The unravelling of the Brexit vote – and parallel calls for a second referendum – is gathering pace. There may be hope for us in this, but there is also a massive warning which is crucial to the viability of liberalism in our country.
The referendum result was a triumph for illogicality. Many of those who voted Leave stand to lose most, through everything from endangered employment rights gained through the EU to the security of jobs reliant on trade with Europe. So we need to look deeper behind the reasons for the Leave vote, and when we do, we see a pattern that was evident at the 2015 general election.
The old certainties of politics no longer fit those who voted Leave. Many people support the NHS but harbour deep hostility towards immigrants, especially migrant workers. People who have seen their safety nets taken away through cuts to public services – all originating from the credit crunch of 2007-07 which was caused mainly by reckless financial instutions overreaching themselves – are understandably angry with those who appear to have kept their affluence while they themselves are fearful for their livelihood and can’t make sense of changes to their high street wrought by globalisation.
Against this background, having the right arguments is not enough – we need to show we understand the anger and fears behind the Brexit votes. We may believe in globalisation, and have evidence that freedom of movement is good for the economy, but that argument doesn’t wash with the struggling industrial worker who waits four weeks for a doctor’s appointment and then finds the waiting room filled with people speaking different languages who look like immigrants. If the argument is made by the affluent classes who’ve survived the credit crunch, it’s even more of a red rag to a bull.
For the past nine months I’ve been working on a book, ‘The Alternative’, with Caroline Lucas and Lisa Nandy about how the progressives can work together to form a plausible challenge to the Conservatives at the next election (Biteback, out 25 August). In compiling it, it’s become clear that the difficulties will centre not just on ending tribalism and enmities between Labour, Lib Dems and Greens, but on finding a programme we believe in that will gain the support of traditional Labour/LibDem voters who now feel we don’t understand them and don’t really listen to them. It’s not just Labour’s problem, it’s ours too.
In dealing with the Brexit vote, we have a trial run. I’d love us to find some way of staying in the EU, but there’s no way we can turn a blind eye to the anger expressed by the Leavers. Anything that keeps us in the EU without clearly recognising why people lashed out will simply drive a bigger wedge between the progressives and those whose support we’ll rely on at the next election.
The referendum is a sign of how far we have to travel to win back the trust of those we claim to represent. There is masses at stake in how we handle the result.
* Chris Bowers is a two-term district councillor and four-time parliamentary candidate. He writes on cross-party cooperation, was the lead author of the New Liberal Manifesto, and is unofficial coordinator of the Yorkists.
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1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
High Fell by-election leaflet watch 3: the proof is in the reading
Have resignations led to a rethink?
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55 Comments
I think there is considerable anger at politicians that they ignore the most vulnerable. Life is bloody hard for those getting sanctioned or having to constantly reapply for benefits because of hospital stays or ongoing medical problems. I think the strugglers and the angry have shown themselves with this referendum that they do have political power. It’s just they haven’t had anything to vote for that will convert that political power into an actual positive change in their circumstances. Now might be a good time to develop the universal basic income in order to demonstrate that all citizens are valued, and that there is a level of poverty we will not tolerate them falling below.
‘Many of those who voted Leave stand to lose most’.
I would say the same applies to many of those who voted for independence in Scotland too.
If only we had leaders of the calibre of Ernest Bevin, instead of this Eton Mess
Earnest Bevin Quotes
“If you open that Pandora’s Box you never know what Trojan ‘orses will jump out.”
“My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!”
“The first thing to decide before you walk into any negotiation is what to do if the other fellow says ‘no’.”
“A newspaper has three things to do. One is to amuse, another is to entertain and the rest is to mislead.”
“Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.”
“The referendum result was a triumph for illogicality.”
I accept that there in an external illogicality about what is happening widely in the social and political arena right now. That said, its illogic has the same illogic of a person frustrated and impotent at their incarceration, who smears the walls of their prison cell with their own excrement. It is an illogical dirty protest, but a protest none the less.
This article sees the problem very clearly, but again falls short of answers. If the book is similarly big on analysis, but short on answers I frankly can’t see the point of wasting good wood pulp.?
What I await are detailed, (and I mean detailed, not wishy washy words of ‘we must eradicate homelessness!!!’..), … so, seriously thought out, and detailed policy measures to shift money and resources to the places that are starved of help.?
