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They didn’t vote to make their lives better, they voted against what they believe was a system from which someone else was benefitting and they were not.
This seems horribly plausible, given the number of times I've seen people proudly boasting that their main motivation in voting a certain way wasn't for some personal gain but because it upset other people. It's a spiteful motivation and I'm quite at a loss as to how you can make any reasonable appeal to people who think that way.
the right wing lower orders
I don't think it's right to describe any group as "the lower orders".
alot of people I’ve spoken to over the last five years see Brexit as levelling down. They didn’t vote to make their lives better, they voted against what they believe was a system from which someone else was benefitting and they were not. Not one person I have spoken to claimed that Brexit would improve their life
Agreed. This is the only single reason for voting Bexit that I respect. It's basically saying that their life is shit, it will get even shitter but they hope that in doing so it gives some of the [generally] London privileged at least a modicum of the pain they have experienced.
This is the only single reason for voting Bexit that I respect.
Respect isn't a word I would use in this instance as it is utterly undeserved. Describes modern society to a T though, why make life better for yourself when you can **** it up for someone else?
...the RW elite and their Eton educations etc. have never been there for the working classes and never will be.
They have an excuse now too. "Sorry, we know we promised levelling up and investing oodles of money in poorer areas but you know, Covid. So we all now need to tighten our belts for a few years (well you lot do)".
Interesting thread to read as an immigrant who has never been able to fathom the English class system and how pervasive it is.
Having lived in Oz, NZ, Canada, France, Scotland and England I can safely say every country has a % of folk who seem happiest when complaining and spiteful but it does seem more prevalent in England. It’s cause is obviously massively complex but looking for a simple reason I would blame the weather, bbc and murdoch
In my office the day after Brexit was like a wake most people have PhDs and clearly not one voted Brexit. At my sons football it’s the complete opposite they nearly all voted for Brexit and they all had different reasons. At the end of the day it was a democratic vote and leave on by 1.3 million votes. Not everyone voted for racist reasons, some for example were not comfortable with the direction of the European project was heading.
All I can say in recent History it tends to end badly when the right wing get the support of the working classes Hilter, Thatcher and Trump and it’s usually those folk who suffer most.
There in lies the irony of that vote, to be blunt for brexit to actually impact my well being other than making certain things a chew its going to have to become absolutely awful for many who voted for brexit.
Currently its probably as bad as its going to get until inflation kicks in and interet rates rise. I dont think there will ever be a redwall backlash as the reality is they will just retreat back to not voting and we will see a return to traditional party politics.
Brexit/Boris is not a one trick pony but it has diminishing returns and disenfranchisement will return "well we tried attitude" these folks will be ground down by inflation and interest rates rather than unemployment and the inevitable bubble going pop.
All I can say in recent History it tends to end badly when the right wing get the support of the working classes Hilter, Thatcher and Trump and it’s usually those folk who suffer most.
And it happens again and again… It’s situations like these which remind me of the musings of Cicero that my peers studied for history A-Level nearly 30 years ago. I he said something like: “To not know what happened before you were born - is to remain forever a child”.
Please feel free to correct - if it isn’t right or is mis-attributed.
The things that worry me are – how have the RW elite managed to demonise the LW dinner party classes into this educational divide without it being spotted that the RW elite and their Eton educations etc. have never been there for the working classes and never will be.
They did have some help, from the “left” of all places. I’ve never found it hard to find some amongst those railing against the right spewing out just as much bile against the wrong sort of left.
Or spewing out that bile against the wrong sort of (chattering class) left, while bizarrely defending the (born to rule) right.
Yes, some of the as well.
It's all but forgotten that prior to Thatcher it was the left that railed against the EU, Thatcher headed the campaign to go into Europe, it was a conservative initiative, as was forming the single market, those old labour voters are still alive, and brexit no doubt resonated with some, it wasn't them that changed it was Ukip and then the tory party that shifted in a U turn to catch them.
I don’t know. I’m not sure they’re really the ‘enemy’
'Enemy' as in opposing threat, from a Scottish point of view which is 10% of the UK vote, it is a concern that the other 90% and deciding majority is pro things that would not be voted for nationally, brexit for example, this justifies and entrenches SNP views that England(by voting majority) is moving further to the right and dragging N Ireland, Scotland and Wales with it.
alot of people I’ve spoken to over the last five years see Brexit as levelling down. They didn’t vote to make their lives better, they voted against what they believe was a system from which someone else was benefitting and they were not. Not one person I have spoken to claimed that Brexit would improve their life and I’ve yet to find someone disappointed with the way it’s gone.
Different but similar area, agree with the observation.
I'll name it "shy inverse snobbery"; their reaction to this so-called new snobbery, which they're not vocal about but quietly approve of and vote for.
I'm from a leave-susceptible background but managed to drag myself just about out of it through education and work, very lucky. And they certainly have made a dent in levelling me down, although tbf not as much as I thought they would - Covid is possibly to thank for that, and I appreciate others have it much worse. Now when I go back to visit my hometown, I'm not in a nice car, I don't have stories to tell of my holiday or work trips abroad, and I'm not optimistic for what's going on at work now/next. Brought me down a bit closer to where they think I belong, they know they have, and they know I know that, but neither of us says anything.
"He's above his station he is"
"Needs taking down a peg or two"
My extended brexity/boris redwallers are painfully aware that my family have prospered during brexit/covid.
I kmow it winds them up... i have had the comments.
