#Brexit disaster: A great night for Anime Nazis, Trump fans, and dudes who say “cuck” a lot

@Crys T : your hate of that decision is definitely unhealthy. That victory isn’t actually a victory of xenophoby, even tho the fascists will try to make you think so. It’s the failue of the UE to present well. And, to be honest, to do well.

@Alan : the problem with the integration of a lot of country, then trying to work on increasing their integrations is that it make the EU too diversified for a true federation. Poland or Turkey have way too different economic and sociologic difference with France and Germany to allow an easy integration.

For Turkey, I never was against it because of Turkey, but talks about their inclusion were way past the moment I felt the number of nation got in the way. Including the Turkey to an already well-oiled EU could work, because that’s “only” two country merging in effect. But doing that for 30 country at once is madness.

Also, there is a very real problem with the fact the EU feel even more disconnected than governement from actual europeans. The EU *have* to work to improve on that, it’s mandatory. The Brexit, after the failed referendum in France some years ago, is the reminder of that.

I think the UK staying in the UE despite the referendum would be the very worst possible outcome. That one *will* definitely cement the EU as not caring at all about what the Europeans want to say.

Yeah Alan, cutting off your nose to spite your face is such a sensible move. I don’t even know how to reach someone who can’t see that when every fucking expert in every affected field says something is a bad idea, then it most likely is a bad idea.

That guy always sides with racists and colonialists over, well, anything and everything else. Never anything blatant enough to be bannable, but I’d still recommend ignoring him.

(part of this is kind of x-posted both here and Pharyngula, not that that matters but I felt it was polite to mention)

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. Kippers and the far-right across Europe all ecstatic. How could we collectively have been swayed by arguments as paper-thin as the Leave campaign? Poor and relatively poor working people seem to honestly believe that this is going to make things better for jobs, public services … when what it’s actually going to do is invite in the TTIP vultures to strip the flesh from all our bones; the trickle-up of money will become a river, and Johnson and his ilk of course won’t give a toss because they’ll be the ones on top of the smaller, dirtier, crumbling little heap.

I know the Scottish situation is not a simple one, but if Sturgeon does call it in the next few years I’m applying for nationality for me and the family.

ETA Alan, when I say paper-thin arguments I’m not referring to your position; from everything I’ve heard/seen on TV etc. the majority of pro-leave people really were/are convinced that this will somehow mean they immediately and directly have a better chance at jobs and housing as a result, simply because there will be less competition from “bloody foreigners” to get them. Completely ignoring the fact that it’s not generally immigrants who impose zero-hours contracts, or who pay low wages, or who decide not to invest in building affordable housing or invest in industry.

The next round of “we (i.e. you the poor, not me and my pals hahahah) must tighten our belts” won’t be long in coming. People like Farage and Johnson will coast for some time on blaming austerity measures on the damage supposedly done by years in the EC, so it won’t backfire on them for possibly a long time. What’s the betting they have the unmitigated fucking gall to invoke WWII images of blitz spirit and digging for victory etc. while at the very same time they dismantle and trash the actual cross-border cooperation that came after WWII.

Well in Ireland we’re well used to Britain fucking us over. The Empire isn’t coming back Nigel. We rang its death knell one hundred years ago.

Sinn Fein are already talking about a united Ireland as if there was a big enough margin between Remain and Stay for that to happen. Wait five years till the farmers start missing their subsidies and then see what happens. Scotland will probably have another vote on independence fairly soon.

@ opposable thumbs

I agree. The remain campaign however just left the field open to Farage and his ilk and let them dictate the agenda. Remain never made a positive case. Their argument (until it was too late to redress the problem) was “we’re right and if you don’t agree your stupid and/pr evil”

It wasn’t so much that leave won rather remain lost.

Immigration is obviously a massive benefit to the UK. Just in financial terms EU immigrants add around £20billion to the UK economy. However not a lot of that visibly trickles down to the poorest people. Remain could perhaps have campaigned for at least some of that money to be ring fenced to be spent on public services in the poorest areas. Then you could visibly point and say “that new clinic was paid for by that Polish guy over there’s taxes”.

Remain should also have instantly called out Farage when he introduced non EU immigration into the debate. Not only was that a total red herring, once again a positive case could have been made. But Remain failed to do so. If people are complaining about access to services like doctors and hospitals then why not point out that over a quarter of people working in the NHS and keeping it going are immigrants!

There was also the issue about general malaise, but there were ways of addressing that too. The vote in that regard may have been a nose cutting off situation, but frustrated people don’t always act in a logical way; we see that whenever there’s a riot.