I genuinely believe that this referendum result, is a deep ‘pre-pitchfork’ cry for help from the disenfranchised. If you refuse to listen and refuse to respond, and do so very soon,.. then you will give the disenfranchised no other option, but to resort to pitchforks.?
This is of course entirely anecdotal on my part but I’ve often found doctors’ surgeries’ waiting rooms far more likely to be filled with older people than people speaking other languages. If you look at the census data from 2011 (wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom), in that year 11.9% of the population were foreign born, while 16.4% were over the age of 65. Of those two groups, which is likely to be currently contributing to our economy more or drawing on public services? I am not of course suggesting we turn our attention to addressing the ‘elderly problem’! Merely I seek to show why the Lib Dems should not jump on the ‘we must address immigration’ bandwagon.
The starting point for any narrative between the moderate wings of progressive parties is the economy .It is something that has always put me off Labour and the Greens .Markets do matter the wealth they create does support socially useful activities like pension funds and infrastructure investment and the state cannot solve every problem .That does not mean the city has all the solutions indeed there is a good argument to be had in diversifying our economic base and encouraging more small businesses to develop. Free movement is a difficult one which both we and the EU will have to wrestle with ,Corbyn did make some good points on this even though it was very late in the day community cohesion is important population shifts have destabilised some of our towns and cities and their ability to fund services.
If the argument in the article was correct then the areas with the highest levels of immigration in England (eg London and Manchester) would have had the highest Leave votes. In fact the opposite was true. The fear is not of the reality of immigration but only fear of the idea of it. A fear that has been whipped up by the rhetoric of certain politicians and newspapers over a long period of time.
Your hypothetical industrial worker may have had to wait 4 weeks for an appointment and may have been misled to believe it was because of immigration when it was really due to austerity cuts.
This is the great triumph of the English ruling elite. Rich English people have persuaded poor English people that they are poor because of poor foreign people when they were really poor because of rich English people.
If you want to address the problem then you have to open people’s eyes up to the con trick that has been played on them. If instead, Liberal Democrats choose the quick and easy path of pandering to xenophobic fear then you will be far down the path to the dark side.
I voted leave. I do not feel lied too. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I voted Leave because I do not like the EU as a concept or as a reality. All I expect now is that we Leave the EU. Aside from that, I’m pretty chuffed to be honest.
Glenn 29th Jun ’16 – 1:20pm…………………I voted leave. I do not feel lied too. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I voted Leave because I do not like the EU as a concept or as a reality. All I expect now is that we Leave the EU. Aside from that, I’m pretty chuffed to be honest………………..
Interesting…Perhaps you could tell us when we will actually leave?
We were told, that post ‘Brexit’, we could get on with putting the ‘Great’ back into Britain…..
I don’t see any rush to start anything…Invoking article 50 was a priority that seems to have become akin to ‘pushing the nuclear button’; no-one wants to be the ‘pusher’….
Boris is nowhere to be seen; Gove, IDS, and Hammond are denying that they actually said anything in the run up to the referendum…..
If this what, “Taking back control” looks like then thank the lord this lot weren’t around in 1939….
Expats,
I never voted to put the Great back into Britain or to take back control, whatever any of that that means. I voted to leave the EU based on a dislike the EU.
We were told multiple things by both camps. All irrelevant to me as I was voting out of the EU not for the who was proposing or opposing it. Since Cameron said he would carry on as PM whatever the result was and since he said he would invoke article 50 immediately that’s what I was expecting to happen. If he wasn’t up to the job of being a PM he should have stood down years ago. Probably amongst the very worst and most dishonest PMs in British history.
Glenn
I voted leave. I do not feel lied too. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I voted Leave because I do not like the EU as a concept or as a reality. All I expect now is that we Leave the EU. Aside from that, I’m pretty chuffed to be honest.
Fine, so I think you have a duty to tell us what you think should happen next to meet the concerns of those who voted “Leave”. I acknowledge they are very deep concerns, indeed they are the concerns that are at the heart of my own involvement in politics. I have spent so much time explaining about these concerns here in Liberal Democrat Voice, and arguing with the Orange Bookers about why I think their vision of politics won’t bring true freedom because it does not address those concerns, and in many ways makes them worse. The problem is I just can’t see how leaving the EU will resolve those concerns. By voting the way you did, you seem to think you can see it. So tell us how.
