I posted this thread on Twitter on this morning:
I was interviewed by Matt Frei on LBC yesterday. The subject of discussion was Brexit. At the close of the interview Matt asked me in ten seconds to summarise something good that had happened as a result of Brexit. I used two seconds and said, “I can't”.
I had a rather strong impression that Matt Frei shared my opinion. I think he also agreed that one of the most worrying things about Brexit is the democratic deficit it has created in England (but not in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
With both LibDems and Labour chasing votes in Leave areas (the southwest and north, respectively) they are unwilling to talk about the massive failings of Brexit, and give no hint of reversing it. That leaves well over 50% of the population effectively unrepresented.
The same is largely true with austerity. A majority of people in this country clearly want improved public services. They would pay more tax for them, if need be. Those who can't would have no problem with government borrowing. But no one is saying that is possible when it is.
And let's not ignore migration. The number of asylum seekers in this country has halved since 2002. The closure of routes is what has forced them into boats. That is all that has happened. That, and a 15 fold delay in processing applications as a result of under-resourcing.
In effect, politics and politicians have allowed the destruction of sensible debate. The agenda has been captured by misinformation, prejudice and deliberate appeals to the lowest common denominator leaving democracy in peril and government in tatters.
I do, of course, understand that this is the Tory agenda. What I do not know is why other political parties allow the Tory agenda to close down the electoral choices maybe 50% or more of people in this country.
Are we forever to be condemned to living in a failed state because we can never discuss the cost of Brexit, the deliberate destruction of competent government and a wholly unjustified claim that the government ‘has no money' when it alone can create it?
It would seem that this is the desire of England's political parties. I don't think it is in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And let me be clear: I am not denying anyone the right to support Brexit, austerity and false economics. What I am really annoyed about is that neither Labour or the LibDems seem to be offering much of an alternative. That is, I think, failure on their part.
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On a purely selfish note, I would contend that the return of real duty free is about the only positive.
But that nominal saving on whisk(e)y is a stark, hollow victory when its primarily use is for drowning away the sorrows brought on by the myriad overwhelming negatives…
I would not notice that
One possible substantive reply to Matt Frei’s question could have been: there was a need to be seen to be honouring and implementing the result of the 2016 referendum; and a soft Brexit, which left us in the Single Market and/or the Customs Union, would have relieved the UK of political pressure to join the euro: the single currency is after all the most troubling and ill thought-out aspect of the EU project because, as many political economists pointed out at the time (including the late Wynne Godley, one of the founding fathers of MMT), you cannot have effective monetary union without proper fiscal union. But this is a purely theoretical advantage – the actual practical consequences of Brexit as it happened have been disastrous, bringing the UK no material benefits.
But we need never join the euro
You’ve acknowledged elsewhere that an independent Scotland, on applying for EU membership, would have to give a commitment to join the Euro eventually. So to, presumably, would the UK, either in its current form or as a rump union. And even if the obligation could be negotiated away or the commitment deferred indefinitely, what does that say about the prospects for a pan-European green new deal?
I’m not in any way celebrating Brexit, I’m saying that neoliberalism has dominated EU economic thinking too since Maastricht, and that it has to change if we are to stand a chance of building a sustainable society.
This is so tedious
A commitment to join is open-ended
Sweden has not joined after 25 years
Politely, stop wasting my time
Cameron had negotiated a permanent opt out of the euro, and of ‘political union’
Scroll down to column 21 for his statement
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm160222/debtext/160222-0001.htm
This was promoted by the Leave campaign as a ‘failed negotiation’.
There is no need
Sweden has been in the EU and not in the euro for more than 25 years
“But we need never join the euro”
You keep saying this but it’s in the interests of the EU to make the euro work effectively. The EU countries do need to move along with getting both the fiscal and monetary unions that is essential for this. This means moving to a more Federally based EU.
