Interesting - thanks.
I expect that the Netherlands membership and participation in the EU will be the critical indicator on whether the EU will be a lasting institution, The Netherlands paid net EUR6.2billion for 2019.
Based on a population of 17.28 million, Netherlands - Place Explorer - Data Commons, that’s nearly EUR360 per capita for the year. Remember that the Dutch rejected the proposed 2004 EU constitution, which ultimately became a non-referendum backed treaty. The Netherlands has greater ties and interests with the EU than the UK had. But if Brexit was a warning of the end for the EU, then watch out for Nexit.
There are a few different questions here. Were the vast majority of Brexit voters racist xenophobes? I don’t believe that’s true. There was no stark dichotomy between Brexit and Remain voters. Voting differences were based on many factors. Do you believe that Scotland, which voted Remain, is significantly less racist and xenophobic than England?
Or do you believe that the section of British voters who are racist and xenophobic carried the Brexit vote? That’s probably true; it was a fairly close vote. But so what? There were plenty of ignorant Remain voters who based their vote because they didn’t want their holidays in Spain and France to be stopped, or were pro-EU based on liberal sentiments without any understanding of the issues. It’s a fallacy to assume that all the “bad” voters were on the side that you disagreed with. It’s also undemocratic to believe that someone who voted based on a motivation that you disagree with shouldn’t have their vote count.
A few days late, and rearguing an argument that’s over four years old, but emphatically yes, the UK voters would have voted for the Brexit agreement that’s been enacted over Remain. The Remain campaign was based on the worst negatives of leaving the EU. The Project Fear label was slogan-based propaganda, but it was also a succinct summary of the Remain campaign’s platform. That platform was rejected by a majority vote. Put the current deal into a referendum against remaining in the EU? It would fail in 2016 and it would fail now.
I can address the viewpoint even if I don’t fully agree with it’s tenets.
–The EU is a stagnating market. The UK needs to look outside the EU in order to prosper.
The developing world definitely offer better future prospects than the EU. The question is whether EU restrictions act as a brake on engagement with those markets.
–EU trade policies are designed to be advantageous to France and Germany, and disadvantage the UK.
EU trade policies are meant to advantage the EU as a whole, and probably advantage non-France south Europe, and eastern Europe more than France and Germany, but do provide advantages to Germany manufacturing and France agriculture. However, the disadvantage to the UK is most likely fairly small.
–EU regulations impose standards that disadvantage UK manufacturers.
Some truth in this, but the economic cost to the UK is likely small. Germany is protecting its export market by requiring the rest of the EU to hold to German standards. However, a lot of the parts that go into the German manufactured products originate outside of Germany, and often outside of the EU. The UK could gain some competitive advantages through cheaper manufacturing, but it would be competing against Asia on cost, and against Germany on reputation. It might gain some domestic cost savings, but they’d probably be inconsequential.
–UK financial markets are subject to predation by EU countries.
Entirely true. A few years ago, there was an EU proposal that Euro derivatives must be traded in markets based in countries with the Euro as their base currency. Obviously the UK, which had most of the Euro derivative market, opposed that proposal. It didn’t go forward, but supposedly could be subject to future political deals. However, the only hypothetical benefit to the UK leaving the EU is that if they remained, they would be subject to such a future deal and would have to comply with it. I’m not sure that’s a real gain of Parliamentary approval of a treaty versus rejection via EU veto.
