Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[uppi]

Well, I posted the FT/Rachman article(hopefully everyone is reading it) as a talking/speculative point rather than suggesting it's going to happen. Looks like Merkel doesn't agree anyway, so that's that I think.

I think the sentiment described in that article is quite dangerous for the UK. You cannot wait until the EU makes concessions and then decide to stay in after all. You would wait forever and meanwhile stifle investments due to the uncertainty.

At this point, the options are pretty much clear:
a) the UK completes leaves the EU and gets diplomatic and trade status comparable to, say, Australia - at least for a while.
b) the UK becomes a non-voting member, like Norway
c) the UK in some way or another admits this was a mistake and returns to the status quo.

Now, the UK has to decide what it wants.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

What you're missing is that in both cases, "the oldies" saw themselves as voting against change, while "the young" saw themselves as voting in favour of change. Yes, in the EU referendum, "the old" vote may have taken the superficial appearance of constitutional reform, but the meat of it was staving off political change in the form of the perceived erosion of British sovereignty, economic change in form of Britain's exposure to a single European market, and social change in the form of a more diverse and pluralistic Britain. Likewise, "the young" saw themselves as voting for change, for a more open, progressive country. They may each have been mistaken- I'd say that the former group are frankly deluded- but that's what most voters seemed to think their votes represented. And each has a clear analogy to the two sides of the Scottish referendum: the "Better Together" campaign on behalf of the status quo and the "Yes" campaign on behalf of something different. Again, you can debate whether either position was realistic, but it's what people thought they were voting for.

The difference between the referendums is that, in the first place, the vote was whether a particular project should go ahead, and in the second, whether a project already underway should be aborted, so in the former, independence appeared a progressive goal, and in the latter, it appeared a reactionary goal. In each case, the underlying clash of imagination was pretty similar.

Thanks. That's a good point and is a different way of looking at it that I hadn't taken on board.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Uppi: ^Not seeing how b and c won't just be a cancellation of their public's vote. And keep in mind that the vote for Leave was roughly 60% in England itself, which has the bulk of the population in their union anyway.

I think it is a charade, yet either way it will end with more pain.

 

[Old Hippy]

I can therefore argue that voting Remain was voting for a white people's European
Union and therefore voting Remain was racist.

.

but you cannot argue that the remain voters are doing the racist incidents and further dividing the UK, it just would not make sense, so the leave voters have to take responsibility for the increased reports of racism for having allowed a campaign based on division

they might not have wanted a racist campaign (I doubt that ) but some certainly believed it as such

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/26/a-sharp-spike-in-racist-incidents-reported-after-the-brexit-vote/

 

[aelf]

A big part of the motivation for voting for the far right is to hit back at the political, academic, and business elites that have led to the stagnation or slow decline of working and lower middle class fortunes. The anti-intellectualism we see isn't just because the voters are stupid, it's because those intellectuals and experts have put together a program that is making their lives worse. Upper and upper-middle class liberal culture openly disdains the white working class, and the parties that used to fight for labor rights are now controlled by smug technocrats and urban liberal types who actively encourage continued globalization and automation. It would be better if a moderately left-wing populist party could appear (and I do mean moderate populist, not Chavismo), but that doesn't seem to be happening to anything like the same degree as the rise of the far right.

The bigotry is very real and increasing, of course. This is in large part because the demographics of Western nations have changed dramatically since c. 1970, with very liberal immigration policies. I'm personally mostly in favor of high immigration, but it's not hard to see how this will create serious tensions and divisions within real communities. But simmering resentment turned into a full boil after the economic crash (which always increases nativism), the EU's subsequent self-inflicted double-dip recession, and the disastrous handling of the migrant crisis combined with an increase in Islamist attacks. Nobody except the populist-to-far right have been willing to say that immigration should be significantly reduced and people who say this are called bigots, even though this now appears to be the majority opinion across Europe and the US. The result is an increase in support for the far right and an increase in bigotry now that they've found a group where their opinions are encouraged.