It’s not the euro itself that is even particularly the problem. It is the fiscal rules which are incorporated into Stability and Growth Pact and the even worse Fiscal Compact which go with it. It is possible we could be subjected to those rules even if we do not use the euro.
If we can be sure that we will be exempt from all these highly neoliberal constraints we should rejoin but we should seek assurances in advance too.
No, it is the euro itself that is the problem
And it is a fact that the UK need never join it
So, let’s stop discussing that issue
As for the fiscal compact – that is very obviously history already
The following eight EU members are not members of the Euro: Bulgaria (joined EU 2007), Croatia (joined EU 2013), Czechia (joined EU 2004), Hungary (joined EU 2004), Poland (joined EU 2004), Romania (joined EU 2007), Sweden (joined EU 1995). Technically the eight are supposed eventually to join the Euro but it simply doesn’t happen, and it is now very unlikely in a foreseeable timescale, if ever. The Greek experience after the financial crash, 2007 has probably kicked the EU’s weak expectation of uniformity into the longest of long grass.
The dates of accession and the timeframes give the real game away; the whole matter is a ritual dance with no determinate end, quite probably ever. If you wish further confirmation, Denmark (joined EU 1973) negotiated an opt-out. The clue is in the fact that the EU is a political union of members who are free to leave (which is an issue that Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are beginning to doubt in the case of the hapless, failing Union of which they thought they were free members).
It isn’t going to happen. This whole argument is little more than the fetid ramblings of desparate Brexiters, who are hiding from their responsibility of having delivered Britain into a future now haunted by the consequences of their outright folly; the incredible shrinking British economy. Or the Unionists, who in Scotland have established their canonical authority in fetid rambling.
Agreed
Thanks
The people arriving in small boats from France, Richard, are principally in search of a better life.
All refugees are
Don’t you realise that?
I’m talking about people arriving by small boats from France. They do not have refugee status at the point of paying criminals to board the boats.
Yes they do
There are no conditions attached to applying for refugee status
You are racistly wrong
I also note this was your eleventh identity here
There’s an interview in today’s Guardian with a Turkish Iranian man who has been living in a hotel in Reading on £1 a day until the government says he can work here. He has been in that hotel for nearly 500 days. He has two university degrees , including a master’s in astro-physics, and speaks six languages including English.
What do you think should happen to him? Send him back to Iran to be killed? He came, on a boat carrying double its safe capacity, because of religious persecution.
Very interesting post for a Sunday.
First of all, may I record my pleasure at you being able to have an interview with Matt Frei. Hopefully your discussion will lead to some more probing interviews.
It is true that the Tory party have left a schism in our society that continues to cause damage in order to win an election. I know plenty of intelligent and capable people who believe that BREXIT was the right thing to do and have absolutely no truck with immigrants at all blaming them for soaking up resources and stressing our social security systems when we know that it is budget cutting that is responsible.
But you say this: ‘And let me be clear: I am not denying anyone the right to support Brexit, austerity and false economics.’
On this I’m not so sure. Can we afford in a so-called democratic society to have people who are so wrong that they have enabled disastrous policies to come into being? That they have allowed themselves to be exploited? Are we wrong therefore to deny anti-Semites, Al Qaeda or people who think that you should be burnt at the stake in order to save your soul?
Ooooh – dangerous ground Richard. Dangerous ground. Me personally I WOULD deny others the right to believe these things as they have caused or have the potential to cause a great deal of harm to me and others.
I would put it differently. I’d say instead that is OK for people to have feelings about these issues and that we acknowledge them. And then that should be the start of a conversation. Was this not the beginning of The Enlightenment?
But to not to seek to deny that which is wrong? Hmm. It’s how we deny that is important, how we resist. Hopefully with reason, facts and ongoing conversations.