Back in post 1704 I quoted two Peer reviewed studies, which concluded -
There has been consensus that the issue of immigration played a primary role in the Leave campaign and Brexiteers’ minds. The reasons for this anti-immigrant sentiment have been explored, with economic and cultural concerns at the fore of the literature. Critically, currently missing from the debate is whether racism played a substantial role in causing anti-immigrant sentiment in the context of Brexit. This article uses new public opinion data from 2018 to investigate the extent to which racism motivated the Leave vote. It found that racism was an important predictor of referendum vote choice, even when economic concerns were held constant. … Despite efforts from elites at the fore of the Leave campaign to rid the debates of racism, exclusively economic arguments proved to be a façade for private racist attitudes of many Leave voters. While concern over cultural pluralism is likely a complementary factor, this article finds the link between anxieties over skin color and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Although a growing body of scholarship seeks to understand the motivations behind the ‘Brexit’ vote – including that which centralises explorations of racism, nationalism and post-colonialism – little consideration has been given to the ways in which ‘post-race’ racisms underpin the narratives of Leave voters. This article draws on data generated through 13 semi-structured interviews to examine the subtle and subterranean ways in which xeno-racism is articulated in the accounts of some Leave voters in the Greater Manchester city of Salford: a city that saw a higher percentage of the electorate (56.8%) vote to leave the EU than the national average (51.9%). Whilst restricting immigration was a key motivator of Leave voters in our research, interviewees vehemently rejected accusations of racism. Instead, couching their views in seemingly non-racial ways, they framed their concerns about immigration as a ‘legitimate’ response to a victimised whiteness. Thus, in discussing our data, we argue that far from living in a ‘post-racial’ epoch, racisms continue to thrive through new modes of articulation. These new racisms emerge from the shadows at key times, such as the EU Referendum, and refashion themselves in ways that are considered more palatable than the older (explicit) racisms of past.
So, you see, it is not “just my opinion”, my claim that racism was the core of Brexit is backed by at least two peer reviewed sociological studies. It’s not "belief’ it’s science.
So do these peer reviewed socialogical studies discriminate between people whose motivations are racist (by some definition) and voters who took this opportunity to give the government and the Westminster political elite a kick up the backside?
Voters in the UK have for many years used the election of Members of the European Parliament as an opportunity to register a protest by voting for Euro-sceptic MEPs led by Nigel Farage and his chums.
The Brexit referendum was another opportunity to rail against the Cameron government by scuppering its ambitions. These votes were never taken seriously by the electorate. Most voters knew little of the workings of Brussels except that it was full of corruption and bureaucratic absurdities. They were educated in this perception by the regular exposes in the Murdock press and by contributions of Brussels based journalists like Boris Johnson who made his name composing senstationalist articles criticising the EU and its institutions.
The British public have been bombarded by stories for decades that the EU is a very bad idea for the UK. In each European election they registered their contempt at the ballot box. When the Brexit referendum was held, they simply continued in the same vein and our politicians did nothing to disabuse them of the fact that the EU was simply a way for crooks and thieves to come to the UK and for other nations to spend the UK budget contribution on their own projects.
Prior to the referendum Cameron went to Brusells to negotiate concessions and returned with nothing of substance. If Cameron had returned triumphantly like Thatcher did with a UK rebate on its contributions, the story would have been very different. As it was, he came back empty handed and it was not a big surprise that the public verdict was negative. The Referendum was an opportunity for the public give their opinion of his efforts by raining on his parade. The Scots had had their voice in this curious ‘Referendum’ thing Cameron had introduced, so now here was a chance for the whole of the UK electorate to get a vote on Cameron and his lamentable performance winning concessions from the EU. There was a lot going on the Brexit vote. People were bringing every sort of grievance to the table and using this as an opportunity to protest.
There are people with racist views in the UK, but that is now regarded as a serious insult. Even people who are quite prejudiced and rather ignorant, really don’t like to be called racist. It is a taboo. While people feel very uncomfortable about expressing views that suggest colour prejudice, they are not so reticent about being xenophobic. Sections of the press have long since stirred up their indignation at the activities of foreign criminals who come to the UK because of the EU rules on the free movement of labour.
I have relatives in quite deprived areas of the North of England and their attitudes are often quite contradictory. Their idea of ‘foreign and different’ is tempered by their personal experience of individuals and how they behave. People from other countries who come to the UK to work hard for their families are respected in working class communities. So too are people who work in public service like the NHS. Many of the doctors and nurses in the poorest districts are from African or Asian countries who are clearly doing a much valued job and who are plainly not from EU countries. They make a distinction between these valued contributors to society and the stories of the of villains they read about in their Sunday newspapers allowed to come to the UK by the Westminster elite and the EU bureaucrats.
I doubt whether these ambiguities are picked up by academic social research that owes more to the internal dynamics of the institutions they come from rather than an objective evaluation of statistical evidence derived from surveys and then Referendum results.
Science is concerend with gathering evidence from experiments that ideally isolates a single factor that causes a measurable effect.