I mean this most sincerely because I am now at a complete loss as to how to proceed politically.
As a baby boomer, I did vote remain by the way, I know many other “boomers” who voted leave. Most like me have at first sight little to lose. We own our own houses, we have inflation linked final salary pensions plus “currently” triple locked state pensions.
Most of the boomers, I know voted Leave, because of immigration. They use the hand car washes staffed mainly by Eastern Europeans, the local surgery with just one British born GP, Subways with its many EU staff. They then say the migrants are just scroungers or taking “our jobs.”
One or two sensibly asked their grandchildren and keen though they were leavers, voted remain, to safeguard their grand children’s future. We “baby boomers” seem to has nothing to lose, but I fear that for those around in five years time or so we may have lost a lot.
Al
If instead, Liberal Democrats choose the quick and easy path of pandering to xenophobic fear then you will be far down the path to the dark side.
There are real reasons why people lower down the wealth and influence ranking are concerned about immigration, and to dismiss it as just “xenophobic fear” is just to show the sort of elitist lack of knowledge and concern that led many of them to vote Leave.
The ruling class in this country are coming close to pursuing the idea satirised by Bertolt Brecht when he suggested that:
The people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
That is why we have this constant line that we need more immigration in order to provide skilled workers, because the elite would rather get the skilled workers that way than spend money and effort training British plebs, whom they despise. If the economy grows, but the only jobs and opportunities provide by that growth go to immigrants (because they “have the skills” you see, as if there is some genetic reason why British people don’t), then isn’t that just what Brecht is saying? And some of the lines that people who take pride in calling themselves “liberals” use come very close to this.
@Matthew Huntbach
I really wish Remain campaigners had acknowledged the points you raise and told us how they could be addressed by the UK remaining in the EU.
If, instead of ignoring or casually dismissing people’s genuine concerns, this had been done during the campaign (and preferably in the years before the referendum) then I don’t believe we would be in the current predicament.
I don’t blame Brexit for winning; I blame Bremain for losing. Too many voters were neglected by them.
Well said – we must understand and acknowledge the angers and fears of those who voted Brexit and the strong feelings of those who oppose the EU for whatever reason. It is precisely because they have been ignored for so long that they came out and voted so defiantly.
I agree also with Ewan Hoyle’s comment at the top – it’s time to do more for the most vulnerable, including the introduction of a universal basic income.
If a future government (which may come as early as October this year) wants to win the support of those who voted Leave – especially if it wants to win them over to the idea of remaining either within the EU or within its free market area, which given the comments coming out of leading Leave politicians seems increasingly likely – it will have to show a real commitment to doing more for the disadvantaged in society. Otherwise they will rightly become increasingly strident in demanding change.
J Dunn asks for specifics, here are a few for starters. I would abolish the bedroom tax, preferably completely but if not wholly, at least on the first vacant bedroom. I would protect and reinforce the pupil premium. Picking up on Jayne McCoy’s excellent post, I would increase self-directed funding for communities – I would recommend this targets communities facing disruption, whether caused by changing employment, migration patterns or redevelopment.
I would work to introduce a right to a state-funded universal basic income for all unwaged citizens and ensure a more humane administration of remaining benefits eg disability. And I would take highly visible action to ensure that wealthy individuals and global corporations paid their fair share of the taxes needed to fund these policies.
Matthew,
My one and only concern was to vote according to my views on whether Britain should be in EU. As far as I’m concerned the referendum was about absolutely nothing else. What happens next is very much down to how the political parties respond and then I will vote for whichever party best reflects my social views in exactly the same way I always do.
The main impact on domestic politics I can see is that will force our elected officials to work for votes. Basically, I think too much attention has been spent on grandstanding about world events and where we stand in the pecking order of international politics and about visions of the future to the detriment of actually representing the electorate.
Matthew,
You are ignoring the facts. The areas with the most actual immigration, those who are most familiar with the reality, voted Remain.
The problem is that providing the infrastructure to create jobs, providing housing, improving the NHS, spreading wealth to the regions and nations of the UK, and yes, providing education and training etc. costs money. Actually working to solve the social and political problems experienced down the income scale in this way is the harder and more difficult path. But it is the right one.
