Ukip - why are they gaining support?

[brogdale]

Horrible as in abrupt loss of export market, flight of financial services industry and overseas investment, all that sort of stuff.

Oh, but that wouldn't just be a result of there being a referendum; that would be because it happened and a majority of the electorate voted out.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Oh, but that wouldn't just be a result of there being a referendum; that would be because it happened and a majority of the electorate voted out.

I don't trust the electorate. Do you?

 

[brogdale]

I don't trust the electorate. Do you?

To do what?

 

[Maurice Picarda]

To do what?

To vote correctly.

What's the most recent polling on voting intention in the event of an in/out referendum? I recall it being 50/50 a while back but the mood has clearly changed rather.

 

[brogdale]

To vote correctly.

 

[butchersapron]

According to both UK polling report and the electoral calculus prediction machines that 7/20/27/37 split would not result in any UKIP mps, but would result in around a 110 labour majority (lib-dems holding onto 20/30). (Usual comments about universal swing etc)

 

[butchersapron]

On the domestic left i suspect that we may see a ridiculous reactionary pro-eu swing hedged with social-market bleating and a consequent further isolation. Not that it matters.

 

[where to]

Latest poll on in out ref is 42 out 23 in and a load of unknown undecideds. Those numbers approximately reverse if unspecified consessions are won.

Any referendum would be a close run thing imo

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Ugh. If they had but one neck.

 

[butchersapron]

Only 28% of the electorate think that the EU is one of the things that would decide where their general election vote would go (and only 49% of UKIP voters).

When asked the in/out question on the tories stupid draft bill the response in todays Sunday Times/YG is 36% go, 45% leave. ICM asked same question for Sunday Telegraph: 46% leave, 30% stay.

 

[sihhi]

On the domestic left i suspect that we may see a ridiculous reactionary pro-eu swing hedged with social-market bleating and a consequent further isolation. Not that it matters.

Any evidence for this?

England's (possibly UK's) most prominent leftist Bob Crow underlines the domestic left's hopes for a national Keynesian ideal by calling for withdrawal ASAP. Not that it matters.

 

[J Ed]

Any evidence for this?

England's (possibly UK's) most prominent leftist Bob Crow underlines the domestic left's hopes for a national Keynesian ideal by calling for withdrawal ASAP. Not that it matters.

He may be talking about the soft left? This was in the Graunid for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/tory-led-exit-europe-carnival-of-reaction

Milne's argument isn't totally unconvincing IMO

 

[butchersapron]

Any evidence for this?

England's (possibly UK's) most prominent leftist Bob Crow underlines the domestic left's hopes for a national Keynesian ideal by calling for withdrawal ASAP. Not that it matters.

This sort of stuff, but more this especially - plus hope-not-hates and that wing of the union funded soft-left emphasis on them and the creeping reaction to UKIP's recent successes that is even happening on here.

 

[sihhi]

This was in the Graunid for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/tory-led-exit-europe-carnival-of-reaction

Seumas Milne is also anti-EU and like Bob Crow in favour of referendum, supported by Labour, plus withdrawal.

Your example does not make sense either in contradicting my point or backing up butchersapron.

 

[butchersapron]

Milne is following the same line as articul8 on here - no withdrawal via referendum as that would and could only happen on tory lines. Effectively it's a defence of continued membership, and one in which social directives are often wheeled out. The right to a referendum but please don't vote to leave.

 

[sihhi]

This sort of stuff, but more this especially - plus hope-not-hates and that wing of the union funded soft-left emphasis on them and the creeping reaction to UKIP's recent successes that is even happening on here.

It's always swings and roundabouts.
This kind of reactive left - not including Ian Bone because there's always some bluster in what he/old Class War says, hard to judge exactly what he's saying - will oppose whatever the Tories seem to heading on.

When most Tory MPs were pro- in the 70s they were anti, now a much higher proportion are anti-, being pro is OK. It's react to the Tories bleeding heart progressivism not 'old' Labour Left which has always been anti-EU.

They can use anti-fascism both times. Oswald Moseley was pro-EU and Enoch Powell was anti-EU. I dislike anti-fascism like a kind of football. We'll target UKIP when our paymasters tell us to. If Labour did become anti-EU due to intolerable business and public pressure, then pro-EU people would become the fingered fascist-enablers.

 

[sihhi]

Milne is following the same line as articul8 on here - no withdrawal via referendum as that would and could only happen on tory lines. Effectively it's a defence of continued membership, and one in which social directives are often wheeled out. The right to a referendum but please don't vote to leave.

This part does sound like fantasy:

The Labour leader has already argued for "comprehensive" EU reform, including of restrictions on state aid and intervention. In office, he would need to go a lot further in using the leverage of restructuring to negotiate change, in alliance with others across Europe. But a progressive package of demands should also shift the shape of a subsequent referendum.

A progressive package of demands via Miliband.

 

[J Ed]

Seumas Milne is also anti-EU and like Bob Crow in favour of referendum, supported by Labour, plus withdrawal.

