Yep. A bunch of old white people decided that they didn’t want to share their power and wealth with brown people and/or ‘foreigners’ so in a incoherent ragegasm decided to take the county down with them. The demos of both voting blocs are shockingly similar.
Well, idiots use such simplistic comparisons. There was a spectrum on both sides, ranging from the informed to the idiotic, however we're in an era where broad brushes are now fine, so neither side seems especially interested in doing anything other than throw shit at the other. You know how the canard of "all muslims are terrorists" is obviously bollocks? Well, switch out 'muslims' for some political thing you disagree with, and terrorists for something insulting, and otherwise intelligent people turn into Dinner by finding it reasonable all the time. I mean, I've no hassle with that being done for humour, illustrative purposes or trolling, but it's being done seriously a lot of the time. Meanwhile the center is collapsing and the hooting monkeys are too busy collecting 'lefty' and 'righty' badges to consider this may be a bad thing.
Ah yes, the old ‘Not ALL...’ strawman. Yes, true, there isn’t a sentiment shared by all Leavers, just like there isn’t for all Trump voters. However, there are common threads shared by significant majorities of both groups. It is important to study these sentiments in order to discover whether they are legit grievances or simply the racist rantings of the Left Behinds that silver tongued charlatains have successfully turned against ‘the other’ and blinded against the vulture capitalist system put in by Reagan and Thatcher (and accepted by their nominally liberal successors) that has successfully plundered the middle classes. Understanding the reasoning of their racist, xenophobic, nihilist sentiments doesn’t erase said sentiments. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? And will it be worse than the current beast? Who knows, all we can do is work to make sure it is our beast, not theirs.
Hang on, you're using the strawman by applying said broad brush, because it suits your biases. And here you throw said biases in the air. You've not the capacity to conceive of an alternative viewpoint, therefore anyone having one must be cast in the role of villain and ascribed properties you can use bolster your views in a self-reinforcing, recursive manner. Immigration has become a problem across the globe, primarily because no one wishes to have a mature conversation on it. It must be displayed as either entirely good or entirely bad, and so both sides paint themselves into opposing corners, glaring across the ground they've abandoned. That sounds like a Trump soundbite
While it is true the majority of the bigots were on the leave side given issues like immigration were a major driving forced behind the vote, I'm sorry but I can't accept this ill informed comment. There were plenty of leavers who were not knuckle dragging, tabloid reading bigots who voted to leave for many different reasons. For instance, a major issue of contention for Britons is the state and direction of the EU, including the unelected nature of much of it. Some of us, like myself, felt it was better to try and reform it from within rather than cut out our European voice. Others felt it was time to cut ties. That's just one area of debate over it. It's multifaceted and complex, with many different motivations. Contrary to the popular comparison, this is not like Trump. That was a binary choice. Americans had a long campaign to evaluate Trump. A campaign in which he constantly displayed his bigotry, incompetence and pathological lying. It's easy to then reflect back and say "how could you vote for such a person"? But Brexit was driven by so many issues, many going back for many years. Indeed, this is one of the very reasons a key area of debate here is that it should never have been just an in or out vote. I think part of the project is that over on your side of the pond you have a lot of left wing commentators, like Michael Moore, comparing the two, when really their knowledge of the European structure is superficial at best.
Whether you like it or not, in America at least it is the end of an era. Even if your side succeeds in curbing immigration the writing is on the wall, white supremacy has a limited time left. Our newest generation is already majority minority. And the trend will only continue. I understand that this change is hard for some to deal with, but it is reality. The reaction to this has been doubling down on voter suppression. In such cases there isn’t no center. Either you think all citizens, regardless of their color, religion, national origin etc are equal or you don’t. In this situation there is nothing righteous in being a Very Serious Person.
That’s a good point. I should probably go back and clarify that I was speaking about US demos in this case. Maybe add something like ‘in America at least’ so that even the Federal Farmers of the board know I was speaking about US demos. Oh. Wait. (FYI, I am aware that it isn’t just South Asians that rile up the Leavers, also Eastern and Southeastern Europeans which is why when talking about both I included xenophobia and national origin and not just racism.)
I have a strong feeling May will narrow her margins here by the time it comes for parliament to vote, a lot of MPs will decide to take the comparatively safe option of the party line, but it won;t be enough. The problem with a second referendum at this point might well be voter fatigue, fatigue and apathy just at the point we need a motivated and informed electorate. It may well kill off the May cabinet but it may not be enough to kill off Brexit and the latter is more important to me at this stage. A tory government is a known evil after all, whereas the uncharted waters of leaving a customs union at such a chaotic time really don't appeal. Alternatively of course there's the possibility moderate voters may well err in favour of remain at this point simply to put an end to the debacle and I'd personally settle for that provided the margins were great enough to put an end to the question for a generation or two. As others have pointed out the last thing we want is a narrow victory which leads to an ongoing tug of war situation.
The contribution of @El Chup will be missed here. Nevertheless, the all-encompassing shambles stumbles on. Facing defeat on a vote on her deal by something on the order of 100 MP's in Parliament, May spent the last few weeks insisting that there was no alternative - only for now at the last minute to cancel the vote and apparently try to reopen negotiations with Europe. The Europeans all say that that's not going to happen, so at most she'll get a different form of words to the non-binding political declaration. Which will do her no good at all. Of course, this might save her skin for a little while but it's incredibly damaging in that it just wastes more time. Sterling has begin to fall precipitously as a result. At least if the vote had rejected her deal somebody might have been spurred to do something to break the deadlock - be that overthrow May, trigger a general election, call a new referendum, go for the Norway option or whatever.