Telling them, with the help of tabloid rags that their problems are caused by scary foreign people costs next to nothing and is the easy path. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering…
Also, may I say that I am proud to live in a country where the first thing our First Minister said on Friday morning was that “I want to take the opportunity this morning to speak directly to citizens of other EU countries living here in Scotland – you remain welcome here, Scotland is your home and your contribution is valued.” and that that sentiment was later echoed across the Scottish political spectrum.
@Al “You are ignoring the facts. The areas with the most actual immigration, those who are most familiar with the reality, voted Remain.” – London/Scotland (lower migration)/N. Ireland (lower migration?) voted Remain – Wales and England (including the South-east) voted Leave.
If the argument in the article was correct then the areas with the highest levels of immigration in England … would have had the highest Leave votes. Al
I tend to agree with Al on this point (although I agree with Matthews take on the other points Al makes), whilst those areas that had experienced high levels of immigrant EU workers, such as Lincolnshire, having a higher level of Leave voters. This doesn’t seem to have the case in those areas that have seen high levels of non-EU immigration.
P.S. in future to everyone else (not Nick Collins – do me a favour and ignore my posts) – I will now change my name to “Leave The EU” to stop anyone else “going off the rails” and for the record, I never used a web address ID.
Chris,
I agree, alienation of the most disadvantaged is a huge problem in this country. When I was knocking on doors in Leeds last Thursday with young middle class Labour activists they told me they had given up on more traditional Labour areas in the referendum campaign. I got the impression they had been getting a lot of abuse. Traditionally the Labour approach was to send in the shop stewards to lead the working class in whatever direction the Party wanted, but shop stewards are in short supply now and the respect for authority that used to exist in Britain is disappearing too..
Many factors are at work here.. British socialism created a dependency culture and simultaneously a lack of respect for education with the “everyone is as good as everyone else” mantra. Simultaneously British capitalism was encouraging people to get into debt (at 4000% interest) buying things they could not afford and promoting the doings of fabulously rich “celebrities” at every opportunity. Meanwhile the upper middle classes and baby boomers were busy pulling up the drawbridge in their gated houses, with reductions in inheritance tax, fat pensions and private schools for their children. We need to be looking at all aspects of society including the media and the school curriculum, although typically the ideas that come out are a bit daft, unfortunately.
In various places at various times Liberals and Liberal Democrats have found ways to connect with disadvantaged in society. Michael Meadowcroft in Leeds West springs to mind. From what I read about Jo Cox, she was the ideal type of Labour politician to do this – very bright but with genuine local roots, which makes her death particularly tragic. We need to work with people in all parties who are doing the right thing
Al
You are ignoring the facts. The areas with the most actual immigration, those who are most familiar with the reality, voted Remain.
As others have suggested, it is somewhat more complex than you are suggesting.
I was and am strongly in favour of Remain, but one of the lines constantly repeated by the Remain campaign that at times got me thinking of switching was “The NHS cannot work without immigrants”. I am sorry, but can’t you and others see what a dangerous line that is? How can an economy be sustainable if basic tasks cannot be performed without bringing in more immigrants to do it? It is an indication that something is wrong if that is necessary, and we need to ask what it is. The problem is that people like you stifle the necessary discussion on it because you want to appear hip and anti-racist. You don’t seem to get the point that it is perfectly possible to talk about things like this without being a racist. And if you don’t, the problem is that the racists are the only one who talk about it, and so get a build-up of support.
I very much agree with what you followed that up with, about the problem being that training costs money. That’s the point I was putting myself. I agree with you that the problems are not caused by “scary immigrants”, rather the need for these immigrants is a symptom of another problem, that is the refusal of the rich to pay the taxes needed for a decent society, or their failure to respond to tax cuts by leading economic development that assists everyone.
@ Glenn – “I voted leave. I do not feel lied too. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I voted Leave because I do not like the EU as a concept or as a reality. All I expect now is that we Leave the EU. Aside from that, I’m pretty chuffed to be honest.”
110%
Andrew McCaig
In various places at various times Liberals and Liberal Democrats have found ways to connect with disadvantaged in society. Michael Meadowcroft in Leeds West springs to mind.
