The Brexit Boondoggle

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Upthorn
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Upthorn » Thu Dec 12, 2019 11:50 pm

I believe the institutions of western democracy have failed and there will not be a peaceful resolution to the return of fascism in the US, the UK, or anywhere else. But I don't think I have the physical or emotional strength to fight and kill to defend those I love.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

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mharr
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby mharr » Fri Dec 13, 2019 7:19 am

Pretty much. This is the build up to the climate migration crisis. Just the Trump re-election to go now, and the anglosphere's reaction plan will be crystal clear.

It is, in all cases though, only half the population going along with this in terms of raw numbers. Somehow that doesn't make me feel any better.

Likewise on the physical and emotional strength, but that's probably true of most people that found themselves here thoughout history. Past time I found a local combat training school. Any generalised recommendations?

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Friday
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Friday » Fri Dec 13, 2019 7:25 am

Can someone break down why they won in such a landslide? I was under the impression that they were pretty unpopular.

Is it just young people don't vote and old people hate brown people?
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mharr
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby mharr » Fri Dec 13, 2019 7:59 am

The Murdoch empire, which owns all the UK tabloid newspapers (that seem to matter), have always been writing a story of the sensible, grown-up conservatives struggling to hold the country together against the forces of communism and stupid modern ideas. Since the Referendum of Doom, the BBC stepped off their traditional, socially liberal small-c conservative pedestal firmly into a supporting role. The Internet and Old Media reality tunnels have been showing utterly unrelated universes for years now.

Plus we had the same thing as Hillary. Plenty of people dislike the Tories and fear what they might do, but honestly believe them to be the lesser evil than weirdy beardy terrorist sympathiser Corbyn who would round up all the Jews and take the country back to the 70s recession overnight.

I believe RPS founder John Walker is pretty representative of why Radio 4 listening Middle England have jumped this way. https://botherer.org/tag/rum-doings

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Friday
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Friday » Fri Dec 13, 2019 8:57 am

The Internet and Old Media reality tunnels have been showing utterly unrelated universes for years now.


yeah this is the most important (and hardest) thing to remember about the information war.
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Büge
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Büge » Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:39 am



So long as people they don't like will suffer more, they don't care.
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby IGNORE ME » Fri Dec 13, 2019 12:16 pm

All we need to do is set up an exchange program where any xenophobe that wants to go live on an island politically isolated from the rest of the world can trade citizenship with any Brit who doesn't.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Thad » Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:31 pm

mharr wrote:The Murdoch empire, which owns all the UK tabloid newspapers (that seem to matter), have always been writing a story of the sensible, grown-up conservatives struggling to hold the country together against the forces of communism and stupid modern ideas. Since the Referendum of Doom, the BBC stepped off their traditional, socially liberal small-c conservative pedestal firmly into a supporting role. The Internet and Old Media reality tunnels have been showing utterly unrelated universes for years now.

Plus we had the same thing as Hillary. Plenty of people dislike the Tories and fear what they might do, but honestly believe them to be the lesser evil than weirdy beardy terrorist sympathiser Corbyn who would round up all the Jews and take the country back to the 70s recession overnight.

I believe RPS founder John Walker is pretty representative of why Radio 4 listening Middle England have jumped this way. https://botherer.org/tag/rum-doings

On top of that, there's our old friend First Past the Post. Most people did not vote Conservative, but in a number of districts Labour and the Liberal Democrats split the anti-Tory vote.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my understanding watching from across the pond: "Liberal Democrat" doesn't mean the same thing over there that it means over here; they're something of a centrist party that generally favors neoliberal economics -- which puts them too far to the right for Corbyn's socialist ideals, but too far to the left for Johnson's isolationism.

Also, importantly, the Lib Dems were the party running on an explicitly anti-Brexit platform. Corbyn has never taken a strong stance against Brexit, partly because he doesn't want to alienate pro-Brexit Labour voters and partially because, even if he won't come out and say it, he's clearly pro-Brexit himself (I believe Zara described him as "an old socialist who believes if we leave the EU, the coal jobs will come back").

There are further complications on top of that. Labour has an antisemitism problem. Corbyn, at best, hasn't dealt with it and has been far too friendly to antisemitism in his party.

Add to that, third parties don't work the same way in the UK as here; voting Lib Dem in the UK is not equivalent to voting Green or Libertarian in the US. It's not a protest vote. There are Lib Dems in Parliament, and overall the Lib Dems got 11.5% of the popular vote (by comparison to the US, in 2016 the third-place candidate, Gary Johnson, got 3.3% of the popular vote).