**** em should have spent more time in education/work and less in the pub/sat on their arse.
To provide some anecdotal data of my own regarding people I know who voted brexit. (And FYI I'm personally very pro-remain)
My previous senior at work. Probably earning about £75k.
My university educated mate who's been in the police for the last 20 years. Probably earning about £60k
My dad, retired but was a self employed builder and did alright out of it.
My mechanic mate, owns his own garage plus a couple of other units which he rents out. Only now works when he wants to.
Absolutely no politics of envy or reverse snobbery when it came to brexit.
Just because the only people you know who voted for it are uneducated losers doesn't mean all brexit voters are. And to keep thinking that is exactly what that article is about. But I guess it's easier just to generalise.
If there's one thing it is justifiable to be snobbish about it is stupidity.
I don't think for a moment that stupidity/bigotry is limited to people on low incomes.
Not saying that applies to all Brexit voters either. But I'm afraid trying to pretend there wasn't a hefty strand of sinister nativism in the Brexit vote is just not credible. Not sure about the 'politics of envy' part TBH.
But at some point those “Red brick” voters are going to expect some real changes to come their way in exchange for their votes, a bit of quid pro quo for selling their souls.
Well, maybe.
Unless of course some other invented enemy is conjured up for them to vote against.
“To not know what happened before you were born – is to remain forever a child”.
Doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past etc. etc.
Many variations.
This is quickly morphing into a second Brexit thread.
The book is just another attempt at framing difficult questions into one simple answer, quite why it's ended up on news sites is anyone's guess. Typical clap-trap from the usual political authors furthering their own career by saying nothing new or particularly interesting.
All I can say in recent History it tends to end badly when the right wing get the support of the working classes Hilter, Thatcher and Trump and it’s usually those folk who suffer most.
It's very easy to appeal to the basest human instincts.
It takes an awful lot of work, a major disaster or war to bring out the better side of human nature in the majority of us.
I can't argue with the article.
I know, I know, Brexit, but the dreaded Referendum have proven to be one of the biggest changes in UK politics for decades and there is no going back to the 'old normal'.
The UK left the EU because the Remain campaign and remainers in general didn't listen, because they knew better and Boris and Farage exploited that.
I said it after the Referendum and was shot to shit on here because we still couldn't accept we'd ****ed it all up, no it wasn't our fault, we were right all along weren't we?
Leavers said they hated being told what to do by the EU, and we either told them they were wrong, or ignored it.
Leavers said they didn't want any more asylum seekers and migrants and we told them they were racist xenophobes and spent months telling the people of former mining and manufacturing towns that if they voted leave then our Finance and Services industries would suffer, the industries that ignored them for decades.
Worse still, when we lost, we refused to believe it, we told leavers they'd been duped, we even questioned the validity of the result, well before Trump made it fashionable. We blame Boris, the Tories and Farage, but Remainers were the architects of our Hard Brexit, because we were never willing to accept leaving, let alone work to find a model outside of the EU we were willing to live with.
Remainers made politics Tribal and that's why Boris Johnson will be PM until 2024, and unless the left learns some humility, empathy and tolerance, the Tories will win again.
Leavers said they hated being told what to do by the EU, and we either told them they were wrong
Does it not matter in your narrative that they actually were wrong though? About almost everything.
We should 'listen more' even when people are talking shite - interesting...
We blame Boris, the Tories and Farage, but Remainers were the architects of our Hard Brexit, because we were never willing to accept leaving, let alone work to find a model outside of the EU we were willing to live with.
Time to close this thread if it's just becoming yet another Brexit thread. But that isn't what happened. "Remainers" put forward all sorts of proposals for a post Brexit relationship with the EU (not least the SNP), and all were rejected as being "not real Brexit"... including by the man who used that idea to become PM. The "vote again" campaign only picked up steam later on, when all attempts to avoid a hard Brexit (which is what we now have) had been rejected by those claiming to speak "for the people".
Politics on the EU was already tribal decades before the referendum.
Does it not matter in your narrative that they actually were wrong though? About almost everything.
We should ‘listen more’ even when people are talking shite – interesting…
Yes, you should listen to people, even if you don't agree with them rather than just saying they're "talking shite".
This is the problem, we're so sure we're 100% right about everything, we're unwilling to even consider any other opinion, we'd rather just try to shout them down, paint them as stupid or evil and force everything into a them and us argument.
I would argue there's been way too much listening to people who haven't bothered to find out that the facts don't support their prejudices, but hey...
I get what you're saying but shouldn't we expect people to at least try and use rational reasoning over monkey-brain emotions when making important decisions?
That article is a lot of pish.
Its basically special pleading and boils down to "I think my opinions are correct and if you challenge me you are a snob / elite / woke". Its yet more manufacturing of grievance
There is such a thing as objective fact. The Earth is a sphere, 4 < 5, the British Economy is smaller today than it would have been without Brexit etc.
The problem is a massive proliferation of media channels that reinforce and legitimise pretty much any view. We just end up siloed into little echo chambers. There is basically no mainstream reasonable discourse anymore and people bump along without ever having their ideas challenged.
The other issue is the "footballification" of these different bubbles. There are plenty of football rivalries where what makes you happiest isn't your team winning its the other team losing (I'm from Glasgow so Ranger / Celtic is the perfect example but there are plenty of others). Some of the bubbles are now so entrenched that they act the same way. "I don't care whether this is a good idea or not, so long as you don't like it or it makes your life worse.