I struggle with a conversation with someone who clearly thought Brexit was justified by differing reactions to the coronavirus crisis last week, and that all discussion about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine was purely politically motivated. I did not agree, but in the light of the underlying tensions the call did not last a lot longer.
As a result I tried to reflect on the differences of view that we had, and did a little research. I found this from an organisation called British Election Study, published in July 2016, less than a month after the Brexit vote. They presented word clouds based on interviews that they hard undertaken with both sides in the debate. As they said:
An easy way to get an initial idea of what respondents are saying is to use word clouds — a visual display of all the text in our respondents answers. These scale the size of the text according to how frequently a word was used. Here we break down the responses into people who, between 14th April and 4th May 2016 (fieldwork dates) said they had decided they would vote leave, vote remain and those who had not yet made up their minds.
This was their word cloud for Leavers:
This was that for Remainers:
And just for completeness, this was those undecided before the vote:
What is the implication?
First, I would suggest that since there has been no obvious impact on immigration (although more than 1 million people are reported to have left as a result of reduced economic opportunity) Brexiteers are bound to be disappointed by what has been achieved. No wonder then that they are seeking post-event narratives to justify their position, many of which are as extreme as was their view that immigration was the big threat facing the UK. And so too is it easy to explain why new people have to be found to blame now if migrants were not the problem that could be solved by Brexit. That Brexit will bring no peace to those who supported it is almost certain.
Second, the fear of those who opposed Brexit has been justified. The economy is being trashed. As The Guardian reports today, the Road Haulage Association thinks UK exports were down by 68% in January. The knock-on effect of that in terms of UK prosperity is going to be enormous if it continues, and if anything many think it will get worse as not all restrictions are as yet in place. There is no chance of reconciliation to Brexit there either.
So what to conclude? Brexit was, of course, the wrong answer to a question that did not exist. But the answer it did give has no chance of appeasing the concerns of either wing on the issue, both of whom will remain critically aware of the fact that they have been sold very short, with neither likely to much change their position for the time being.
England, in particular, is in a for a very long and bumpy ride on this issue, not least as almost no political party is having the courage to recognise Remainer views right now and alienation from politics is growing on all sides as a result.
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You’ve posted the first cloud twice. The Remainer cloud should emphasise “economy.”
Corrected
You inserted the Leavers word cloud twice!!
Unfortunately, I think it is going to take another financial crash to wake the UK up – it will be more difficult for the bankers to retain as much influence in the response to the next one and serious questions about how to rebuild a productive economy in the context of climate change and bio-diversity loss threats start to get addressed. In the meantime all we can do is keep chucking stones into the pond and try to make the biggest splash we can….if we don’t then our ripples will never reach the edges of the pond. Keep chucking Richard…your stones are getting bigger and the rest of us need to help them grow.
The central banks and financial authorities around the world will all have less room for manoeuvre in the next global financial crisis because of all the money that’s been pumped in to stimulate the economies of countries hit by coronavirus and the financial crisis of 2008. Interest rates are rock bottom so there’s little scope for cutting those any more. National debt levels are already huge, so how much more can be added?
However, Brexit worsened the UK’s position further due to the Bank of England’s extra quantitative easing after the referendum to stabilise the UK’s economy and the credit rating agencies cutting the UK’s rating because of our increased debt, and a deteriorating outlook due to leaving the EU. I think it’s quite possible that the agencies could downgrade the UK again. They sounded negative about the UK’s prospects last year, and they could downgrade the UK again if the difficulties at the borders continuing hitting trade through the year, or the UK doesn’t get the financial and data equivalence agreements it wants. That would make it more difficult for the Bank of England to do any further quantitative easing in the future.
So I think you’re correct that if the UK gets hit by a financial crisis in the near future, the Bank of England and other financial institutions will have less ability to influence things, and mitigate the worst effects. It won’t be Johnson and his wealthy backers that suffer the worst, it will be those at the bottom that have been struggling to get by through the pandemic. I’m not sure that it would change the minds of the most ardent leave supporters. It might take more than a financial crisis to open their eyes
I have to say I agree with your conclusion but really do not agree with your comments on in the constraints on QE
Frankly, I simply do not recognise the constraints that you say exist. They are the make believe stuff of the City that is now almost irrelevant
Er, it is just me, or have you got the wrong word cloud for Remain? According to the original website, it should be dominated by “economy”. Here the Remain one appears the same as the Leave one.
I’d tentatively suggest that net immigration will indeed be down as many people have left (due to coronavirus mainly, not Brexit) and then many others won’t come (due to the economic effects of both). Neither is particularly welcome, as immigrants (typically young, healthy, well educated, hard working people) are good for our economy.
Apologies….
Are you sure you’ve copied the correct word cloud for remainers, Richard, as it appears to be identical to Brexiteers?
Agree with your conclusion though. Thus Brexit is never going to satisfy anyone. But we have to live with it now, and the cost wil be high once we get a true picture as the Covid crisis eases.
Corrected
Sorry…..