Problem is I've seen all these criticisms but no real suggestions other than vague exhortations to refocus on the plight of the working class. Surely you're not suggesting that the left embrace the anti-immigration stance out of pure expedience.

Whatever you say may be true in America, but by moderately left-wing populist party in the UK, you might be referring to a non-Blairite Labour Party. That is, or was, an option with the new leadership, but is the working class choosing that option? Or are they too distracted by far-right populism?

It's easier to gain support by shouting about immigrants and the evil EU. Short of mimicking the far-right by doing that, I don't see any suggestion of what the left can do in what you say. If the working class weren't flocking to Labour under Corbyn, then there's just no winning them over this time. Too bad. Education does help, but that seems to have become a taboo topic in conversations about working class (whites) these days.

 

[luiz]

Who are "the native working poor", though? It seems to be taken for granted that there's some Platonic ideal of the British worker: white, straight, Protestant, socially conservative and anti-communist, but it's a fiction, a bedroom ceiling fantasy invented by the last ruined dregs of the One Nation movement. It's as much a fantasy as the Stalinist ideal of the worker- coincidentally white and straight, religiously agnostic and socially moderate-to-liberal, pro-communist if only you can get the right pamphlet into his hands- a fiction!

The working class is, if it is anything at all, diverse. It's not inherently prone to voting UKIP any more than it's inherently prone to voting for- well, whatever cobbled-together socialist coalition is running this time around, I can never keep track. It's white and it's black and it's brown, it's straight and it's gay, it's Protestant and it's Catholics and it's Muslim and it's no-religion-specified. It's native born and it's immigrant, it has ancestors in the Doomsday Book and it got here yesterday. These are all true, because a class is not defined by any of these characteristics.

The image of a conservative middle-aged white person living in a post-industrial small town or suburb conjured up by the phrase "white working class" describes maybe a quarter of the actual human mass that make up the working class, and that's being generous. So why is it that "the working class vote" only becomes a cause for concern when it's talking about that demographic?

Hum, despite rapid changes, Europe is still a continent of white people. Even in France, certainly the least white of any European country, about 80% of the population is white according to demographers' estimates (there are no official ethnic statistics in France). The UK, another immigrant-heavy country, is about 90% white, and the same goes for Germany (counting Turks and Arabs as non-white for the purpose of this discussion. We should say "European origin" instead, but that's too long). Considering non-whites are way over-represented among kids and the unemployed, the proportion of white people among workers is actually higher than the figures I mentioned above.

So while there is of course diversity, there is also a huge predominance of white people, among workers as among the rich alike. Only among newborns would you see "American-style" diversity. The working class in Europe is therefore by and large mostly white. If we're talking of "working poor", we're also talking of people done with school, so not kids. Also, European countries tend to be fairly old, so these people do tend to be relatively old.

As the vote on far-right parties throughout the continent show, they are still a very big part of the population, even if also one that is shrinking fast. The people giving the Front National consistently over 30% of the national vote in France are certainly not the economic elites and Parisian bobos, and certainly not the Arabs and Africans either. It is the working poor, who are angry at the erosion of their economic well-being and of their culture and way of life.

 

[Mise]

The latest I've read on the "deal" the EU intends to offer is that Merkel has already ruled out a "EEA+" deal, i.e. the UK will NOT get a better deal than Norway. Instead, Germany intends to offer an "EEA-" deal, which means: (i) Access to single market, (ii) No "passporting" for banks, and (iii) No control over migration from the EU. "Passporting" is the process via which banks are able to operate in other EU countries: they have a "passport" which allows them to do so. If UK banks lose passporting, it will be TERRIBLE news for them, and in reality would mean that a lot of banking operations would have to move to the EU, probably Frankfurt, Paris or Amsterdam. The only other option is to simply leave the EU and not have access to the single market.