I was in a planning committee the other day, and I was told by a member of the public that had I done X or Y I would have got the public on board. I informed her that she was wrong. It’s not my job to get people ‘on board’. I am not a politician – I’m a developer. I said that is perfectly reasonable for people to have feelings about my proposed development and it was not my job to deny them those feelings. It is my job to acknowledge them as real. Development is a disruptive thing. We usually get people agreeing to it, those not wanting change, those objecting to a particular principle or those who think we are building properties because of immigrants. All I can do is explain what the development achieves for the City and the area and talk it through. Planning permission and the attached conditions (created from further discussions over compromises) will see to the rest.
‘Talking it through’ seems to be the lost art in politics. And democracy’s weakness is in allowing those who are wrong to wield too much influence in the system. We allow the intolerant to much room because we don’t want to be like them. As I’ve said before, I think that we need to be a bit more like them. Just a little mind. It will prevent the intellectual blackmail they subject us to time and time again for a start.
Finally, there is a huge subtext to the immigration issue that we are facing. Climate change seems to be causing mass disruption in some parts of the world and people are moving – not just from conflict. These mass movements are the elephant in the room for me. Living space is going start coming at a premium and I think that this is emerging now and it’s going to be really rough. I get the feeling that the UK is pulling up the drawbridge and thinks that that is enough. It is deeply worrying, whatever your views on immigration are. And as living space comes under pressure, there are political opportunists waiting to pounce.
To be honest, it all looks very ugly to going forward to me and brings me back to my point at the fourth line down. The human race will either survive together or go down fighting each other. It’s frightening I tell you.
Noted, but I will always defend the right to disagree so long as it does not invite hate
Yes, you are right.
Avoiding hate is crucial.
There are cleverer ways to take the fight to unreason.
” …….neither Labour or the LibDems seem to be offering much of an alternative.
Probably not on austerity and false economics but we can expect both parties, if in government, to take significant steps towards normalising relationships with the EU. This will be necessary before we would even be considered possible suitable candidates to rejoin.
It also isn’t simply going to be a matter of getting a small majority in the opinion polls. The EU will need to see a consistent support of at least 60:40 for rejoining before they take us seriously. Whether this happens will depend on the terms on offer, and it is unrealistic to expect the EU to offer us the same deal as previously. It will also depend on just how well the EU is doing. If recent statements by Christine Lagarde are anything to go by they might not be doing too well at all.
Might the lack of effective parliamentary opposition be due to all the major parties being in a cartel of policies which only seem to be speciously differentiated by degree rather than foundation?
Might causes of this being a high priority wish/policy of seeking donations from the group of the wealthy and the under informing of the electorate?
I have to say that that is an extremely depressing view. I also have to say that it seems likely that you are correct.
The opposition parties are focussed on winning seats, and not much else, and as long as the electoral system is unreformed I can see no change. The Overton window is firmly shut on Brexit and austerity. When Corbyn tried to take the debate out of the Overton window, we saw the consequences (regardless of the specific policies he espoused).
Something good from Brexit? It has at last brought to the surface, and to unavoidable public attention the dysfunctional nature of our FPTP system, the blind factionalism of our political parties, the decayed nature of our constitution, the failure of our neoliberal, fake-market economy, and even the hitherto endemic, but well hidden deep prejudices of our electorate.
It isn’t very attractive, and facing an unsettling truth about ourselves is is unlikely to be a comfortable experience; but it is proving an overdue if bracing appointment with reality. Will we learn from it? From my judgement of Britain, quite probably not, but we can live in hope.
BREXIT is likely to have the same effects on British society as the American Civil war did on America from what I can see.
That is until we have a proper debate about it (not some fear-based consensus from Labour or the Con-Dems) and some rigorous parliamentary committee reports on funding and data abuse.
I watched Prem Sikka on nottheandrewmarrshow this morning. What he was talking about mainly was the fact that if HMRC had lots more officers looking into tax fraud there would be no need for austerity. He gave figures out, but it was difficult to follow in that format. However, I found it on LFF just now.
https://leftfootforward.org/2022/11/there-is-no-economic-case-for-austerity-heres-why/
Rather than talking about Brexit and demonstrating about getting the government out, should people be demonstrating about this?
