andysays
Love and solidarity
No reasons at all, obviously.
Of the 17 million plus people who voted to leave, not one of us had any reasons, we just did it to piss you and Bob Geldof off because we're cunts
UK music industry, bands, work permits and Brexit
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Of the 17 million plus people who voted to leave, not one of us had any reasons, we just did it to piss you and Bob Geldof off because we're cunts
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I don't think it would win any pedantry awards to point out that that is a reason.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
A bloody good one though.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
No idea really. 'taking back control'. Of what? Borders, mostly, what else could it be? To do what? To keep the foreigners out. Why do you want to keep the foreigners out? I can think of three reasons put forward: taking 'our jobs', suppression of wages and the housing shortage.
Taking the last one first, the population of the UK has risen very modestly in the last 50 years, by a little under 20 per cent. The housing shortage is not due to immigration pressure. It is due to decades of policy-making by tory and labour governments intentionally destroying social housing, and shortage is what 'the market provides' in situations of private ownership of essential resources, where permanent structural shortage maximises returns on capital. The big thatcherite lie, and one of her most pernicious legacies.
So foreigners are 'taking our jobs'? Nope. A job market is not a zero-sum game. Every reason to think that without immigration there would be more unemployment, not less.
Foreigners coming in and undercutting and suppressing wages. More legs in that one, but again it's not a simple equation. The reduction in percentage of gdp paid out in wages is a worldwide phenomenon, and wages are suppressed using many different measures, primarily not immigration but 'globalisation' and moving capital around in search of maximised returns. But where it is the case that you have immigrants prepared to do work for less, what's the best way to tackle that? Blame the workers on low wages, or band together with those workers to demand a better deal for all from those who actually profit from the suppression of wages (the same bunch, generally speaking, who profit from the shortage of housing - there is a common enemy here)?
And then there are those, perhaps one per cent of people who voted leave (maybe as high as two per cent - I'll be generous), who see brexit as an opportunity to throw off the shackles of neoliberalism and build a socialist future. How exactly that works and how brexit helps to push the UK in that direction, I have yet to hear any kind of explanation beyond vague hand-waving. I see it leading to the opposite.
andysays
Love and solidarity
So many words, such little understanding...
8ball
Decolonise colons!
See - that's a few of them.
You missed out "stopping giving money to the EU", which turned out fairly popular.
And the whole legal sovereignty thing.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
A couple off the top of my head..
1. Decisions within the wider EU that have an economic focus are increasingly being made to promote/support the interests of the Euro and it's member states (though you might argue about those interests..), with little regard being given to those EU states who are not Euro members.
2. the EU is making ever increasing 'land grabs' into the competencies of member states - foreign policy, economic policy, immigration policy, to add to the current fishing and agricultural policy - it's difficult to argue against the idea that in 30-50 years, while the countries of the EU will still exist as polities, the big economic and foreign policy decisions won't be being made by national governments, but within the EU.
3. Guardian columnists might drown themselves trying to swim the channel.
I think they are quite good reasons to be, at the very least, wary of continued membership of the EU, but apparently they are just (thick) racist twaddle.
1. Decisions within the wider EU that have an economic focus are increasingly being made to promote/support the interests of the Euro and it's member states (though you might argue about those interests..), with little regard being given to those EU states who are not Euro members.
2. the EU is making ever increasing 'land grabs' into the competencies of member states - foreign policy, economic policy, immigration policy, to add to the current fishing and agricultural policy - it's difficult to argue against the idea that in 30-50 years, while the countries of the EU will still exist as polities, the big economic and foreign policy decisions won't be being made by national governments, but within the EU.
3. Guardian columnists might drown themselves trying to swim the channel.
I think they are quite good reasons to be, at the very least, wary of continued membership of the EU, but apparently they are just (thick) racist twaddle.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
The research (of which there is a lot) did not ultimately bear this out, certainly not in a simple way.
Of the self-declared working class, there was no association at all in the NatCen analysis.
- ignore me - data less surprising than I thought re: cited reasons among Brexit voters.
editor
hiraethified
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Must be a great relief for you.
The Fornicator
Active Member
Len McCluskey is pretty clear on this: “The majority of Labour party members don’t want Brexit [but] the majority of working class people do.” In other words, winning a general election might mean not trying to stop Brexit."
https://www.politico.eu/article/second-brexit-referendum-why-is-unlikely/
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
lol, seen this revisionism before. Wake of the trump vote. Similarly 'russian collusion'. But yes I can produce graphs showing the opposite and the heaviest voting leave areas still correspond to the poorest parts of the country. Not entirely- there are other splits along different lines, by age, by education (and in some cruder class analysis this is often used as an synonym for class). Never the less, its still true that:
EU referendum voting intention by social class | UK Survey
now, the question just how crude is this cd2 abc stuff when it comes to nailing class composition?
so while its fine to say 'its bit more complex than that' its simply wishful thinking to dismiss it.