The deal above would be bloody terrible, as we would lose massive amounts of tax revenues and jobs as banks move to the EU, and we wouldn't even gain control over immigration. It would not be palatable for either the 52% of voters who wanted to leave, nor the 48% who wanted to stay. If this was the only deal, then we would probably have to go to a second referendum: a straight in or out, where out really means OUT, i.e. no access to single market whatsoever. In this case, it is likely that we would vote IN in the second referendum.

However, France intends to gazump this deal, by offering full control over immigration. This deal would be far superior for the 52% of people who voted to leave, obviously, but also note that the main losers here are the banks: the City would be crippled, the banks hobbled and forced to move to the EU, but many on the left would gleefully relish this possibility. It would be a much easier sell. In this case, it may not go to a second referendum vote; we may leave the EU on these terms, and accept the permanent loss of jobs and tax revenue.

The winners, of course, are France and Germany, where it is likely that financial services will relocate after they leave London. Huge boost for them, not just jobs and tax revenues, but also in global standing and political clout.

I may start brushing up on my French.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Really, if you are going this way, you can't really know anything for certain. However if you go into demographic breakdown of the vote, tie that then with political affiliation and furthermore education and income factors you gain a pretty overwhelming probability that people of X educational/financial status usually hold Y views. I'm sure you can stand on a barrel then and rant about sample sizes and methodologies, but these findings have been overall consistent across countries with similar political setups.

Your chosen political stance shares common ground with a lot of unsavory stances of other groups.

Not relevant. I'm sure that BNP neo-nazi skinheads, as a demographic, are more likely to enjoy drinking lager and eating kebabs than the average Brit. This does not mean that if I like those things that I am part of that group, or endorse that group, nor is drinking lager and eating kebabs directly, causally linked to becoming a BNP neo-nazi skinhead. Acknowledging that such statistical correlations exist is one thing, but using them as a shaming tactic to indirectly blame people for views they do not hold, or the actions of people who are not them or who belong to groups that they are not part of, is another thing entirely and is logically fallacious.

 

[Verbose]

@Uppi: ^Not seeing how b and c won't just be a cancellation of their public's vote. And keep in mind that the vote for Leave was roughly 60% in England itself, which has the bulk of the population in their union anyway.

It can't be done, unless some other part of the democratic toolbox can be applied to it — to build sufficient democratic legitimacy to allow Britain to effectiely overrule itself. Most likely a general election.

Which is where all the current technical discussion about what Parliament can/can't - will/won't do stems from, as I see it.

I think it is a charade, yet either way it will end with more pain.

What do you think is a charade here?

 

[Lexicus]

Oh God, Marxists.

Look, pal, bosses are all for open immigration and for that matter strongly supported remaining in the EU, specially the big bosses and those of the financial sector.

The people feeling the pain of unrestricted immigration, and inflating the ranks of the far-right, are from your beloved "working class".

I assume you haven't the slightest clue what is going on in Europe, but the evil capitalists are actually fighting pretty hard against the rise of the far right. Last year in France, when it seemed certain Marine Le Pen would take the North and Marion Le Pen would take PACA, businessmen of both regions ran a massive campaign against them, pretty much threatening people to quit their regions if the far-right won. And they managed to beat the polls and defeat what seemed like a certain FN victory in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

The capitalists you hate so much do much more to fight the far-right than useless Marxists who only serve to irritate people.

We're in 2016, not 1886. Try updating yourself a bit.

The moderate left stayed out of the race to help defeat the far-right. The commies that Lexicus loves so much didn't move a finger to help the Republican right against the far-right.

Of course I don't know for sure what exactly enabled defeating the far-right, but I'm guessing a sustained and unprecedented blitz by business on all major media outlets explaining that a vote for the FN was a vote against jobs played a big role.

I also know for a fact it wasn't the commies who defeated the FN, in fact the commies were swallowed by the far-right and keeping repeating their old record (only now with the addition of identity politics) that nobody cares about, most of all the "working class".