By the way, I can’t find your interview with Matt Frei on LBC. Do you have a link?
I broadly agree with Prem, although also make the same point from an MMT perspective when the argument is about upholding the law
My interview was at about 11.03 onwards yesterday
” I am not denying anyone the right to support Brexit, austerity and false economics”
I have no problems with village idiots – but let’s call them what they are: entertaining imbeciles.
Believe in perpetual motions machines – fine – but you are an imbecile
Sunlit uplands and unicorns and £350m on a bus – fine – but you are an imbecile – unfit to govern anything and wasting my time & those of others.
I know what I would do with the entertaining imbeciles – but since this is a family orientated blog I will forebear.
I will argue with them, as I have argued with Starmer today
Idiots deserve to be called out
But I respect their right to be idiots if they do nit promote hate
Although that leaves Starmer on dodgy ground
One of the main reasons the opposition political parties of England are not opposing Brexit with all their might is that they know the majority Brexit supporting media with destroy them for their Brexit opposition.
This makes them cowards along with betraying the majority of those eligible to vote.
David Byrne says:
The report by Moore and Ramsay (Kings College London), 2017, provides an interesting insight into how the news media manipulated the minds of the illiterati in order to get Brexit done.
And, don’t let us mention the effects of targeted social media content for the sake of brevity.
Mr Byrne,
Thank you, very useful. For example: “[Vote] Leave, however, successfully undermined the economic warnings of Remain by questioning the campaign leaders’ honesty, their expertise, their motivation, and by presenting the whole economic narrative as a cynical strategy to frighten people into voting for the status quo.
….
As the campaign wore on, Leave campaign leaders and Leave- supporting news outlets began to wrest the agenda away from economic issues towards immigration.
…..
“Leave campaigners and partisan news outlets strongly protested
against accusations that their focus on immigration was prejudiced or intolerant. Yet, based on most definitions, it is hard not to find their claims and coverage discriminatory. Out of 111 articles that expressed a view about Turks, for example, 98% (109) were negative. Out of 90 articles that expressed a view about Albanians, 100% were negative. Three metaphors were dominant in the coverage of migrants: migrants as water (‘floodgates’, ‘waves’), as animals or insects (‘flocking’, ‘swarming’) or as an invading force.
….
Sovereignty was a secondary issue, discussed in the context of primary issues like the economy, immigration and healthcare.
….
Direct digital communication was, according to Vote Leave’s director Dominic Cummings, where the Leave campaign devoted most of its resources. Vote Leave sent, Cummings wrote, ‘nearly a billion targeted digital adverts’ and spent approximately 98% of their money on digital campaigning.” (‘UK media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum campaign’; Martin Moore and Gordon Ramsay, 2017: pp.164-166).
Draw your own conclusions, in part I suggest in the context of recent Blogs and comments (threads), here over the last two or three days.
It may seem a trifling issue to those who live in England, but the lingering issue of the status of the devolved nations is encapsulated in the title of the Moore & Ramsay paper: ‘UK Media Coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum’. Residents of the devolved nations are all too familiar with the lazy conflation of UK with England which, over time, becomes interpreted as an insult. The media in Scotland, Wales or N Ireland were not included in the analysis and no mention is made of the potential for the devolved nations to think differently. Perhaps if some attention had been paid to the media in N Ireland, the intractable problem of the protocol there might have loomed larger in the minds of English voters; or would they just have dismissed it as “foreign news” of no relevance?