Your example does not make sense either in contradicting my point or backing up butchersapron.

Are you reading this differently to how I am? He's arguing not to leave, isn't he?

 

[goldenecitrone]

Pro EU don't have to do much at the moment considering we're actually part of the EU. They can sit back and watch all the anti EU types running around huffing and puffing. If a referendum does come, then they will have to step up a gear or three.

 

[butchersapron]

Pro EU don't have to do much at the moment considering we're actually part of the EU. They can sit back and watch all the anti EU types running around huffing and puffing. If a referendum does come, then they will have to step up a gear or three.

Eh? There are rising levels of anti-eu feeling across all of europe - including the former strongholds of pro-eu feeling - and the pro-eu types are sitting pretty?

 

[J Ed]

Is there any chance UK withdrawal could lead to the whole edifice collapsing? 55% youth unemployment in Spain is just indefensible... something needs to change.

 

[butchersapron]

Is there any chance UK withdrawal could lead to the whole edifice collapsing? 55% youth unemployment in Spain is just indefensible... something needs to change.

That's the hope - which is why national defences of the EU from the left (social-directives, stability = jobs, a bonfire of the protections blah blah) is so pathetically short-sighted and un-internationalist. Withdrawal forced on the political class (in the same way that you would try and impose a workplace reconstruction on the boss) is the real internationalist position.

 

[sihhi]

Are you reading this differently to how I am? He's arguing not to leave, isn't he?

His position is advising Labour to secure pro-Leftist changes to the Britain-EU relationship, if this fails, to leave. His point is that Labour must battle and be seen to battle the EU.

 

[sihhi]

That's the hope - which is why national defences of the EU from the left (social-directives, stability = jobs, a bonfire of the protections blah blah) is so pathetically short-sighted and un-internationalist. Withdrawal forced on the political class (in the same way that you would try and impose a workplace reconstruction on the boss) is the real internationalist position.

How can we impose withdrawal on the political class, given that changes to national benefit schemes (an area some would argue has little to do with the EU directly) cannot be resisted?

Also:

a. What about those who don't care?

b. Where does it leave those place like Serbia or Montenegro where there are in spite of economic problems, leftist-liberal coalitions in favour of joining the EU in spite of how terrible it is.

It's like suggesting the US working-class ought to impose withdrawal from NAFTA, when in places where it is ostensibly strongest, most organised - in Los Angeles or Chicago it can't keep its schools in working-class districts open.

I don't have answers, just still confused.

 

[butchersapron]

Well, we are closer to withdrawal from the EU than stopping changes to benefit schemes. It's not a case of opposing the latter, slowly building up support for an alternative EU then having a unified movement imposing it on the the political class and capital, that is a fantasy (and the one that has hamstrung the left on the eu since the early 90s and the definitive move away from the social model). What we have is a messy situation whereby the short term political interests of one section of the political expression capital have led it into conflict with other sections of capital and opened up a dynamic that could, if followed through to the end, unleash unexpected consequences across the whole of the eu. That's situation right now - it's not the result of our strength but it is still the situation that we have to recognise and take the opportunities it offers us - and a europe-wide reconfiguration surely opens the doors to local victories feeding into others across the continent - far more so than when under the financial discipline of the EU/ECB/IMF/etc

 

[sihhi]

I'll take your word for it. But:-

Do you imagine a Europe-wide reconfiguration is
a. possible or
b. meaningful for anything but a fleeting moment of hope?

Isn't there any danger we might become like Tariq Ali dedicating his 1988 work, on the possibilities that Soviet glasnost/disengagement from Cold War militarism offered the British left, to purged political hero Boris Yeltsin?

Seeking to make hay out of opportunities that present themselves by chance, not of independent working-class-dominated pressure, and then ending up with egg on your face?

I see all the discussion of EU/non-EU as essentially two ways of reaching the same goal making capitalism in European areas profitable with respect to (re)emerging competitors like China, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa.

 

[butchersapron]

I'll take your word for it. But:-

Do you imagine a Europe-wide reconfiguration is
a. possible or
b. meaningful for anything but a fleeting moment of hope?

Isn't there any danger we might become like Tariq Ali dedicating his 1988 work, on the possibilities that Soviet glasnost/disengagement from Cold War militarism offered the British left, to purged political hero Boris Yeltsin?

Seeking to make hay out of opportunities that present themselves by chance, not of independent working-class-dominated pressure, and then ending up with egg on your face?

I see all the discussion of EU/non-EU as essentially two ways of reaching the same goal making capitalism in European areas profitable with respect to (re)emerging competitors like China, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa.

Missed this earlier mate, will reply tmw.

 

[butchersapron]

I know it's the Telegraph game, but let them play, this one might get out of their control :

 

[butchersapron]

Readable version here

 

[J Ed]

I know it's the Telegraph game, but let them play, this one might get out of their control :

lol, I think 'the average commenter on the Telegraph BTL' should be a definition of swivel eyed