My point that businessmen are doing far more to fight the far-right than useless Marxists is certainly an undeniable truth.

And I don't need to try to make the left look bad, it's doing a great job on its own in Europe. Just compare the platform Hollande run on to his actual policies, in the Valls government.

That was kind of my point. The shift to the far right is against the interests of business, who are kicking and screaming about it.

Lexicus was using the tired old Stalinist line that fascism is the "defense of the capitalists" against socialism, as if bosses were exploiting racism and xenophobia of the working poor to their advantage. But there is no "socialist threat" for business to defend against. This is 2016, not 1926.

Reality is bosses are fighting against racism and xenophobia, but they're losing the battle. Indeed the economic elites are completely out of touch with the working poor, as are left-wing politicians and the college kids who vote for them. This was my point all along.

Repeating idiotic Marxist mantras that were ridiculous 50 years ago is just clownish now.

Lexicus was not doing anything of the kind. In this case you didn't even bother to try to respond to what I said, just built your own strawman and went on a rant about Marxism because that's what you do.

The bosses are not really fighting against xenophobia because that would require measures commonly referred to as 'socialist' like providing for employment and social security. Making speeches about how 'irresponsible' the far right is only makes more people vote for them out of spite.

The rise of the far right is not in the interests of the bosses (yet!), but neither is a working class organized without regard to ethnic, linguistic, or other divisions.

Of course, should the political situation change, if the alternative to the far right becomes left-socialism rather than some form of neoliberal order, then the bosses will line up behind the fascists as they have so many times in the past.

BTW, the bosses are no more single-minded than the working class. Some of them are certainly embracing the far right and see its rise as in their interests.

Now, what I actually said was that it's in the interests of the bosses to have a working class divided by ethnicity, race, and/or language. And organizing across these lines is the way to fight it.

Nothing you said actually disagreed with either of those obvious truths.

 

[Kyriakos]

It can't be done, unless some other part of the democratic toolbox can be applied to it — to build sufficient democratic legitimacy to allow Britain to effectiely overrule itself. Most likely a general election.

Which is where all the current technical discussion about what Parliament can/can't - will/won't do stems from, as I see it.

What do you think is a charade here?

^Their vote was not to go into negotiations on whether to stay under some conditions. It was to Leave. So in effect what is going on now is a charade.

(it is not comparable to our own vote, which was to decline a specific deal, and later on the pm just accepted an at least equally horrible - if not worse- deal. Voting to Leave should mean you leave, no?).

Anyway, i can accept this is an issue for the British to think about. Not for me primarily. So i hope they do what expresses them either way.

Edit: and to end on a more pleasant note:

 

[Mise]

^Their vote was not to go into negotiations on whether to stay under some conditions. It was to Leave. So in effect what is going on now is a charade.

(it is not comparable to our own vote, which was to decline a specific deal, and later on the pm just accepted an at least equally horrible - if not worse- deal. Voting to Leave should mean you leave, no?).

Anyway, i can accept this is an issue for the British to think about. Not for me primarily. So i hope they do what expresses them either way.

Edit: and to end on a more pleasant note:

Realistically, whatever deal is finally struck will have to go to a second referendum.

In any case, for it to become law it must be voted on by parliament. So it must at least please 300-odd MPs.

EDIT: lol

 

[Akka]

The EU is a Geo-political project as well as a political-economic one so keeping the UK in might be worth the price of a new deal from the EU's point of view.

That would be the single worst outcome. Vindicating tantrum-throwing behaviour is the last thing that the EU needs, and on top of being utterly unjust to everyone, it would encourage such behaviour.

If anything, the UK should be only allowed to stay if it forgoes every single special deal it had.