‘Take back control’ was the popular terminology used to ‘spin’ the Brexit proposition; the principal ‘control’ being promoted was over borders. The important point to focus on now is that, having ‘taken back control’ the Government was in a strong position to exercise that control when the authoritative public health advice was to close the borders to protect the public from the spread of coronavirus. Island states have a huge advantage, as proved by Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia – and even the Isle of Man.
What does the UK do? It doesn’t close its borders – even now; a year late, with well over 100,000 dead and new variants testing the efficacy of our new vaccines. Why are our borders not closed? Taiwan closed its borders a year ago; it has a population of 24m, and has had 8 (eight) deaths; life is almost normal there, and the economy is still growing at 2%.
We haven’t closed our borders. Here is Grant Shapps MP: ““A lot of people asked me ‘why don’t you just shut the borders? Close it entirely? …. Putting aside the fact we are an island and we require people and goods to be able to function at all, bringing in the medicine, the goods, the PPE, putting all of that aside, look what happens in the United States.They did, last March, entirely close the border. Britons haven’t been able to fly to America since last march, no one in Europe. It hasn’t helped them last year, not one iota.” (From Sky News, reported in the tabloid Daily Express).
Shapps demonstrates only that the British Government neither wants to close its borders, nor is even capable of closing borders. It also fails to understand both what is required of a British government to protect the security of its people, or to understand either the nature of “control”, or even the nature of an “island”. Britain is living in a farcical, fantasy Wonderland, run by a colletion of talentless, cynical mad hatters, who manipulate a supplicant media, operate government like a casual tea party, and know – know – they van get away with anything.
Needs to be restated and reprinted everytime the government or msm or your mate says BrexShit Leave vote was about anything else except the button pushing that said we were being swamped by immigration from the EU. Based entirely on the drop in real income caused ONLY by the politically imposed Austerity – set up by NuLabInc and implemented with gusto by Osborne/Cameron/Clegg, to enable a BrexShit referendum and fait-accompli of the referendum vote (clearly fixed).
I heard for the first time the other day that ex MEP and leading WREXITer Daniel Hannan had received a peerage!
I couldn’t believe it when one considers the mess we have now and I felt quite angry. A reward for vandalism. That’s what is was. And he lied about retaining the single market .
What sort of culture rewards liars like that? It’s disgraceful.
The Scotland vs England match
To anyone determined to browbeat Scotland and her abilities after the mess created by Engxit, I suggest you Google the word “scunnered”.
Ignored, abused and bullied by a despot husband who took her away from her friends and robbed her of her inheritence. And everytime she says enough is enough and tries to leave she gets shouted at until the final “I’ll change” remorse to calm things down. We all know how that works out in marriages.
Bet the EU feels really guilty for what they said in 2014 now they’ve had a taste of England running at full bigot.
Looks like the WordCloud image for Remainers is the same as the one for Leavers? (just a paste error?)
It shouldn’t be now
I tend to agree that a Scotland-England hard border will disadvantage the Scots more than anyone.
The current Brexit trading chaos is the result of the desires of a number of politicians to be treated as third country by the EU
That is exactly what is happening Live with it and stop whingeing but next time be careful what you wish for.
Signing trading pacts – if they ever happen – with countries thousands of miles away means that many tariff advantages will be negated by greatly
increased transport costs.
Brexit is an emotional and ideological concept based largely on delusions of grandeur. 21st century UK is not the UK of the Victorian era and in the eyes of most of the rest of the world the the UK occupies a fairly small space in the grand scheme of things.
You really do need to understand what Scottish independence is all about, including rejoining the EU now
A very significant proportion of Scotland’s trade with England consists of electricity, gas and oil. Another massive constituent is food and drink.
Are you suggesting that England will just do without? Given that much of the UK’s renewable energy from green sources comes from Scotland, how will England manage to meet its climate change commitments without sourcing (and paying for) supplies from Scotland? And then there’s water….. I know that England could theoretically arrange to source from Europe, but do they imagine they’ll get a favourable deal from EU countries now?
I think to me the government main intention to still keep the borders on imports open has nothing to do with corona crisis but everything to do with keeping the flow of goods and therefore prove to the public and remainders that it was only project fear. The evidence of project reality is taking place in Northern Ireland because the borders on imports are controlled by the EU. If the aim of Brexit is to take back control why keep the borders open?! Logically speaking, they are actually admitting, through their actions, that frictionless trade is the only way but do not want to admit it verbally of course. Almost 800 million in customs taxes are not being collected.
The reason that so many people want to come to live in the UK – that immigration is high, that it is seen as a ‘problem’ – comes down to the UK being seen as a ‘good’ country, where they want to live. So to drive down immigration, what is needed is to change that view, to one in which the UK is not where you want to go and live. By wrecking the country, and its economy. And that is what the anti-immigationists are doing, through Brexit, etc. When I first thought this, I thought I’m being cynical – now I’m not sure on this, perhaps it is the dastardly plot…
Or as an alternative, the unasked question is ‘Do you want to live in a country that people want to immigrate to? Or one that they want to emigrate from?’