And now that the ECJ has ruled that Britain can stop it at any time up til actual leave, days matter. Especially if there is to be a People’s Vote.
I've been hoping against hope for a long time this sort of position would arise, where the only way to push forward with Brexit involves the collapse of the very government hell bent on doing the pushing. May Cabinet is in a position now where even in the fantasy world scenario where she wins the vote she's still gone in the near future regardless and this is exactly the sort of situation people should have been considering during the referendum. It may yet happen in some form but we're in a much better position to stop it now than we were and May knows it. She's hung her premiership on this one issue and seen it through obsessively without listening to alternatives whilst I'd not go so far as to say I predicted this, I certainly had hopes. She can't recover, not as a viable leader and especially being reliant on the DUP which was such an unpopular alliance in the first place before they started to undermine her from within. It's too late for her to change tactics now, she's committed to a course and has no recourse to a people's vote without undermining everything that has defined her presence in number 10. Any new government now is going to have to do some serious catch up, including an assessment of public opinion before they can proceed and the EU are under no obligation to keep extending deadlines or offer new concessions. O the contrary it's in their interest at this point to use the position of strength they are in to force our hand and I for one welcome that because it puts a any new cabinet in a position where neither the existing strings nor a "reboot" are particularly tenable or popular.
This from a nation that argues about whether or not someone is wearing a flag pin or gave a fist bump. Yes, it's silly, but it's tradition. Like the uproar over the Ten Commandments in courtrooms or statues of Confederate slave drivers, y'know.
The whole thing is a farce of course, but if you're tryig to get your head around the mentality imagine from a US PoV if someone grabbed the constitution in protest or pulled down the flag in the senate. I personally have as much reverence for our own inanimate objects (ahem, symbols of office) as I do for yours, but we have people who view them as holy artifacts imbued with the spirit of the nation or similar horse shit just like you do. Interestingly, it's a tradition over there too
Vote of "no confidence" against May called by Tory MP's, to be held this evening. I haven't read much commentary about how it is likely to go but if she loses it will create another significant delay. She herself says that such a scenario would inevitably lead to delaying the date for Brexit. The approval ratings of some of the potential candidates are as follows: Ruth Davidson -7 Boris Johnson -19 Sajid Javid -19 Jacob Rees Mogg -20 Jeremy Hunt -34 Michael Gove -38 Yes, those are minus figures. And no polling was done for Esther McVey, presumably because the infinities involved following the universal credit mess ran the risk of rupturing the spacetime continuum.
You do have to admire her stamina though. She's got to have been doing fourteen hour days, much of it under withering criticism in full public view for weeks now.
Oh personally I have some sympathy for her plight, she's a human being trying to do the impossible, but she can step down any time she likes. She is pushing and pushing this because it's the defining issue of her premiership and admitting it's dead in the water would essentially amount to closing the curtains. Maybe she would be better off doing that on her own terms and stepping down rather than face further humiliation, who knows, but too much is riding on this to pull punches now. I want that vote of no confidence, I want the government to collapse in disarray and I want a labour cabinet who will support the NHS I cherish. If that means delaying brexit or even revoking article 50 even better but the damage being done now to the conservative government can only be a good thing given the alternatives.
May doesn't deserve to be thrown out for all the hard, sensible work she's done trying to manage this crisis. But if it leads to a new PM canceling Brexit and ending the madness, so be it.
Well, word is that enough Tory MPs have declared support for her this morning that she'll win the vote. They could be lying of course - but she would still be incredibly damaged by a close vote even if she wins, so the question now is how close it will be?
this is great and seems a good explainer: @hugorifkind The thing is, the best way to understand Theresa May’s predicament is to imagine that 52 percent of Britain had voted that the government should build a submarine out of cheese. Now, Theresa May was initially against building a submarine out of cheese, obviously. Because it’s a completely insane thing to do. However, in order to become PM, she had to pretend that she thought building a submarine out of cheese was fine and could totally work. "Cheese means cheese," she told us all, madly. Then she actually built one. It’s shit. Of course it is. For God’s sake, are you stupid? It’s a submarine built out of cheese. So now, having built a shit cheese submarine, she has to put up with both Labour and Tory Brexiters insisting that a less shit cheese submarine could have been built. They’re all lying, and they know it. So does everybody else. We've covered this already, I know, but it’s cheese and it’s a submarine. How good could it possibly be? Only she can’t call them out on this. Because she has spent the past two years also lying, by pretending she really could build a decent submarine out of cheese. So that’s where we are. On balance, I this analogy works fine, perhaps except for the submarine and cheese parts, which need a little work.
Well, she won the confidence vote but probably not by as much as she would have liked. Now I believe that she's back on her pointless tour of Europe to obtain assurances that everyone relevant have already said that they'll reject.
Meanwhile, Rees-Mogg is going around saying a win of 63% of the vote is pathetic and she should resign. This is the same man who calls 52% of the vote "the will of the people" and insists we must obey the Daleks it at all costs.
I was rather hoping she'd lose, but a weakened PM chasing a seemingly forlorn dream isn't the end of the world. As you say though she does seem to have almost preternatural stamina.