The latest I've read on the "deal" the EU intends to offer is that Merkel has already ruled out a "EEA+" deal, i.e. the UK will NOT get a better deal than Norway. Instead, Germany intends to offer an "EEA-" deal, which means: (i) Access to single market, (ii) No "passporting" for banks, and (iii) No control over migration from the EU. "Passporting" is the process via which banks are able to operate in other EU countries: they have a "passport" which allows them to do so. If UK banks lose passporting, it will be TERRIBLE news for them, and in reality would mean that a lot of banking operations would have to move to the EU, probably Frankfurt, Paris or Amsterdam. The only other option is to simply leave the EU and not have access to the single market.

The deal above would be bloody terrible, as we would lose massive amounts of tax revenues and jobs as banks move to the EU, and we wouldn't even gain control over immigration. It would not be palatable for either the 52% of voters who wanted to leave, nor the 48% who wanted to stay. If this was the only deal, then we would probably have to go to a second referendum: a straight in or out, where out really means OUT, i.e. no access to single market whatsoever. In this case, it is likely that we would vote IN in the second referendum.

However, France intends to gazump this deal, by offering full control over immigration. This deal would be far superior for the 52% of people who voted to leave, obviously, but also note that the main losers here are the banks: the City would be crippled, the banks hobbled and forced to move to the EU, but many on the left would gleefully relish this possibility. It would be a much easier sell. In this case, it may not go to a second referendum vote; we may leave the EU on these terms, and accept the permanent loss of jobs and tax revenue.

The winners, of course, are France and Germany, where it is likely that financial services will relocate after they leave London. Huge boost for them, not just jobs and tax revenues, but also in global standing and political clout.

I may start brushing up on my French.

After seeing the UK and its subpar worker's rights being so snubs about how they outperform France and its "outdated" workers's rights, mainly due to the fact that the UK has a considerable financial advantage with the City (remove the City and France is far ahead of the UK in GNP), it would be a delicious revenge

Anyway, I certainly hope EU won't offer such a sweet deal. The UK wants out, let them have what they asked for, and without the usual special rule just for them.

 

[uppi]

@Uppi: ^Not seeing how b and c won't just be a cancellation of their public's vote. And keep in mind that the vote for Leave was roughly 60% in England itself, which has the bulk of the population in their union anyway.

I think it is a charade, yet either way it will end with more pain.

Technically, they would not be a de-jure member of the EU in option b, but I agree that it would be a charade - not the first one in this mess, though.

 

[Verbose]

^Their vote was not to go into negotiations on whether to stay under some conditions. It was to Leave. So in effect what is going on now is a charade.

Did they understand that? They claim they didn't. Boris Johnson clearly doesn't, if one is supposed to take his latest piece on the future of UK-EU relations at face value (well...).

Effectively the referendum was a charade, all they way up to when it delivered the actually unpredicted outcome.

If you think what's going on NOW is a charade, then you should recognise the entire run-up to the actual vote a charade. No one talked about the current situation the UK is in.

 

[Kyriakos]

^While i agree that the UK had nowhere near as much crap to deal with as countries in the South, one has to suppose they did have reasons to leave, likely more of the PR type than actual misery, though (or rather a by proxy thing, given the Eu has stopped being either a union or having the values it was associated with pre 2004 anyway). That said, House Bolton traditionally wishes to remain in the 7 Kingdoms, so any backers should rally behind it and Cameroose
Ultimately, Winter is coming for all.

 

[Verbose]

^While i agree that the UK had nowhere near as much crap to deal with as countries in the South, one has to suppose they did have reasons to leave, likely more of the PR type than actual misery, though (or rather a by proxy thing, given the Eu has stopped being either a union or having the values it was associated with pre 2004 anyway).

At the risk of invoking British ire... They have had more EU integration of a certain kind than anyone else — actual large scale labour migration. The EU's extension eastwards was pushed not least by the UK, which saw it as a means of undercutting the trend towards deepening integration of the EU core member states. A large expansion would make that more difficult, and it has. It's just that when a large group of nations with rather lower living standards came in, a lot of individuals made individual decisions about using the free movement of people and labour, and since the UK speaks English, they disproportionally headed there.

