UK: lost, divided and alone

[Denzil_DC]

The woman selling me the railway ticket at a small Welsh station was in no hurry. She was having a public discussion with the worker next to her. He said: ‘You can’t buy girls pink toys anymore, they have to be grey.’ She replied: ‘It’s the same with the word gollywog...’ They were both within earshot of customers and both wearing the uniform of a major rail company.

During the Brexit campaign you could hear it everywhere, if you bothered to listen. Brief random expressions of racism, brief revolts against political correctness. Coming from a small working-class town myself I knew what they meant: a fake revolt of the underclass was under way — against the values of a socially liberal elite and its lifelong project: membership of the European Union.

In that conversation, and millions like it, nobody had to use the word ‘Europe’. The referendum was just the opportunity to say: we’ve had enough. Enough bleakness, enough ruined high streets, enough minimum-wage jobs, and enough lies and fear-mongering from the political class. On the night, 56% of voters in that solidly Labour Welsh town voted to leave the EU.

The signs were there. In the local elections of May 2016 the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) broke through into the former mining valleys of Wales where politics had been solidly Labour since the party was formed in 1906. In the European Parliament elections of 2014 UKIP had won 26% of the vote across the UK, always concentrated in the same kind of town: small, drab, with a low-wage private sector and just enough inward migration to remind everyone of what economists confirmed: that migration from eastern Europe was suppressing the wages of the lowest paid.

http://mondediplo.com/2016/07/03brexit

Journalist Paul Mason offers his analysis of the dynamics of the Brexit vote in Le Monde diplomatique.

[femmedem]

1. An interesting read with lots of implications for the U.S.

Thanks for posting.

[cprise]

2. ...

Cameron pledged to cut net immigration to ‘tens of thousands’. Last year net migration reached 333,000. Half of the net arrivals came from the EU and the rest through the points-based admission system linked to employer needs (2).

For the Brexit movement this figure became iconic. It held out the prospect that EU migration could add one million people to the population every three years; that wage growth at the low end of the workforce was impossible; and that not even a Conservative government had the will to act.

[Denzil_DC]

3. The sad thing is,

that if Brexit goes ahead, it won't counter the problems of wage growth, even if some way is found to limit immigration while retaining the UK's trade links.

Those with few qualifications in areas with high unemployment will be forced to take what poorly paid, often tedious and unpleasant, jobs there are left, under threat of entitlement sanctions. And those entitlements aren't likely to increase since a whole new austerity regime will be enacted.

[cprise]

4. Its a complex issue

The EU has some good qualities, but it reduces democratic input. Its relatively transparent, it comes with rights for individuals and the working population. It has spearheaded environmental protections.

It also has an increasing level of hubris, with member states imagining that the US and NATO affords enough protection to reengage in imperialist expansion. They attempted to sell the resulting refugee crisis as an economic bonus. That is a clear sign of a delusional economic class who take comfort in the trappings of money.

From here on out, the UK will be humping the leg of the United States more than ever before (if that's even possible, given recent history).

[DonCoquixote]

6. "The EU has some good qualities, but it reduces democratic input"

I apolgize for a bit of that European sentiment, Schadenfruede. For a brief periods, many Euros acted like they were the new superpower, the new Rome, the ones that replaced both the Yanks and the Russians, etc etc etc. Now, they have shown that they are very much unbale to do two things we Americans did: establish a Federal Gov't, and accept Immigrants. Add to this that the EU went from being "Let's prevent the Germans from starting WWIII" to "The Germans say we have to cut our social programs, so let's make an example of those pinko Greeks." Sorry, Schaenfreude.

I do not know who will be the next superpower, maybe China, but it will NOT be Europe, at the very least, it will not be a a Europe where Berlin, Paris and London get to fight to see who uses the EU as a tool to reestablish their old empires.

[Night Watchman]

5. Well,

it's not like they're a Third-World country. Maybe they could save money by dumping their biggest Welfare Frauds, the Windsor family.