Not just Michael Meadowcroft. There was a time when one part of our bedrock support was poor and disadvantaged people in southern and rural areas who felt Labour was too urban-based to care about them and who obviously did not like the Tories, and the other part was poor and disadvantaged people in Labour-dominated areas who got fed up with Labour complacency and incompetence.
Clegg and the Cleggies threw all this away, in the supposition that there were many new votes to win by becoming a “party of government” and expressing scorn at those who worked hard to win support in deprived areas as just gaining “protest votes”, or as the leading Cleggie strategist put it “borrowed from Labour”.
Glenn
My one and only concern was to vote according to my views on whether Britain should be in EU. As far as I’m concerned the referendum was about absolutely nothing else.
Sorry, but that’s just not how politics works, or ought to work. Things are connected, if you have one thing you have to consider the knock-on effects, you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, just take it in isolation. At its most basic, you can’t detach “I want X” from what it costs to pay for X.
Suppose, for example, I were to ask my family “Do you want us to go on a holiday staying in a luxury hotel in a tropical paradise?”. Well, they might say “yes”. But that can’t be detached from the cost. It would be my duty to say to them “If we do that, you can’t have any new clothes for the rest of the year and we’ll live on bread and water, because that’s the only way we can pay for it”.
We Liberal Democrats learnt a bitter lesson on this sort of thing. We isolated tuition-fee free university education from how you could pay for it. So people thought a Tory-LibDem coalition would have Tory levels of tax along with LibDem policies that actually (but we didn’t make that clear) required higher tax.
Clegg […] expressing scorn at those who worked hard to win support in deprived areas as just gaining “protest votes”, or as the leading Cleggie strategist put it “borrowed from Labour”.
Can we have that again, but as an accurate & contextualised quote rather than the Lib Dem bashing Guardian spin doctoring of it?
I have to say that’s the first time in several decades that someone has suggested that I appear “hip” !
In my first campaign as a Lib Dem agent/organiser back in the day, I had to steer a first-time candidate through a full-scale BNP onslaught in a council by-election in England. I am well aware of the ugly forces that anti-immigrant rhetoric can unleash. The area concerned had a far below average immigrant population by English standards and the problem was illusory. We had echoes of that in recent weeks from Leave campaigners implying that the entire population of Turkey was coming and immigrants would rape peoples daughters.
But if you actually talk to reasonable people on the doorsteps though who say they are worried about immigration, you soon find that what concerns them are really other issues such as housing, health, education, jobs etc. It is just that someone has convinced them, for their own reasons, that the root of their problems is immigration when it simply isn’t.
I think we have to be very careful in promising that we’ll want to go back into the EU. We don’t know what the situation will be.
Leave EU> – Wales and England (including the South-east) voted Leave.
Proportion of foreign-born people in Wales = 5.5 per cent. Lowest of the UK nations.
Some very good posts above by Matthew Huntbach (apart from the Clegg bashing!)
The referendum result was simply an illustration of the saying – if you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer. It is insane to ask the country if they want to take an option which does not even exist. What does it mean to leave the EU? No one knows. So let’s ask people if they favour it, then officially give air time to two opposing camps – we do so love the adverserial system in England! _ then wonder why people believe that the official camps are official.
The truth is that deep down people believed that there must be a plan somewhere. Of course one did not and could not exist.
On the issue of immigration, why is it that people resent if there are foreigners in the waiting room and do not resent being treated by foreigners. The truth is most people don’t. Many people have not felt able to express their racist views openly. Now they do. We must work together to get back to where we were and then keep up the slow progress we were making in England.
I am shocked that Leave voters are feeling chuffed. Have you still not realised what the result will lead to? The Remain campaign made clear the economic risks, and that immigration would increase if we came out of the EU but still wanted to trade with Europe. We are now seeing the reality of this. As the Financial Times reports today “Britain’s politics are going the way of Greece. The economic risks of Brexit were well rehearsed. The political perils were neglected. The out decision defies the majority in parliament. Its legacy is a rudderless Conservative government, a Labour opposition fallen to civil war and a political class at sea about what to do next. This is a nation surrendering its claim to be one of the world’s most stable democracies.”
A friend of mine in Holland sums it up nicely:
“Regarding Brexit, well imo this is just stupid. Although there’s a lot wrong in the EU today, working together is always better than going separate. Working together has brought all in Europe peace and prosperity. Right now Europe has to solve some big issues and I would like to do this with the UK as one of the partners.”