And it matters because the UK is still heavily divided by class — the referendum revealed more of it that than might perhaps be entirely recognised? The UK has a wealthy London and south-east, which dominates the country, and large areas of the country done hard by. The UK also has a large low-wage sector with poor job security, where the working class compete with imigrants, and not just from the EU. (The irony is that the EU spends largely on the underprivileged bits of the UK — like Liverpool, where Thatcher's lost in 80's could talk about the need for a "managed decline" of the city, to crush the working class after riots, but where the EU has spent heavily on urban renewal instead.)

I'd say the EU's actual acitvities in the UK have been inoccuous or actually helpful. But the British perception of the EU is totally negative and has been for at least a generation. Even the media that are by British standards EU "friendly" pretty much just stick to not publising bogus claims about the nefarious EU. The reporting is next to 100% negative, or no reporting at all.

Frankly, as far as I can tell, this is now beginning to look increasingly like a revolutionary situation in the UK. It hasn't had that many. The really serious ones was rather a long time ago. I'm now having run-ins with Brexiters who proudly explain that it's about more and deeper values than the economy, and that the EU just understands the price of everything but the value of nothing. The problem is that this is the complete inversion of what continental revolutionaries (French, German, Russian) have historically accused places like the UK, US, France even, of — of being crass, money-grubbing, old and decrepit, while their alternative (even if it's going to cost) is an inherently superior, more humane order of society (French "mission civilisatrice", "deutsche Kultur").

Right or wrong, the tenor of more British people than I would ever have imagined is sounding downright revolutionary. The Germans are confused — they're used to the British claims of level-headed pragmatism, against the "continentals" in the EU and their supposed high-falutin' idealism. Now there are British histrionics about an abstract form of "soverignity", which was supposedly under threat, but has now supposedly been saved... By comparison, it's "keine Experimente" Merkel's Germany that is increasingly looking like the balancing pragmatic power in Europe — whether it intended to or not. While the UK is off on some increasingly weird tangent.

 

[Mise]

Actually they headed here not only because we spoke English, but because we allowed them to work in the UK immediately, in 2004. They didn't have automatic right to work in Germany and France until 2011, by contrast, and so moved to the UK instead.

 

[Verbose]

Actually they headed here not only because we spoke English, but because we allowed them to work in the UK immediately, in 2004. They didn't have automatic right to work in Germany and France until 2011, by contrast, and so moved to the UK instead.

Also very open and permissive labour market policies, yes. The UK has been the most dependable champion of market liberalism in the EU like that. The EU didn't make the UK do any of this of course. So that extent it is a situation also generated in the UK.

Protectionism is on the rise as an alternative ideal all over the EU. Given the outcome of the referendum, it might spell a sea-change in the UK as well?

 

[Kaitzilla]

...
I'm personally mostly in favor of high immigration, but it's not hard to see how this will create serious tensions and divisions within real communities.
...

High immigration is great until the capital city, packed with immigrants, votes to secede.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28/london-should-secede-from-the-united-kingdom/

I think the sentiment described in that article is quite dangerous for the UK. You cannot wait until the EU makes concessions and then decide to stay in after all. You would wait forever and meanwhile stifle investments due to the uncertainty.

At this point, the options are pretty much clear:
a) the UK completes leaves the EU and gets diplomatic and trade status comparable to, say, Australia - at least for a while.
b) the UK becomes a non-voting member, like Norway
c) the UK in some way or another admits this was a mistake and returns to the status quo.

Now, the UK has to decide what it wants.

The vote was clearly a mistake, because there was only 1 correct answer.
There will be a 2nd and 3rd referendum until the people vote the correct way.
If not, the elites will force the UK to adopt all EU rules/laws for any trade deal, and achieve victory in all but name.