EU referendum voting intention by social class | UK Survey
now, the question just how crude is this cd2 abc stuff when it comes to nailing class composition?
so while its fine to say 'its bit more complex than that' its simply wishful thinking to dismiss it.
editor
hiraethified
Racism doesn't always follow class lines.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
And intelligence certainly doesn't either.
editor
hiraethified
That's just his opinion though. I'd like to see proper research.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
We've done this to death elsewhere. The brexit vote split (fractured?) society in many different ways. More labour voters voted remain than leave, more tory voters voted leave, more in certain parts of the country voted leave than in others in the same social class. Many more old people voted leave. Young people voted strongly remain. People who own their own homes outright voted strongly leave (intersecting with 'old people', that one: lots of intersections here; the educational attainment figure also intersects with age given how many more people go to uni today compared to 40 or 50 years ago). Also, people in social housing tended to vote leave, suggesting a w/c bias there, but this isn't really supported by the fact that the tons of w/c people not lucky enough to have social housing but stuck in private renting or struggling with a mortgage tended to vote remain. Generally, the more immigrants there were in an area, people tended to vote remain. Black and ethnic minority groups tended to vote remain across social classes.
The vote is almost like an open book that you can project almost any argument onto. On here, the argument has tended to focus on the fact that, narrowly, the average income of remain voters was higher than that of leave voters, although you have to be careful with those kinds of averages as, if you're using the mean average, a very few extremely rich people can skew your results.
The Fornicator
Active Member
BBC3 giving leavers something for their license fee :
The Fornicator
Active Member
Well you can always have a look round the internet. Educate yourself, like.
sealion
Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive
I know but it doesn't stop the shit that's written here and in certain media publications.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
if it wasn't the working class votes from the north east that nailed the brexit vote then perhaps snide comedians and internet commentators should be told so that they may focus thier ire and comedy on the petty booj. Probably a bit too close to home tho eh
I can explain what my concerns were and why I wanted out. Taking back control meant two things to me. The first is that I want laws that effect me and my country to be made in my country, by our MPs. It may be a shit system, it’s not really representative, it’s massively corrupted, but it’s more representative and less corrupt than the EU. The more localised that decisions and laws get made the better for me, and National is better than European.
So there’s that. Then borders, yes. Free movement isn’t a good idea as far as I can tell. Businesses use the free supply of low and unskilled labour to drive wages down (even below minimum wage for cash in hand stuff). Economic migrants living 8-10 people in shared houses, sleeping on mattresses on the floor. It isn’t right. That’s why they want free movement, that and because it means for them personally, they can pop about Europe in their suits on the Eurostar with fewer border control. And have their European weekend mini breaks etc. No relevance to anyone else, how often do you go on holiday to Europe? Once every three years here.
And then, yes, pressure on services. You say a 20% increase in population like it’s nothing. But our kids are in classes of 32+ pupils, you can’t get a GP appointment, social housing doesn’t exist, benefits are slashed. Of course this isn’t the fault of individual immigrants, it’s not even an inevitable consequence of immigration if services had been expanded (not decimated by austerity). But they haven’t. We can’t cope with the population as it currently is. That’s a political choice, right, austerity? Well here’s a political consequence, Brexit and people wanting less immigration.
The arrogance of these fuckers cutting shit back to the bone then turning round and being shocked that people think the country can’t cope with more people.
And the final reason ime was this. And my brother said this to me. Vote remain if you want shit to remain the same. Vote leave for change. I think a lot of people felt things had got shit enough that something needed to give.
For fwiw that’s my take on it. And how millionaires like Geldof fit in on it, and the bankers, and business owners, and people with jobs that have them ‘living and working’ across Europe, well of course they think it’s a terrible idea. Because frankly, it was all working very nicely in the first place for them.
sealion
Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive
Still trolling me with insults i see
It's a bit early to be pissed up isn't it.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
This is quite an interesting one - I've heard it from a few people.
It doesn't seem to be cited as a reason as such, but if you take something like figure 4 from here, it looks like something that is there, bubbling away, and maybe just something that people don't put into words as immediately as the big ticket issues that the media talks about...
But of course everything would have stayed the same. It would have perpetuated the status quo. And the status quo was everything inexorably getting shitter.
Now the alternative might be even worse. It really might. But the one thing that was for certain was that it would have continued getting shitter if nothing changed.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Over the course of 50 years (two full generations, more or less), a 20 per cent increase is very small, yes. It is not the reason why classes are 32+ pupils, why you can't get a GP appointment, why social housing doesn't exist or why benefits are slashed.
That's the big lie. And immigration since WW2 has been crucial to keeping all kinds of those public services going, of course. Anyone who thinks reducing immigration will address any of the above problems has been sold a lie.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Yeah, I agree. There was no way those particular driving concerns weren't going to get shitter.
The Fornicator
Active Member
Yep, it's not necessarily well phrased by the public but things like 'blowing shit up' or 'disrupting' , as well as Edie's choice of words all mean the same kind of thing. The system is wrong, neo-liberalism was wrong, untrammeled globalisation is wrong, uncontrolled worker migration is wrong, none of that works for working people. It's a whole bunch of stuff that exists within austerity and EU membership, and just because working people aren't professional smooth talking heads doesn't make it less so.
When your class sizes are huge, and the NHS is over stretched and you haven't had a real pay rise in 10 years, and the council tell you your living room now counts as a bedroom, you don't need Nigel Farage to tell you things are iffy as fuck.
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