** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

[Vorpal]

Maybe it is simpler to use the term social democracy which I think is more akin to what the British on the political left would like to see.

[bovlomov]

Maybe it is simpler to use the term social democracy which I think is more akin to what the British on the political left would like to see.

There seems to be a problem, especially in the modern Anglosphere, [edit] with[/] speaking in shades of grey. The language is of capitalists versus communists. Yet I have never met a capitalist that truly believed in free markets, nor a communist that believed that all property should be in common. Both might pursue the ideal in theory, but in practice they understand that until the paradise emerges, pragmatism is required. In that sense there's no difference between most capitalists and most communists. They believe in a certain amount of public ownership and they believe in a certain amount of private enterprise. The amounts fluctuate according to taste. One day the capitalist is complaining about paying tax, the next he is asking for state handouts. The communist complains about the sale of public housing but buys and sells his own for profit.

None of this would be so bad if people were less dogmatic. We're all bumbling along without very many principles. Yet from the tone of much public debate you would think the country is inhabited by two opposing fundamentalist sects living out their pure theories without deviation. It's not that politics has become extreme and dogmatic. It's more that the language has become extreme and dogmatic while the practice has moved the opposite direction, where everything is self-serving opportunism and expediency for the moment.

[andrec]

However, and having said what I said above, both the Tories and Labour, primarily over Brexit but under different guises, are being increasingly infiltrated by extremists. Another labour MP threatened with deselection for standing against anti-semitism whilst attempts are being made against more moderate Tory MPs eg Grieve, Rudd, Gauke.

And what on earth right does the Board of Deputies have to try to more or less dictate who stands for Parliament? Imagine if the General Synod or the Baptist Union or the Methodist Conference tried that on!

What a shower.

Political parties are private organisations and how they choose their members and candidates is their own affair. Anyone who doesn't like a party's policy can stand against it in elections and put their own views forward in the campaigns.

If they're private organisations then they've no business running public affairs and one shouldn't currently be choosing the new leader of the UK.

You'd prefer state owned and state run political parties to run things? They have that system in China and Cuba. Eastern Europe and Russia tried it for while but they got fed up of it. I see nothing wrong with a private organisation recommending itself to the people as a potential government and running the country if it is given permission to do so via an election.

[Vorpal]

None of this would be so bad if people were less dogmatic. We're all bumbling along without very many principles. Yet from the tone of much public debate you would think the country is inhabited by two opposing fundamentalist sects living out their pure theories without deviation. It's not that politics has become extreme and dogmatic. It's more that the language has become extreme and dogmatic while the practice has moved the opposite direction, where everything is self-serving opportunism and expediency for the moment.

While polarisation has been underway for some years, and tends to be somewhat cyclic, it has recently been accelerated by social media campaigns. https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira- ... te-report/ explains in detail how it has been done. Less has been made of similar reports about Russian interference into Brexit https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ate-report

[661-Pete]

Just seen the story about Widdlecoombe Fair likening Brex**it to emancipation of slaves - and by corollary, likening EU membership to slavery.

If that's not gross racism and extremely insulting to African-Americans descended from former slaves, I don't know what is...

It just goes to show what disgusting opinions circulate within the Brex**it sphere.

[reohn2]

Just seen the story about Widdlecoombe Fair likening Brex**it to emancipation of slaves - and by corollary, likening EU membership to slavery.

If that's not gross racism and extremely insulting to African-Americans descended from former slaves, I don't know what is...

It just goes to show what disgusting opinions circulate within the Brex**it sphere.

What a disgusting excuse for humanity

[Cunobelin]

Farage and his clowns are what a small group of people voted for, and now they can live with the consequences.

A stunning speech, but in its irony rather than the intended purpose. In that applies to an awful lot of countries

Since 1970:



Since 1980:




All countries which exercised the "rights to gain freedom from their oppressors"

... and I am sure that Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland are glad to hear her words

[Cugel]

Maybe it is simpler to use the term social democracy which I think is more akin to what the British on the political left would like to see.

There seems to be a problem, especially in the modern Anglosphere, [edit] with[/] speaking in shades of grey. The language is of capitalists versus communists. Yet I have never met a capitalist that truly believed in free markets, nor a communist that believed that all property should be in common. Both might pursue the ideal in theory, but in practice they understand that until the paradise emerges, pragmatism is required. In that sense there's no difference between most capitalists and most communists. They believe in a certain amount of public ownership and they believe in a certain amount of private enterprise. The amounts fluctuate according to taste. One day the capitalist is complaining about paying tax, the next he is asking for state handouts. The communist complains about the sale of public housing but buys and sells his own for profit.