Glenn …. good to read your comments.
I also voted leave because I think the EU is incapable of reform. All fine words about working from within the organisation to achieve change but fundamentally the EU is stuffed full of blinkered politicians who are not prepared to admit, or even look at the possibility, that the organisation has failed the less fortunate in our societies. The veto system is hardly democratic when one country can hold up progress to reforms agreed by all other countries (eg France in relation to the Parliamentary travelling circus) and who agreed to the expenditure of millions on modern art works to decorate the halls of power?
As for the manoeuvring to hold a second referendum, no such possibility would have been discussed if the vote had gone the other way by 4%. But the rich and powerful will try and probably succeed in finding a way to rerun the referendum and ‘take back (their) control’ of our country. Shame on the Lib Dems if the party supports such undemocratic manoeuvring.
Why are people making this so complicated? After more than 40 years of Tory And Labour governments constantly blaming Europe for all ills is it any surprise that millions of Britons have a negative view of the EU?
David Franks, Liberal Democrat leader of the opposition, Luton Borough Council.
Al
In my first campaign as a Lib Dem agent/organiser back in the day, I had to steer a first-time candidate through a full-scale BNP onslaught in a council by-election in England. I am well aware of the ugly forces that anti-immigrant rhetoric can unleash.
Yes, and the ward in the London Borough of Lewisham I represented for twelve years was a notoriously mainly white council estate in the south of the borough, in the 10% most deprived wards in the UK, and with its people seething with anger over feeling they were neglected by the Labour leadership of the borough who put all their attention to the multi-racial parts further north, and seething with anger because the situation was changing as when council houses became vacant they tended to be assigned to non-white tenants.
Deal with that …
OK, the resentment was probably the main reason we won it. Later the BNP made a serious attempt to win it, but because we were already there, we stopped them. I think they might have succeeded had it remained Labour with no other active opposition.
So, a major part of being active in the ward was turning the resentment away from it being expressed as racism. Part of it was being patient when people came at you and said racist things, not just spurning them, but realising what was underneath and turning them away from expressing it like that. Part of it was recognising there were genuine concerns, the ward had been overlooked and there was a mentality in the council that because it was mainly white and suburban rather than inner city it did not need much attention.
Over the years it became more multi-racial, and the challenge was defending the allocation of council houses when people brought up in the ward, with a culture based on the notion that when you became old enough council housing would be there for you, could no longer get allocations because they tended to be in less need according to the allocation system than those with an immigrant background. Not easy, yes? I think we did it with dignity and never succumbed to pandering to racism.
Of course, the Cleggies smashed it all up for us, and we lost that ward and every other one in the last local elections.
I’m a disgruntled Tory Remainer and there are millions of us. Few of us have any time for the main candidates for the Tory leadership and we’re looking for a home. Are the LibDems too left wing for us?
Cllr Mark Wright
Some very good posts above by Matthew Huntbach (apart from the Clegg bashing!)
I’m sorry, but the “Clegg-bashing” is a statement of reality.
The line was actually put, I remember being there at the party conference where Clegg put it, early on in the coalition when there was still much optimism about how we would be perceived through it, that now we were a “party of government” and not a “party of protest”, and it went as far as expressing what seemed to be contempt for people like who had worked hard to gain votes in places like the ward I represented. Party strategists appointed by the leader even went as far as saying those vote had been “borrowed from Labour”, and seemed to be content at seeing them go “back” to Labour (er, in working class parts of the south in particular, those votes had been “borrowed” in 1974 and stayed with us since – until 2015). There really was an attitude, pushed strongly by the sort of people who liked what was written in the Orange Book, and by those who had a lot of money to fund these ideas, that if we developed a new view of “liberalism” in which small-state low-tax and free-market economics would be prominent, we would attract a large number of new committed voters, and this would be better than winning “protest votes” like those that got me elected in Downham ward.
Matthew and Al
I don’t want to get into a big debate on immigration. I would say look at a map and look at the demographics of the areas and you will see that there are other factors at play. For instance where I live, Leicester, the city had more Remain Voters. The Suburbs and County had more leave voters. The County is where most of the jobs done by EU workers actually are. So I would flip it round and say the county is voting from experience of EU migration and the EU. Whilst, the city which is very much more ethnically diverse is voting more from previous experiences. Also much is also made of the strong Remain vote by young people, but the reality is over 60% of young people did not vote at all. This indicates indifference rather than support.