“I am not denying anyone the right to support Brexit, austerity and false economics. What I am really annoyed about is that neither Labour or the LibDems seem to be offering much of an alternative. That is, I think, failure on their part.” 100% with you on this. For me this is the most worrying issue. I thought leaving EU membership a mistake in 2016. Then it became a disaster because of the extreme disconnect. I assumed that we would be in some kind of FTA, effectively SM by another name. Now is the time for opposition Parties to start explaining that we need a good trade agreement with the EU, however it is called. They should explain that whatever trade agreement there is will mean some rules by which we will abide, illustrating how bad the Australia agreement is hat was negotiated by Liz Truss. Explain all that new ‘red tape’ slowing down trade, and destroying honest businesses, that the EU rules would abolish. What I find [hard to give an honest word] is Starmer saying there would be another vote on EU membership just to destroy Corbyn and any chance of a Corbyn/May deal that would have kept us within SM & CU.
The opposition parties avoid Brexit for the simple reason that to confront Tories with it gives the Tory Party an easy stick to beat them with and would lead to a huge distraction at the present time stoked by Tory supporting media. What the opposition needs now is to have a realistic chance of becoming the next Government and at the moment Brexit discussions would damage those chances.
The polls are clear that a majority of people know Brexit was a disaster and because of that it doesn’t need to be made an issue in the current climate. Brexit can be addressed in the future but for now it is one of the two things, the other being illegal immigration, that the Tory Government would love to be front and centre of the debate. Don’t give them that chance.
Starmer is not putting it aside
Don’t delude yourself or excuse him
He’s with the ERG on this
I don’t think I mentioned anything about Starmer neither do I think I am deluded that to start a Brexit conversation serves no purpose except to provide the Tory Party and specifically the ERG with beneficial ammunition. By all means be critical of Labour but there is a danger that if you fight everyone you end up with nothing but screaming into the void of despair. At the moment there is only one binary choice like it or not and until a vote counts for more than that simple binary equation all of us are left with only that single choice. Yes we need to pressure Labour into changing its stance on many things but there is more chance of that happening than changing the Tory view of the world.
I don’t do party politics
I say what I think is the truth
That’s precisely why I don’t do party politics
The truth is much bigger than those parties
I really do not need a b).
Mr Gray,
“…. there is only one binary choice like it or not and until a vote counts for more than that simple binary equation all of us are left with only that single choice. Yes we need to pressure Labour into changing its stance on many things but there is more chance of that happening than changing the Tory view of the world.”
I give you Scotland as the demonstrable proof that a) it is not true there is only a “simple binary choice”. I have no time for Party, and extol the virtues of none; but both Conservative and Labour are, as Governments, unelectable in Scotland – for very, very good reason. The problem you have is that you seem unable to accept that your Party system is broken, and the centre has been moved grotesquely so far right nobody with any standards at all could vote for Conservative or Labour (especially after Starmer’s interview; I was sceptical but open-minded unti that scrape of the bottom of the barrel); and look at themselves in the mirror, squarely in the eye. I have never understood why people cannot see why Scotland needs to escape the Union; or thought it was a romantic Jacobite throwback; it is in fact the end game of an old, badly rotted, dysfunctional post-imperial Union, bankrupt of purpose, ideas or even understanding of the world, aunable to give up delusive, madcap or unattainable ambitions, and with nowhere to go save the grave.
There is your project. Scotland can do no more (two world wars and almost eighty years of Union indifference since have broken the spell); and it certainly cannot save you from yourselves. We are finding it hard enough to extricate ourselves from the wreckage.
You both need to get a grip. I don’t have a project. I lived for many years in Scotland and always supported the right of the people who lived there to have independence. Your example of Scotland is not relevant in the context of the choice English voters face. Neither is it demonstrable proof of anything. In Scotland you currently have a one party state and until Scotland achieves its independence that nation will not be able to move very far forward from a single issue.
Your solution for England is to neither vote Tory or Labour and to do that leaves this nation in a perpetual world of Tory rule because none of the other parties currently have any hope of achieving electoral success and to split the vote means a fragmented left. Great idea. Yes the current party system may be broken but you can’t fix it by simply allowing the Tories to keep hold of power. That just leaves the field open for them to manipulate the system even further so that they can maintain control in perpetuity. That is what Republicans in the US want. To ensure that the Democrat vote is splintered or ruled out entirely. That votes are suppressed to ensure only a single party can ever be in control.