I think part of the problem is no-one really thought this could happen and so the remain campaign got complacent.

The official leave campaign have agreed with Cameron that there’s no need to serve the Art.50 notice for the foreseeable future. That’s the document that formally notifies the EU of UK’s intention to leave and starts the 2 year clock running.

The leave campaign’s view is to wait at least until after the French and German elections.

As Germany and France are the two main players in the EU it probably makes sense to see what governments they end up with before negotiating the future of the EU with them. In the interim though I suspect there’ll be a lot of discussions behind the scenes.

So for the time being we’re still full members of the EU. Theoretically, if there was a renegotiation of some issues, then the notice might never be served. Not sure how well that would go down (could be seen as the elite once again ignoring the people) but it was a close run thing and it may well be that in 18 months or so, after a few concessions, the mood here may have calmed down a bit.

The key thing, and I think this is a lesson that will now have been leaned, will be to actually engage with the sceptics and address their concerns. Showing a bit of humility might address the general disconnect and real demonstrations as to the benefits of immigration will allay that issue. Ironically there was a ‘migrant impact unit’ that was set up to monitor the effects of immigration with the aim of them ensuring that things like public service and housing demand were addressed, then we went all austerity. We should revitalise that. Spend the taxes garnered from migrants in the areas where they locate. Use that money to expand public services and build more homes. Ironically although that will boost employment we’ll probably need more migrant workers to do that.

It’s a positive feedback thing. More services, means more employment, means more taxes, means more money for services.

Still waiting for Arthur, Merlin & the knights of the round table to awake from their slumber, ride to Westminster and present Boris with the mystical sword Excalibur, to ringing cheers of “sovereignty”. Guess they got stuck in the crowds at Glastonbury. ..

@SFHC

Are you playing the new safari in Pokémon Shuffle? Shiny Magikarp and Shiny Gyarados are both 1% encounter rate. 🙁

@richardbillericay I think that’s an accurate translation.

@Kevin No doubt. And people *should* feel hard done by and ignored, because they have been. The irony is that Leave now makes it even easier for the elites to screw over everyone else in the UK.

@Alan – I’m a British citizen living in Germany, so my ideas may be clouded by my dissapointment, but I can’t agree with you on the neutrality of this decision. There are left wing arguments for leaving the EU, and strong elements of anti-elitism in the leave decision, and I would be disappointed but accepting if I thought thats what this vote was about.
However, I moved to Germany a few years ago, and I noticed the growing swell of racism and xenophobia thats leading up to this beforehand. People were increasingly openly racist, especially outside London. I campaigned against library closures in Hampshire, so people would come up to our stalls and get into political discussions, and the amount of seemingly normal people with bizarre unfacts and conspiracy theories about immigrants was staggering. I met a lot of lovely people, but I also met people who believed
-there were secret queues for immigrants in job centres so they could get higher unemployment benefits than locals and this was why we can’t afford libraries
– Polish people were stealing goldfish and swans from local parks to eat, and would probably steal library books
– there were areas in London under sharia law, and no-go areas for white people (there were no boroughs in England that had a non-white majority at the time and thats probably still true)
Even when people didn’t believe such spectacular nonsense, a huge amount of people vastly overestimated the amount of immigrants in the country. And as always, the whiter the area, the more they are afraid of and ignorant about brown people. It seems to me that the vote was much more about peoples racist fear of immigration (and yes, most EU immigrants are white, but racism involves a lot of fuzzy thinking as this site constantly demonstrates).

@Crys T:
I definitely agree. This was nothing to do with the EU as it actually is. This was to do with the EU as it exists in the minds of Tory voters. It’s a dogwhistle for them.

Historically, there has been widespread support among ordinary British people for a higher level of redistributive taxation and stricter controls on financial activity. Every time the rank and file Tory electorate start to make noises in this regard, the dogwhistle gets trotted out and the voters get meekly back in line. In this manner the party has managed to keep its electorate behind a leadership which is pretty openly only in favour of the elites.

The issue now is that this dogwhistle has been used not to promote party unity, but to allow a faction to seize control of the whole party. Johnson, Gove and their ilk have carried out a palace coup against Cameron, Osborne and their ilk. That’s really all that this is.

Anyone who blames Farrage for this is missing the point, possibly deliberately. Farrage has never been anything more than noise. Johnson’s hatred of Cameron is the proximal cause, but the real cause is that the dogwhistle has been so useful over the decades that it’s grown too powerful.