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Where did it all go right? The bare statistics are breathtaking. Even looking in percentage terms, employment rates are at all time highs, unemployment rates are at 10 year lows and the economic inactivity rate is also at a joint all time low (tying with 1990). Job vacancies are hovering just below their all time highs. Most of the economically inactive are students, stay-at-home mums or the ret…
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The Lib Dems did make a serious difference in achieving a more nearly equal level of income across the population. But since then...?
I will be voting to Leave the EU - but it's not something that makes me angry. As a 29 year old living at home with my parents, what makes me angry is having had interest rates of 0.5% for 7 years combined with a Chancellor intent on pumping up a housing bubble. Furthermore, I despair that seven years after the last recession, our Chancellor is running a budget a deficit of £76bn and doesn't appear to have the appetite for doing anything about it.
Also, rising real incomes have little meaning when housing is unafforable across much of the south of England. That is a direct consequence of immigration, much of which comes from the EU, combined with inflexbility of supply. If we had an inflation index that included property costs effectively, I doubt anybody would be talking about living standards rising.
So, yes, it's unsurprising that people are annoyed, and that they hold the EU partly or largely responsible for that.
Opinium 4% Remain lead to -3%.
Yougov 4% Remain lead to two ties.
ICM online Tie to 4% Leave lead
ICM phone 10% Remain lead to -4%.
ORB 13% Remain lead to 5%.
I would suggest that it's people that think all their opponents deep down want to kill them that are not only behaving like a three year old, but a particularly paranoid three year old at that. Please stop this tedious drivel.
As for "tedious drivel" - well, you would know all about that.
The economic argument for Remain had traction, but no, that wasn't enough. Dave and George had to come out with £4,300 and World War Three. The ensuing mockery discredited much of what the "experts" had said earlier.
Would you trust anyone who predicts 15 years ahead, when they cannot reliably predict 15 months ahead? Would you trust anyone who predicts World War Three if Herr Juncker is no longer in charge?
Leave are free to say what they want now - it can't be dafter than that.
Similarly the generation gap has the young most squeezed by housing costs for Remain, the older home owners who have done well out of housing for Leave.
Those who have felt the pain of austerity (both in lost services and in lost jobs working for councils, etc) are those who are most likely to be Leavers. The areas and demographics for Leave are those with the highest rates of public sector employment. Mr Meeks is right about the relationship between austerity and Brexit support.
What they feel is unrepresented. Their perception - we can argue about whether it's justified - is that the Government is seen as almost dysfunctional, steadily eroding the welfare state without actually solving the problems of the economy, while the opposition is seen as preoccupied with left-wing mantras mainly of interest to middle-class intellectuals. And the EU is seen as part of the syndrome - obscure decision-making processes and mainly looking at remote issues to Britain like the Euro and the problems of Greece and migration in Germany. The perception that we've lost control of migration and it's partly the fault of the EU reinforces that.
So lots of people are contemplating Leave because they see it as a step in the right direction - "our politicians may still be crap but at least they could do stuff if they wanted to". I don't think people are furious, by and large, or that they nourish great hopes either way. But they don't feel politics really works, and they think that maybe if we withdrew it would work a bit better.
This will end in tears as soon as interest rates rise, I'm interested to see who will be at the helm when we hit the iceberg.
Leave would be a move towards the Swiss model that you so admire.
@BethRigby: Extraordinary by @Nigel_Farage: Women face rape by migrants if we stay in fear. Sorry, whose peddling project fear? https://t.co/mP7DJqPlx1
When the Treasury released figures showing Brexit would cost each family £4,300, Arron Banks, the head of the maverick Leave.EU, described it as 'an absolute bargain'. The leaders of the official Leave campaign know full well the price of Fortress Britain. Fewer houses built. Fewer of our children getting a high-quality university education. Poorer health care. Lower pay. The loss of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of jobs.
But they, too, feel it is a price worth paying. We are at last having the open and honest immigration debate people have been crying out for. The least they can do is admit it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3625733/DAN-HODGES-Pay-cuts-job-losses-cripples-NHS-s-really-gained-Fortress-Britain.html
Leaving the EU forces our politicians to take responsibility.
I agree with your sentiments, and they were very well put. It's irritation at incompetence and a "We always know best" attitude when that is clearly wrong.
The real "angrys" are in a small minority, but "We take you for fools" isn't a good manifesto.
It has been too easy for parliament to point at Brussels and shrug apologetically. I want them to be accountable, the buck should stop at Westminster, it has nothing to do with immigration, the economy or anything else.