I think it is just easier to say that there are more Leave than remain voters and to stop making a big song and dance about who voted what.
Pat
But the rich and powerful will try and probably succeed in finding a way to rerun the referendum and ‘take back (their) control’ of our country.
The Brexit campaign was run and funded by rich and powerful people whose main resentment against the EU was ways in which it could impose restrictions on their money-making and exploitation. Of course they didn’t put it that way to the plebs. Or they just talked vaguely about “EU control” and never actually said what that really meant.
Our country is run by one of the most right-wing economic governments in Europe. Those running Brexit were the most right-wing economic elements of that government. When they talked about “taking back control” they meant taking back control by THEM and their extremist right-wing economic policies. They did not like the idea of international co-operation which is necessary for environmental protection and stopping the ultra-rich from playing one country off against another when it comes to workers’ rights and the like.
Pat
who agreed to the expenditure of millions on modern art works to decorate the halls of power?
Who agreed to hundreds of millions of pounds being taken from BHS to pay for private jets and cruisers for one person while the company was bled dry and closed down making thousands unemployed?
What sort of luxury art works decorate the halls of power of the banking elite and so on? Why is it when these people take money from us to live lives of luxury that’s considered ok?
It’s a tactic of the anti-democratic economic right: make a big fuss about fripperies some politicians (and I am not saying those politicians are right to do it) take, to distract attention from the hugely greater amounts that the bloated private sector bureaucrats (aka “the finance industry”) take.
Glenn 29th Jun ’16 – 2:06pm…Expats, I never voted to put the Great back into Britain or to take back control, whatever any of that that means. I voted to leave the EU based on a dislike the EU…………
Sorry, but to me that is a childish answer…WHY do you dislike the UK? Did ‘taking back control’ of laws, immigration, trade, etc., play no part?
I completely agree that the EU has acted as a stabiliser clipping the wings of Conservative government in a similar way that LibDems did in the Coalition. As has been said that’s why the Tory right have fought against it. And yes they’ve used the immigration issue to blur the reality and many have fallen for the illusion. The resulting ascendency of the Tory Right and the future lack of the EU’s dampening effect on their activities leaves Remain Tories with no party to align with.
I’ve just looked at the 2015 Election results. On the Remain side were:
Greens 4%,
LibDems 8%
SNP 5%
say half of Labour 15%
say half of the Tories 18%
Totals 50%
On the Leave side were:
UKIP 13%
say the other half of Labour 16%
and the other half of Tories 19%
Totals 48%
So not a million miles from the Referendum result with only the odd % change on the Tory and Labour split.
At present Labour is a lost cause and there’s a great probability that in future that UKIP % will be above 20 next time, fed from Labour ranks. With the right wing in charge for the Tories there’ll be about half of their 2015 voters (the Remainers) looking for somewhere to go.
If my predictions are correct next time round the Tories will get say 25% , so will UKIP, Labour will poll about 15% and Greens 4%. So there are about 30% of votes that are LibDem or looking for a Remain party to vote for.
Expats,
I’m not going to argue with you, because you are actually twisting what I said. The vote was on membership of the EU and I voted on membership of the EU. It was a simple in out question. I do not like big political projects, I’m not an internationalist. I see the EU as being both of those things and voted accordingly.
@ Matthew Huntbach,
It is regrettable that you are no longer an active politician.
Your posts, which I have read since 2010 have helped shape, or articulated with precision, my own beliefs. I wish they had reached a wider audience.
@Steamdrivenandy:
I do not know from where you derive your figures, but according to polls, Leave voters were considerably less than half of Labour (11% to 19% Remain) and considerably more than half of the Tories (21% leave to 14% Remain).
@david franks – I agree with your point, although I would include the UK press, in following their own agenda, have also contributed over the years to the negative perception of the EU that many have.