In social science, there is a paucity of reliable evidence that does this. There are too many factors when dealing with human relations. Ask the same question another time and you get a different answer. Ask the same question in a different way or next to another question and you get different answer. It takes huge samples to eliminate these variables that is way too expensive to collect at scale.
Retrofitting the EU Referendum results on to social surveys taken after the event? What chance is there of that getting to any worthwhile conclusion. Even the well practiced political pollsters can’t get it right. Why should academics fare better, beset, as they are by their own institutional biases?
British society is dominated by divisions of social class, which is itself a very nuanced. I suggest that giving the dispossessed working class communities an opportunity to kick these posh Eton boys in Westminster up the backside was a significant factor in the Brexit vote. Labours drubbing in the most recent General Election was a similar signal from the electorate.
There is a huge disatisfaction with political system and this is a trend no only in the UK, but many other countries as well. Not least, in the US.
For the UK, the EU was a convenient whipping boy for some underlying political tensions that were very little to do with race. Though ‘xeno-racism’ sounds an interesting catch-all term into which any prejudice can fit.
I still remember the bemusement I felt seeing a few shocked Londoners being interviewed on the street post-Brexit: "If we had known it would pass we would never have voted for it!"
I’m hoping there was no more than a handful of that particular breed of idiot, but you rarely win betting against the illogical behavior of human beings.
Did you read them?
Thank you for your answer.
See, if someone presents a cite you disagree with, you need to read that cite so you can say “These peer reviewed socialogical studies DO NOT discriminate between people whose motivations are racist .…”
So thank you for your question.
To me, it’s very simple.
If two sides are campaigning on any public issue, and one side
- constantly tells blatant lies
- plays on emotions rather than presenting facts
- uses scare tactics and tries to create fear
- has shady and untrustworthy characters leading it
- has dubious and secretive sources of funding
… and the other doesn’t… which side would you say is likely to be right, even before looking at the details of the issue?
Which side would you say has the more convincing case, the side that has to lie and cheat to persuade people or the side that doesn’t?
Which side do you want leading your country?
My perception is that most, perhaps all of the above list applied to both sides in the referendum campaign. In which case the sensible voter tries to ignore the noise, assess each side on its merits, and use personal experience to decide how to vote.
There is no equivalence in the big lies continually repeated about Turkey joining the EU, about the £350 million a week, etc., etc.
There is no equivalence in breaking campaign finance restrictions, and accepting finance from dodgy sources.
There is no equivalence in scare tactics and populism.
I think that’s quite unlikely. The average Dutch voters are far better informed than their British counterparts. Also, Brexit is probably as good an argument for countries to stay in the EU as any.
Finally, there is nobody associated with Brexit who comes across as a decent human being, so there is an automatic feeling of disgust towards people who advocate leaving the EU.
Source: German, (currently) living in the UK with a half-Dutch partner.
The contrast between the conduct of the Referendum on Scotland leaving the UK and the Referendum on the UK leaving the EU was very marked. The former was taken very seriously and there was a fulsome debate in Scotland over the course of a year. Everyone had their say and the arguments explored the implications of the vote from many angles. It was a debate that took place all the way through society. By the end of it the Scots were certainly very well informed and quite exhausted.
The UK Referendum on leaving the EU was quite different, it was run to a timetable similar to a General Election with a few weeks of political campaigning.
The Electoral Reform Society wrote a report criticisings its conduct.
The result had little basis in Law, it was advisory. Nonethless it had huge political implications because it transformed the issue into an obsession of a faction within the Conservative party that threatened Camerons administration, to a political imperative that was blessed with an executive authority that trumped the established political order. This was no longer advice to the UK Government the Brexit faction trumpetted, it was an expression of the ‘Democratic Will of the People!’
The UK Constitution does not normally include a provision for the use of Referendum to decide on important matters in any routine manner. There are few checks and balances. It is used as a political device open to politicians to get them out of a jam. That was how it was used by Cameron and it blew up in his face.
There are states that regularly use referendums to decide upon important matters. The Swiss system is the most famous example, where it is baked in to the system. Ireland has also embraced this kind of direct democracy to decide upon important constitutional issues that have a moral element. The process has been widely admired for the conduct of a national debate.
This kind of diligence was quite absent from the UK Referndum on EU membership. The electorate was not informed, it was very mis-informed and the leave campaign was substantially bankrolled by tycoons who like to play politics from the shadows.
