of those who phone into talk radio. So people with strong enough views to actually want to air them. To comment on people’s views you have to hear them. Apart from the people you might talk about it with, friends neighbours & others you meet in the course of your life you only have the internet & media sources. If none of those are representitive samples then what is?

 

[redsquirrel]

Can we have some examples of what is a 'sophisticated popular political culture', and how people might increase their 'political sophistication', which web pages should they read?

 

[DotCommunist]

try the daily mail comment section as well maybe, that'll also give you a high opinion of people

 

[William of Walworth]

Absolute cobblers. People who come out with anti-democrtatic, patronising garbage like Helen Black will get pulled up on it though, rightly. In fact there was little/no abuse of Helen Black at all, some piss taking/dismissal of the crap they posted.

I won't delete my response last night to Helen's post, but I've had a rethink and I agree with far less of her post than I initially thought I did. There's a couple of lines in it that were (IMO) just factual common sense, but I do think she's wrong to attribute the majority of Leave voting to anti-foreigner motives. As I see it, wish to generally to kick the arse of those in charge was just one of the much more important drivers for most (oversimplifying for brevity there, but you get my point I'm sure).

 

[William of Walworth]

If only voters had the sort of nous required to dismiss 52% of the country as either 'old people or white nationalists'.

You sum in one line why I don't agree with Helen Back's post any more.

I was an idiot for missing or overlooking ( ) that particular line you quote from her post
Yesterday's beer and cider contributed to my idiocy there (explanation not excuse)

 

[MightyTibberton]

A poll by Comres (I can't do links on this machine! Sorry!) In the last week of the campaign found that immigration was the most important issue for the majority of Leave supporters. Doesn't make all those people racists of course, but I saw a huge amount of anti-Muslim propaganda on Facebook during the campaign. Yet more fun problems of fitting a mash of hugely complex issues into a one-question vote!

Don't mix beer and cider! Yoiks

 

[Pickman's model]

A poll by Comres (I can't do links on this machine! Sorry!) In the last week of the campaign found that immigration was the most important issue for the majority of Leave supporters. Doesn't make all those people racists of course, but I saw a huge amount of anti-Muslim propaganda on Facebook during the campaign. Yet more fun problems of fitting a mash of hugely complex issues into a one-question vote!

Don't mix beer and cider! Yoiks

Nothing wrong with snakebite

 

[mojo pixy]

What is 'political engagement' or a 'sophisticated popular political culture'? How are these measured?

It seems to mean little more than voting in elections and being a liberal. And again the unpolitical masses appear, they don't do what you want to restrict politics to so they aren't political.

Not voting in general elections, not voting in council elections, not running for the local council or assisting someone who is (a very select little group, that one), not joining or positively contributing action to a union at work, not being involved in any kind of collective action in the workplace apart from going to work, not organising or joining protests, demonstrations, not writing letters to councillors and/or MPs, not organising or joining local actions to support some group in need or just to pick up litter, not actively boycotting X or Y...

I've got no time. It's boring. It's not my thing. People are already doing that.

It's not just not voting that makes people politically disengaged.

 

[Wilf]

A poll by Comres (I can't do links on this machine! Sorry!) In the last week of the campaign found that immigration was the most important issue for the majority of Leave supporters. Doesn't make all those people racists of course, but I saw a huge amount of anti-Muslim propaganda on Facebook during the campaign. Yet more fun problems of fitting a mash of hugely complex issues into a one-question vote!

Don't mix beer and cider! Yoiks

Whatever the mix of motives was for leave voters (anti-immigration Vs more positive anti-politician revenge, responding to neo-liberal abandonment etc.), whatever the % of the electorate who voted, whatever went on on facebook, a majority voted for it. In the sense of the rules of the game, the common understanding of those who set up the referendum and those who voted in it, 52% was enough to sway it. FWIW, I have a feeling neo-liberalism outside of the EU will be marginally worse than inside of it, mainly because of the process of disengagement and the trading position the UK will encounter in the future. I was a natural leave voter, but couldn't vote leave in the sense of voting for anything headed by Johnson, farage et al - along with, more importantly, the absence of any kind of lexit option. But then whilst I have a feeling things will get worse after we leave, it really is end of story. There will be plenty of parliamentary and inter-elite wrangling over access/semi-access to the single market, plenty of that. But ultimately, any kind of narrative around the idea the voters were racist and/or hoodwinked is pointless.

Equally FWIW, in terms of any kind of democratic theory/constitutional position, the idea of a 2nd referendum would have been entirely proper. However Cameron was too thick/arrogant to contemplate a defeat so, again, there's no validity for doing it as a retro-fit.

 

[MightyTibberton]

Nothing wrong with snakebite

People who drink snakebite are unpeople.

There! I said it! You were all thinking it but I had the courage to say it!

 

[SaskiaJayne]

Whether “things will get worse” after brexit is probably more down to which UK government is elected at next GE rather than brexit itself.

 

[Pickman's model]

People who drink snakebite are unpeople.

There! I said it! You were all thinking it but I had the Courage to say it!

Have a double diamond

 

[Pickman's model]

Whether “things will get worse” after brexit is probably more down to which UK government is elected at next GE rather than brexit itself.

Because...