@ David-1
I haven’t seen a source for the Tory and Labour split in the Referendum so I took a slightly educated guess at 50% going to each campaign. Your figures suggest the Tories had 35% in 2015 when they actually got 36.8%, which I rounded to 37% and I rounded the Labour figure to 31%
Bumping both Tory and Labour figures up to meet the actual 2015 %centages gives Remain 51.5% and Leave 46.5%. That suggests that a large proportion of the extra voters in the Referendum voted Leave, whereas the inference during the campaign was that they were mainly Remain voting youngsters.
Anyway, enough already, what about my plea for a home for disillusioned Remain Tories?
No one has responded to steamdrivenandy. I think it depends on your definition of left wing. We are all coming to terms with a new political landscape, but I think most Lib Dems are concerned about the plight of the poorest and weakest in society whom austerity economics has hurt even more. To do something about this is probably going to mean paying higher taxes if you have a good job. In my view the last thirty years have polarised our country with the very rich getting even richer and the less well off struggling along, relying on food banks. This has been a major factor in the success of the Leave campaign. So, are you willing to pay higher taxes to help the cause of Remain? If you are then welcome to our party and we can discuss rates of tax and all other options later.
Despite being a LibDem member for 25 years I guess like most Brits I’ve always been mildly Eurosceptic. Like any good LibDem I’m internationalist in my outlook, but co-operation between countries isn’t the same as joining them at the hip. Of course we were never fully joined and even the most ardent Remainers don’t seem too keen on becoming full members of the ‘club’. After jetting around every capital earlier this year, Cameron got nothing to show for it. So to my mind it looked like years more of bickering from the sidelines, not getting what we wanted, or make a clean break. Yes, I was concerned about the economic risks, both short term as we are seeing now, and long term if we spend years arguing about trade deals.
When the campaign started I’d say I was about 75:25 to stay. So you’d have thought, with all the doommongering from Cameron, Osborne and their posses of economists, I’d have stuck with this and reluctantly voted in. I guess the apocalyptic threats were getting more and more absurd, so that probably didn’t help. But it was obvious no one was seriously addressing the issue of population numbers. For me it’s the practical issue, and I’m not that bothered what people look or sound like. We need to house another Birmingham every 3 years. But we can barely manage to keep up with natural growth. Those homes aren’t going to be built in the leafy shires, but in the existing towns, using so-called brownfield sites. Here in Portsmouth we’ve got a lot of controversy about 500 homes on an old hospital site. This could take years to develop (cont’d)
To keep up with the population trend Portsmouth will need to house 20-30,000 new people to take our fair share over the next 20 years. Of course that is possible, but given our planning system and landbanking by developers, there is no hope of getting anywhere near that. Many migrants are already living in cramped conditions. Are we ready to accept more people living like this?
The other big negative for me is that I feel we are exploiting many of these migrants, and more to the point their home countries. Many are well educated, but when they come here they are doing unskilled jobs which we don’t want to do. Of course I don’t blame them, they are still earning more here than they could at home – if they could get a job. But how is this helping their countries develop?
So I think there should be controls on free movement. We could go back to permits like before the A8 joined. Clearly there is no way Juncker and his pals’ Europroject can go backwards. It’s all set in stone with no room for manoeuvre. That’s the EU’s problem.
I voted Leave.
Steamdrivenandy –
I think that you could quite easily make a home for yourself in the Liberal Democrats. Make sure you have thick skin though; the left of the party is definitely in ascendency at the moment. The ‘orange’ kind of liberal, which I am going to assume that you are (coming from the Tories and all), are not made to feel particularly welcome. I myself would probably self-deprecatingly identify myself as a “Yellow Tory”, and have found that my liberal economic ideals of free markets and a smaller state to be the views of a pariah. Still, the party is a broad church and I truly value the intellectual stimulation I receive by disagreeing with almost everything that is currently ‘trendy’ within the party.
Welcome aboard 🙂
@Jayne Mansfield
Thanks. But to be honest, I really find it hard to get bothered these days. There just seems to be too much nonsense in politics. I am tired and bored with ending up in positions where I always seem to be fighting against both sides simultaneously.
First, I’m glad to see someone here defending, even celebrating, anger. There is a kind of Liberal, just as there is a kind of religious person and a kind of rationalist, who flinches from and disparages anger. Of course it can be a great engine for wrong – but for right too.
The next steps after feeling anger:
1: Think hard about whether it’s justified. If it is:
2: Organise.
3.Strategise.
4. Act.