Neither is it a case of doing or not doing party politics. What it is a case of is how to make the lot of people in this country better than it is at the moment. That is not achieved by keeping the Tories in power. It is very easy to say I don’t do party politics and that truth is bigger than parties but like all good revolutionaries know no one achieves anything from moral posturing.
Wow
Is Starmer a friend of yours?
If you think pragmatically supporting a politician like him is our solution you are seriously mistaken
I don’t want a future in his gutter
Have you actually noticed what Starmer is doing to the labour party, much in the name of anti-semitism? Perhaps you should read a facebook group called Peace and Justice to see where many ex-members of his party have gone.
That’s all we want, peace and justice. We won’t get either of those with Starmer in charge.
Mr Gray states “In Scotland you currently have a one party state”. Wow! since when? We have had the d’Hondt system of proportional representation since the inception of devolved politics. It is deliberately designed to prevent any one party from gaining power. As a result, the party with the most votes (currently SNP) governs in coalition with another party (currently the Greens) and on rare occasions has managed to govern on its own, typically with a majority of only one or two seats. As has been said in this forum many times, Westminster should embrace PR (but not necessarily the d’Hondt system); most PR systems will be a better reflection of public opinion than FPTP.
Will you be binning Twitter now that The egomaniac Musk is in charge? I think you should…
David Allen Green has opened an account on Mastodon Social….
See my Twitter feed for my reasons for not doing so
Mr Gray,
“Yes the current party system may be broken but you can’t fix it by simply allowing the Tories to keep hold of power.”
You rather miss the point, if not missed even the meaning of the word ‘broken’ (as in ‘not working’, ‘shattered’, ‘fractured’); because it seems obvious to me that using a broken system is not a recommended way to fix a deeply entrenched problem.
One quite basic, obvious (elephant in the room) fact that Labour, Starmer and it appears you, cannot face: that Brexit (and the NI Protocol) is as much of an (intractable) problem for Britain as energy, climate, Putin, China (the end of exporting deflation) or Covid; and as much, or more of a long term economic intractable fixture, as any of them.
Scotland hasn’t voted majority Conservative since 1955. It actually made little difference to anything, or the sense of needless decline in Scotland since WWII, by voting Labour subsequently; the proof of that is that for UK Labour, Scotland was ‘the’ Labour stronghold, from its roots (from Keir Hardie, through the ILP). Neverheless, the penny finally dropped, because finally it dawned post-war, after over fifty years of failure, and Labour suddenly became unelectable in Scotland: the eventual reward for failure, even in Scotland. Labour is now an electoral embarrassment in Scotland – even at its best it is ‘all officers and no foot soldiers’ (and frankly possesses a leadership that is notably bereft of a cohort of emerging talent).
What I made clear was that Scotland cannot fix your problem; and without Scotland Labour in Westminster starts any election at a very serious electoral disadvantage; that is just a fact. Do you really think that I cannot see the problem you outline? it is after all, rudimentary, and I believe, frankly – naive. The problem is your solution: you don’t have one. Labour providing a similitude of Conservative policy is not an answer. You may think it a faint similitude now; but suppose Labour attained power? Under pressure, and there will be pressure, the faint similitude will likely quickly lose the gloss of even being ‘faint’ (or may in retrospect look as if it was a ‘feint’ similitude when it was sold to the public; after all it will just be electioneering ‘pledges’ – soon gone with the wind, because of ‘events’, dear boy): it is an old story ….
You can’t fix the politics, and candidly, your rambling rant rather suggests you haven’t a clue what to do about it either. It is no suprise to me you are where you are. Do you honestly think your reply suggests that you have actually, em – ‘got a grip’?