Curiously enough, the UK public are not particularly interested in international trade relations. Most have the vaguest idea of how the economy works, how the country trades with the rest of the world. Why should they? The UK Parliamentary system is a representative democracy. We pay politicians to take care of this stuff. EU membership was not a particularly hot political topic before the referendum, it was way down the list of issues. Most of the working class Britain has a perception of Europe that goes little further than summer holidays in sunny Spain.
For the past four years the public have watched the government tear itself to pieces over what was presented to the public as a simple binary issue. Utterly bemused that the whole thing could be so complicated. Most imagined it was akin to cancelling membership of a club. Surely you just call your bank and cancel the subscription?
This was an abdication of responsibilty by the political class and for that they were forced into going through with messy divorce from the EU, with very little preparation or much of strategy for the economic future of the country. There was no plan for leaving the EU after the referendum. It was not supposed to happen. The public were supposed to vote to remain and secure Cameron from the attacks that had bedevilled his predessessors in the Conservative party. It went horribly wrong and the party was taken over by rivals who were quicker to learnt the rules of the new game of populist politics.
What will the UK do with respect to Brexit? Well we will look for some bright ideas from the man in charge. So far his decision has been to go through with Brexit right in the middle of a pandemic and the dire economic crisis that goes with that.
At least we have some consistency in government. Boris and his chums all went to the same school as Cameron. They may have embraced populism, but they are clever and some of them must be talented to lead the UK out of this Etonian mess.
They need to get out there and convince the world that the UK is a major trading nation open for business and promote the products of key new industries and sell the services developed in an advanced economy.
Some of this is beginning to appear. The Conservatives have embraced environmentalism (which in itself is an astonishing turnaroud) and the promotion of the cheap Oxford vaccine has the potential to open a lot of doors in the fast growing developing economies that need this sort of health technology. They need to attract inward investment unhindered by EU strictures and invest in new growing business sectors.
Despite the UK shooting itself in the foot, there are still cards to play.
It was hugely irresponsible to hold a referendum with no plan whatsoever for if it passed. With the IndyRef, the Scottish government had an official plan, and were constrained in what they could promise by the prospect of having to put it into practice if they won. The ‘No’ campaign were able to challenge and criticise specific aspects of the plan in order to reduce support for it. People knew what they were voting for, whichever option they picked, and could weigh up the pros and cons.
But with Brexit, the various Leave groups were able to make all kinds of pie-in-the-sky promises, since it would never be their responsibility to implement them, and people could imagine whichever version of Brexit would give them what they wanted, to compare to the status quo. The Remain campaigners had to argue against a Schrodinger’s Brexit that could be any thing to any one - a much more difficult job.
Well, I guess it at least solved the internal problem the Conservative party had with the endless attacks each succesive leader had from the Euro-sceptic wing. It has now been taken over by them. It is the Brexit party.
They now have the challenge of transforming themselves from being the party that is hard on the EU, hard on Immigration, strong on borders - all that negativity. To a party that has a positive vision and plan to develop the UK economy as a global trading economy.
It is rather easier to destroy things and ruin relationships than to build them. The dynamic is quite different. Johnson is blessed with a big working majority, he can get laws through Parliament with little opposition. If it was a clean slate, there is a lot he could do. Unfortunately there is this pandemic affecting the whole global economy which may not be quite ready for his pitch. He will also be mindful of the huge debt the country has run up as it desperately tries to preserve many important parts of the service economy from going under. I really don’t think the public are really aware of just how bad things are from an economic point of view.It is going to be a roller-coaster ride and we will soon see whether Boris and his cabinet are up to the job once this Covid crisis has been dealt with.
Pandemic in retreat by the summer and the global economies all beginning to grow as their economic stimulus plans get going thereafter? We can but hope that the UK economy will swimming with this tide. There needs to an international consensus to avoid a global recession as their was in 2008. Such plain sailing now seems more likely now that the political tide in the US has changed and we will soon have a reliable adult at the helm. A case for cautious optimism?
Had you really had been curious, you would have learned something that would have allowed you not to need recourse to whataboutism in this particular debate. But then you would have voted differently and would even be another kind of person altogether.
You forgot to mention somebody’s e-mails too, I guess.