Cameron’s EU deal
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Young Master Smeet wrote:So, tomorrow is christmas for anoraks, I can hardly wait, either way, there'll be an interesting result, oodles and oodles of data to crunch, and big constitutional questiopns to examine and argue about till we're mauve in the face.
Today's Times prints some revealing statistics:
Quote:83% of local authorities voted Leave where more than a quarter of the electorate do not have good GCSEs (at least five A*-C)86% of local authorities with a high proportion of manufacturing jobs vote Leave.79% of local authorities with house prices below the national average voted Leave.77% of local authorities with average earnings below £23,000 voted Leave.We shouldn't forget that 48% didn't vote for Brexit and that there were majorities against not just in London but Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle. Birmingham was an exception. But the traditional "rivers of blood" xenophobia of this not particularly run-down part of England would not have been enough to give Brexit a majority without the addition of the resentment of discarded workers and communities in the ex-mining areas of South Wales and the North East, traditional Labour areas where the Tories have never stood a chance and which have the least immigrants (London, on the other hand, has the most).
Watching the North East news on the BBC the next day, gave off a distinct impression that a lot of people in my region voted Brexit as a way to give the current government a kicking. People are fed up with austerity, massive cuts to local services, welfare, NHS etc. In kicking the elites, the people of the North East have just cut themselves off from the only funding source they were getting, the EU. The next bunch of Tories who get in won't be looking to fill that hole.I suspect many, casual, leave voters didn't quite expect this outcome, but thought the government would be scared into easing up on austerity. The sad thing is, they've just handed the reigns to a potentially more hard line bunch of Tories.
SocialistPunk wrote:I suspect many, casual, leave voters didn't quite expect this outcome, but thought the government would be scared into easing up on austerity. The sad thing is, they've just handed the reigns to a potentially more hard line bunch of Tories.I think you meant "reins", but in this case you were perfectly correct!
Rod, (is it ok to use this name?)Thanks for the correction. A slight slip up, though it kinda works as a pun, seeing as dominating power, has perhaps been unintentionally handed to the slimiest Tories imaginable.
ItIt seems that those of us living in Remain areas like London (and Warwick) concentrated too much on attacking Brexit and failed to emphasise the title of the EC statement that "The problem is not the EU .. it's capitalism" and so neglected to address the thinking of workers in Leave areas that the EU was the cause of the problems they faced. But then we didn't distribute any leaflets or hold any meetings in those areas..
It also seems that the immediate fall-out from the result is not the expected implosion within the Tories who are not at all eager for a general election but in the Labour Party.http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36632539Once more we have heard the undertones of anti-immigration being expressed by political so-called leaders within Labour who are eager to follow the anti-foreigner sentiments of their traditional support rather than challenge those views at the price of losing votes to UKIP.
Quote:Corbyn accused Labour voters who backed Brexit because of concerns about EU migration of "lacking understanding" of the way migrants "enrich" the UK, prompting fury among MPs…His remarks prompted Labour MPs to accuse the leader of a "complete lack of understanding" of immigration while a shadow cabinet member said the speech makes his position as leader "untenable".Quote:"Rod, (is it ok to use this name?)"I always assumed his nom de plume was rodman as in angler but i stand to be corrected SP by his good self.
Meel said
Quote:All the evidence suggests that Brexit was supported by the poor more than the rich, the uneducated more than the educated, the unemployed more than the employed, and by people with the least experience of immigration.I'm not so sure.Eastern England such as Boston etc where there are large numbers of migrant workers in the agricultural and food processing industries locals voted heavily fo leave. It is also a region where the claim that migrants are stealing jobs is the strongest. Scotland and NI are overall places of relatively low immigration and the main issue for voting remain seems not to have been immgration…But we have to accept a 40% figure (and that is quite large) in Scotland voted to leave and i'm guessing immigration was the main reason. NI leave vote i think reflects religious affiliations. But i am also reminded of this research from a few years ago that is worth raising again.
Quote:On rising racial prejudice she reported “that the group that recorded the biggest rise was white, professional men between the ages of 35 and 64, highly educated and earning a lot of money. Their attitudes may directly affect others as many will have managerial responsibilities".https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/27/-sp-racism-on-rise-in-britain?CMP=share_btn_tw
A word of sanity from Ricky Gervais
Quote:Joking aside, Brexit won't make any difference. The rich will still be rich, the poor will still be poor, and we'll still blame foreigners.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/ricky-gervais-brexit-eu-referendum-results-a7102451.html
There are not many immigrants in the ex-mining areas of South wales nor (I assume) in the depressed areas of the North East. Perhaps the comrades in county Durham can confirm.I can't see either what Corbyn could have done to get them to vote Remain. I would have thought in fact that he would have had a better chance of this than the metropolitan Labour politicians who are now stabbing him in the back as an obstacle to their rise up the greasy pole, precisely because he doesn't come across as one of them.
Quote:I would have thought in fact that he would have had a better chance of this than the metropolitan Labour politicians who are now stabbing him in the back as an obstacle to their rise up the greasy pole, precisely because he doesn't come across as one of them.I intensely dislike Hillary Benn. Whatever that weasel is up to, I hope he comes a cropper “good and proper”.What has happened since his intervention to join in the bombing of Syria? We have not heard very much about the “effect” or otherwise of the UK bombing missions. It all went quiet on that front very quickly.
Blog: "David Cameron gets heckled every day of his life. The media never bother to report the names of the hecklers or the gist of what they say.Yet a single heckler shouts at Jeremy Corbyn at Gay Pride, and not only is that front page news in the Guardian, it is on BBC, ITN and Sky News.What makes a single individual heckling a politician newsworthy? There are dozens such examples every single day that are not newsworthy.The answer is simple. Normally the hecklers are promoting an anti-establishment view, so it does not get reported. Whereas this heckler was promoting the number one priority of the establishment and mainstream media, to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. So this heckler, uniquely, is front page news and his words are repeated at great length in the Guardian and throughout the broadcast media." https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/news-agenda-set/
It was "immigration" perceptions…the scapegoats for everybody's misery…not facts or figures…not the expertshttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/hartlepool-eu-referendum-leave-voters-immigration-jobs“The main reason I voted to leave the EU was immigration,” said Tommy Docherty. “And that doesn’t make me a racist. There needs to be a cap on immigrants coming to this country because, as things stand, this country just can’t cope.” https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale “There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.” Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.” It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out.And the blame goes deeper than the Brexit…back to Cameron and his swarms of migrants and those Labourites like Straw and Blunkett who pandered to voters prejudices. And now it seems that to appease the Frankenstein monster they helped to create, the Labour Party are to throw in with the Tories and UKIP to tighten immigration laws. Once again in the broader interest of the working class, the SOYMB blog posted this todayhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/06/brexit-so-be-it-we-get-it.html
That article from the Guardian about Ebbw Vale well illustrates my (and Meel's) point:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-valeAnd part of it is Nye Bevan's and Michael Foot's old constituency. Lower down the valleys there were coal mines, now all closed. The miners were members of the CP-dominated South Wales Area of the NUM. Labour has 33 of the 42 seats on the borough council.
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