None of this would be so bad if people were less dogmatic. We're all bumbling along without very many principles. Yet from the tone of much public debate you would think the country is inhabited by two opposing fundamentalist sects living out their pure theories without deviation. It's not that politics has become extreme and dogmatic. It's more that the language has become extreme and dogmatic while the practice has moved the opposite direction, where everything is self-serving opportunism and expediency for the moment.

We tend to differentiate political positions with the familiar (to us) left-right dichotomy. Often this is mapped on to socialism-capitalism, sometime on to it's more extreme versions.

As a beginning to a more informative schema of political types, I prefer the initial separation of political attitudes of Michael Oakeshott's "The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism".

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Oakesh ... oks&sr=1-3

The Politics of Faith are generally very ideological with lots of imaginary ought-to-be; notions such as "Progress" (with a capital "P") denoting an ever-better human behaviour, understanding and condition; visions of an imminent utopia. They sometimes (but not always) contain a high intolerance to alternatives to their vision. They can appear in many forms of government, from democracies to fascist or communist states; but rarely in more traditional forms of government found in non-Western nations, unless they're a theocracy.

The Politics of Scepticism are generally conservative (with a small "c") and wary of revolutionary changes predicated on utopian visions or highly specific and inclusive list of what is right and what is wrong. They tend to be tolerant in recognising that human modes of living can take many different and sometimes contradictory forms which are all as valid as each other but can only be encompassed in one polity via a lot of quid pro quo. They are wary of large change with all it's unintended consequences, preferring the traditions that are tried and true. leavened with occasional radicalism when circumstances change to demand that. They too can appear in many forms of government, from absolute monarchies to social democracies such as that found in Britain ... until recently.

*****
At present we're seeing a resurgence, via Brexit, of what many perhaps mistakenly call a right-leaning Politics of Faith. Many on the left are also in favour of leaving the EU, after all. These politics of faith do contain elements also found in the more extreme right wing discourses of many nations: nationalism of a jingoistic and even xenophobic kind; a preference for often intolerant moral views allowing no alternatives; an admiration for strong men and rich men; a traditionalism that's both reactionary but paradoxically radical or even revolutionary in the means it will allow to support what it thinks are it's essential traditions. These "traditions" are often myths about some past golden imperial age; or neoliberal fantasies about The Free Market and it's trickle-down largesse.

The Brexit situation has divided people along political faith/scepticism lines, then. Those who want to leave have nothing of scepticism in their vision of sunlit uplands, lucrative trade deals, wads of government money for this, that and their other favourite thing, from fishermen and farmers to a privatised NHS and much else handed over to "efficiencies of The Free Market". All of that is a blind faith. Their dislike of the EU is not based in any scepticism but mere prejudice, with no fact-based arguments to underpin their "gut-feeling" for wanting to leave.

Those who want to stay are more of the Politics of Scepticism in that they tend to recognise the EU as an imperfect but necessary bolster against an otherwise dangerous world, both in terms of economic and perhaps even physical survival for Britain. They are conservative in not wanting to destroy a set of political arrangements long in the building, with many obvious advantages and easements. They are very sceptical indeed about the wild claims and postures of the likes of Farage, BoJo, Rees-Mogg and others who peddle obvious untruths daily, in the form of impossible promises about their utopian Free Market heaven.

Well, this is how I would characterise Brexit through that initial Oakeshottian prism. Of course, it's lot more diverse in it's character than that. But it's a better start than assuming it's all about the old left-right class war, even though that too is involved in the churn.

Cugel

[PDQ Mobile]

Just seen the story about Widdlecoombe Fair likening Brex**it to emancipation of slaves - and by corollary, likening EU membership to slavery.

If that's not gross racism and extremely insulting to African-Americans descended from former slaves, I don't know what is...

It just goes to show what disgusting opinions circulate within the Brex**it sphere.

It is quite simply utter tosh from someone who has become a rather unpleasant person (or always was?).
Above all it shows so little understanding of what the Parliament in Brussels is for.
It is for compromise and the promotion of understanding.

The hypocrisy that these people go and simply attack a organisation that they so detest rather debate or simply abstain and not take their seats like the Irish Republicans is beyond all reason. The Irish Republicans have at least some honesty.

These Brexit Party loons are using it a a vehicle of self promotion. (and claiming their salaries etc I imagine)
Nothing more.
Chickens and roosting come to mind!
Though Widdicombe is very old!

