6 Takeaways on Britain's shock vote

[Ex Lurker]

http://www.politico.eu/article/6-takeaways-on-britain-uk-shock-vote-brexit-leave-eu-referendum-david-cameron-nigel-farage/

A year after leading the Conservative Party to its “sweetest victory” in the general election, David Cameron announced his resignation.

He will forever be remembered as the prime minister who lost Europe. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who broke with Cameron to back Brexit, has his “Independence Day.”

But Cameron may also be the man who lost Scotland — and possibly even Northern Ireland.

As the results started to become clear at about 3:30 a.m., Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds said wearily: “I found the overwhelming strength of feeling on immigration just trumped all other issues.”

People had stopped listening. They had a way to cut immigration and they were going to take it.

Outside the big metropolitan areas, there was real anger over the government’s failure to control the numbers arriving from Europe every year.

David Cameron had twice promised to reduce the net inflow to below 100,000. It had been a “no ifs, no buts,” pledge in 2010 and a rather more limited ambition in 2015. But by May this year — six years into Cameron’s premiership — the number had hit 333,000 a year.

[forjusticethunders]

1. But people will cry to their last breath that it had nothing to do with racism.

[whatthehey]

5. Well to be honest, it didn't have much

Parochialism, isolationism, jingoistic naive nationalism? Oh yeah it had plenty to do with that, and yes it's pretty reasonable to assume racism correlates highly with these sentiments. Even the most simplistic UKIP supporter (but I repeat myself...) however likely realizes that EU migration policies are connected to EU immigrants, almost all Caucasian, some of them literally and specifically so. Anyone thinking this affects Indian or Bangladeshi immigration is unlikely to be able to spell Brexit, let alone work out how to vote on it. European folks except for a few isolated pockets are mostly mutts of a churn of tribal groups that moved around Europe for centuries. The Celts were most likely originally Belgian. The name England itself comes from a German tribe. The Vikings started Russia as a nation as well as populating a bunch of Britain, France and even Sicily. The Roman Empire was more of a melting pot than the US could ever dream of being (at its zenith it was ruled by a Spaniard for example). About the only way to cite racial differences in Europe is to complain about the Central Asian origin of the Slavic peoples, but they are mixed so much with the Scandinavian settlers (again, Russian is a Viking word) in medieval times and western Europeans in more modern eras that any distinct separate identity is fuzzy to say the least.

And of course, that's with a non-biological understanding of "race", since it doesn't have a biological one really.

[forjusticethunders]

7. Sure it's not racism?

[whatthehey]

8. Why does that make it racism?

Even if you say "there's a bunch of brown people in that ad" then a) there's a bunch of white people in that ad and b) that ad is not representative of EU immigration, and is merely a convenient dog whistle to tug at an emotional fear of people not like me.

[forjusticethunders]

9. Gee putting POC in a picture and making them look scary

has nothing to do with racism, I never knew. I guess the Willie Horton ad had nothing to with racism either.

But of course we have a white """"""progressive""""" telling a black person what racism is.

[sendero]

10. What the FUCK..

... does immigration have to do with racsim? People were tired of limited resources and housing stock going to immigrants instead of them.

I don't blame them and only an idiot would.

[sufrommich]

2. My heart goes out to the sane people of the UK. What a frightening path

they're being forced to walk. I can't imagine how upsetting this must be.

[auntpurl]

3. And it WON'T EVEN CUT IMMIGRATION.

[Larkspur]

4. As one who opposes H-1b and L-1 visas, I can empathize with the Brexit Brits

Ordinary people are being treated like vermin by the elites in business and politics. This time in Britain enough of these ordinary people put a finger in the eye of the elites. Unfortunately, the arrogance of the elites will blind them to devising real solutions that can be beneficial to all.

[whatthehey]

6. Why? It will lose jobs and barely affect immigration