So it's really not like the US -- you can credibly claim that the Lib Dems played spoiler in some seats that would have otherwise gone to Labour, but you can just as credibly claim the reverse. And in this case going around talking about spoilers is particularly distasteful; it's perfectly understandable why Remain voters, or voters concerned about antisemitism, would choose the Lib Dems over Labour.

There are going to be a lot of "what does this mean for the US elections in 2020?" takes in the coming days and months. The truth is, we don't know. In some ways, the challenges we're facing are very similar; in others, they're very different. We have a very different electoral system than the UK, and while I think some of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination are much worse than Corbyn from a policy perspective, I don't think any of them are as bad at campaigning as he is. (Or at least none of the ones who have a viable shot at the nomination.)

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Friday » Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:48 pm

More and more I'm starting to understand that First Past the Post is one of the major problems facing the world.

There are going to be a lot of "what does this mean for the US elections in 2020?" takes in the coming days and months. The truth is, we don't know.


Personally (and this is just my take, I don't have like, data) I don't think it means jack shit. As you say, the US is very different.
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Grath » Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:29 pm


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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby zaratustra » Fri Dec 13, 2019 7:17 pm

fffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Thad » Fri Dec 13, 2019 8:23 pm

Friday wrote:More and more I'm starting to understand that First Past the Post is one of the major problems facing the world.

You and me both. It's one of those boring, wonky things most people don't understand or think about that has a *massive* impact on people's lives.

Non-proportional districts are a problem too. I don't know anything about how districts work in the UK, how they're drawn, or whether they have the kinds of problems many American states do with gerrymandering, but my understanding at least is that they skew Parliament in such a way that it doesn't represent the population proportionally, in addition to the aforementioned issues with FPTP and split votes favoring unpopular candidates.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Mongrel » Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:22 pm

Uh, I guess pocket boroughs and rotten boroughs aren't a thing anymore at least?

...just trying to look for SOME kinda bright side here.
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby mharr » Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:45 pm

Basically it takes 40,000 voters to elect a right wing mp and 50,000 to elect a left wing one.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Caithness » Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:53 pm

Thad wrote:You can correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my understanding watching from across the pond: "Liberal Democrat" doesn't mean the same thing over there that it means over here; they're something of a centrist party that generally favors neoliberal economics -- which puts them too far to the right for Corbyn's socialist ideals, but too far to the left for Johnson's isolationism.


As far as I can tell they're equivalent. In the US we have a right wing and a centrist party, we're missing the left party.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby mharr » Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:30 am

Also it really is the Boomer problem. More people are living longer lives, which should be great, but in our culture that doesn't seem to foster wisdom. Those that don't have a long term to consider vote for short term gains and fuck the future.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Büge » Sat Dec 14, 2019 10:52 am

mharr wrote:Also it really is the Boomer problem. More people are living longer lives, which should be great, but in our culture that doesn't seem to foster wisdom. Those that don't have a long term to consider vote for short term gains and fuck the future.

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It's because the people who need society to improve the most (minorities, the poor, disabled folk, etc.) tend to die earlier. The people that survive typically have some sort of privilege that they want to hang on to, so they vote against changes to the status quo.
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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:21 am

But... Remain *is* the status quo. You can't say that in this case. The 70+ demographic voted as a majority to take a specific, drastic political action that they probably will never see the full effects of, if they experience any of the effects at all.

I find it interesting that Lib Dem support is pretty much unchanging throughout the generations, but I'm not going to try and extrapolate anything from that.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Thad » Sat Dec 14, 2019 12:46 pm

Caithness wrote:
Thad wrote:You can correct me if I'm wrong, but here's my understanding watching from across the pond: "Liberal Democrat" doesn't mean the same thing over there that it means over here; they're something of a centrist party that generally favors neoliberal economics -- which puts them too far to the right for Corbyn's socialist ideals, but too far to the left for Johnson's isolationism.


As far as I can tell they're equivalent. In the US we have a right wing and a centrist party, we're missing the left party.

Sure, but we've got a handful of Democrats who are farther to the left than most, and those are the ones most people call "liberal", not the centrists. While there are some debates about nomenclature, most people use "liberal", "leftist", and "progressive" as if they're synonyms here. In the UK, "liberal" has retained a more classical meaning.

Brentai wrote:But... Remain *is* the status quo. You can't say that in this case. The 70+ demographic voted as a majority to take a specific, drastic political action that they probably will never see the full effects of, if they experience any of the effects at all.


From Brexiteers' perspective, joining the EU was the massive change to the status quo, and they've voted to go back to the way things were in the Good Old Days.

Which is absurd for a variety of reasons, but entirely compatible with what Buge was saying.

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Re: The Brexit Boondoggle

Postby Mongrel » Sat Dec 14, 2019 2:37 pm

Brexit was basically the latest in a long iteration of ridiculous schemes to try and go back to 1966.
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