[horizon]

It's interesting to compare and contrast Brexit with the English Civil War. Both cut through family, class and political lines so we are sent looking for a deeper perception of society and what drives it. My guess is that Parliament in the 1640s was driving forward a future-looking version of England, whereas the Royalists were holding on to the past. Conversely, Brexit is looking backwards and Remain forwards. Even though England got its king back, the future was set. Although Puritanism drove the Parliamentary cause, it was also (AIUI) mightly underpinned by the new economic forces of mercantilism: wealth could be gained through trade, industry and enterprise, not just from the ownership of land. This was a recognition of the future world. In the case of Brexit, the mercantile nation state is on the wain and new structures have taken its place: the destructive power of Brexit is channelled against the new world, akin to the Luddites breaking farm machinery.

[Oldjohnw]

It has been said before that Brexit has become a cult. Evidence not required, just blind faith, believing anything and everything which appears to support the cause. No sacrifice is too great for this short life given the endless joys of the world to come. Sacrifice, of course, being what the little people at the bottom of the cult heap do.

[Pastychomper]

...
The Brexit situation has divided people along political faith/scepticism lines, then. Those who want to leave have nothing of scepticism in their vision of sunlit uplands, lucrative trade deals, wads of government money for this, that and their other favourite thing, from fishermen and farmers to a privatised NHS and much else handed over to "efficiencies of The Free Market". All of that is a blind faith. Their dislike of the EU is not based in any scepticism but mere prejudice, with no fact-based arguments to underpin their "gut-feeling" for wanting to leave.
...

I feel a great deal of scepticism about that paragraph, at least. Back when Major was backing Maastricht, those who disagreed were called Euroskeptics. Nowadays I know quite a few people who are in favour of Brexit, but none who expect it to be all "sunlit uplands, lucrative trade deals, wads of government money for this, that and their other favourite thing."

They tend, rather, to be skeptical of the ability of a remote government to be more in touch with the little people at the bottom than a government within our own borders. To have little faith in a democracy that dilutes their vote across a much larger electorate. Skeptical, too, of any notion that the EU intends to limit its influence over its member states to what it has already achieved.

They seem rather embarrassed to have found themselves on the same side as BoJo and friends,* but agree with Larry Niven that "there is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it".


*Assuming BoJo has friends. He probably does, politrickians tend to be good at social stuff when they're not engaged in their employment.

[horizon]

Nowadays I know quite a few people who are in favour of Brexit, but none who expect it to be all "sunlit uplands, lucrative trade deals, wads of government money for this, that and their other favourite thing."

[/size]

I think that Brexit makes some good arguments, points out some relevant problems and asks some of the right questions. Dismissing their case out of hand is IMV a mistake. My difference with Brexit is that it is case of right question, wrong answer. Their aspirations (world trade etc) are IMV a bit bonkers but their criticisms of the EU aren't necessarily so.

[pete75]

Political parties are private organisations and how they choose their members and candidates is their own affair. Anyone who doesn't like a party's policy can stand against it in elections and put their own views forward in the campaigns.

If they're private organisations then they've no business running public affairs and one shouldn't currently be choosing the new leader of the UK.

You'd prefer state owned and state run political parties to run things? They have that system in China and Cuba. Eastern Europe and Russia tried it for while but they got fed up of it. I see nothing wrong with a private organisation recommending itself to the people as a potential government and running the country if it is given permission to do so via an election.

No I prefer publicly controlled bodies to run public affairs. You obviously prefer a private organisation to choose who is to be the next leader of the UK. It's a public post and one which may affect us all. Rather than it being the choice of a private organisation it should be the choice of the public.

[windmiller]

It's interesting to compare and contrast Brexit with the English Civil War. Both cut through family, class and political lines so we are sent looking for a deeper perception of society and what drives it. My guess is that Parliament in the 1640s was driving forward a future-looking version of England, whereas the Royalists were holding on to the past. Conversely, Brexit is looking backwards and Remain forwards. Even though England got its king back, the future was set. Although Puritanism drove the Parliamentary cause, it was also (AIUI) mightly underpinned by the new economic forces of mercantilism: wealth could be gained through trade, industry and enterprise, not just from the ownership of land. This was a recognition of the future world. In the case of Brexit, the mercantile nation state is on the wain and new structures have taken its place: the destructive power of Brexit is channelled against the new world, akin to the Luddites breaking farm machinery.

Cromwell disolved Parliament because it was essentially corrupt and wanted to restore the even more corrupt King. The remain stance fits like a glove with King Charles, Parliament and its' cronies - who wanted to keep the status quo and prevent democracy from evolving. Cromwell opened the door to the limited form of democracy that we have in the west today.