Alastair's approach is that approximately 50% of people are thinking of voting Leave. That is, in his view, irrational so he is looking for explanations of for their irrational behaviour. The most obvious explanation is that they are angry and angry people are inclined to give the government a kicking when they can. So he approaches the statistical material looking for ways to explain that anger.
In fact average real incomes have continued to grow strongly since 2015 and now exceed the 2007 peak in real terms. That is nothing to boast about, basically we are on average back to where we were 7 years ago which is an exceptionally long period of static incomes, unprecedented in modern times. It is also the fact that the average hides differences with those on higher incomes generally doing better than those in the low middle. Those at the bottom have been helped by minimum wage increases. There is some potential for irritation on the part of the squeezed middle as Ed used to call it even though his idea of middle started somewhere about the top third decile.
But look at the counter evidence. We have polling showing this government, despite tearing itself in public, continues to lead in the polls. It had a respectable, if not exciting (outside Scotland) results in a wide series of local elections just a month ago. The proportion of people doing alright on the figures have increased by 2015 and have probably increased since then. The government was re-elected with a majority only a year ago.
I would put forward a counter-hypothesis. If the majority were currently struggling to cope the gloom and doom being broadcast by Remain would have greater traction. Those on the edge are risk adverse and those that are not are more willing to take a chance or not focus so closely on the economics of the argument. People are not angry or wanting to kick a government. They are moving up their scale of needs and thinking our country could be even better than this. If I am right Remain have a problem.
Also leaving the EU forces our civil servants to stop using the EU to bring in laws and regulations duping our politicians ability to block , amend or say no. This is why the Civil Service is fighting so hard to stay in.<
It's this that underlies the Trump/Sanders/Corbyn discontent, not whether unemployment or income levels are up or down.
Meanwhile on immigration it is striking that Leave are getting away with creating the impression that Brexit would actually make any significant difference.....
It's not a good look.
Economics is not a science. Economic forecasting is not scientific. Pretending otherwise is childish. Basic honesty would require an error bar between - infinity and + infinity.
In 14 years, your family will be £4,300 worse off.
If a seven-year-old said that, we would smile indulgently.
Leave can talk nonsense now and say "Well, you started it."
So what we are in danger of doing is withdrawing because people feel the parties are all a bit crap, and moving to a situation where the virtually unanimous view of the people responsible is that they'll necessarily become more crap.
More likely he is in the top 1%
The TUC has gone two decimal places better - we'll be £38pw worse off.
With that talent, they really should be working in the City.
This number has increased in a month.
Osborne really has no chance for the Leadership now.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2016/06/almost-six-in-ten-party-members-blame-cameron-and-osborne-most-for-tory-eu-referendum-divisions.html
Good bit easier to be rich in Wales based on those numbers.
Some Scottish data
Those earning over £86,000 in 2010/11 were in the top 1% of the adult population in terms of income. Those earning over £70,000 were in the top 2%.
The top 1% of income taxpayers were those earning over £108,000 from their jobs. The top 2% of income taxpayers earned over £79,000.
And, frankly, there is some truth in this. Some of what Leave says is ridiculous. I am not completely confident that we will be better off out. It is an unknown based on a series of imponderables. I just think the balance favours us having greater control of our own affairs. But I can readily understand how people reach the alternative view. And I am certainly not angry about it.
Areas and demographics for Leave are those that want to see the rich pay more to aid them, whether by building housing or by providing other forms of support such as tax credits.
All those posters who daily froth about excess immigration killing the prospects of ordinary working British people have decided this morning that Leave is in fact the optimistic option. Someone should tell Vote Leave, who seem to have decided "we're swamped by immigrants" is their sole campaign theme for the rest of the referendum.
We're NOT all in it together.
https://politicaladvertising.co.uk/2016/05/24/vote-leaves-new-poster-uses-turkey-as-a-bogeyman/
Rather more people will see this than an interview on Sky on a Friday night.
I think I will call it the remain-o-rant.
Bascially, tot up the amount of ad hominem/brexiters are racists/the country will be ruined by brexit and I've got my popcorn out type posts per day and divide by 10 and you get the Brexit lead.
Mr. Betting, must disagree. Osborne still probably has the MP support to make the final two, so his becoming leader remains a credible possibility.
As this is a referendum with a yes/no answer a majority is inevitable one way or the other and that majority will be much more average than whatever the top 1% earn in any particular area. It is how the average feels that will determine their approach to the question and the average person in this country thinks they are doing ok.
From 2003:
' Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes told MPs: "The number coming here for employment will be minimal."
According to the report: "The net immigration from the AC-10 to the UK after the current enlargement of the EU will be relatively small, at between 5,000 and 13,000 immigrants per year up to 2010." '
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2967318.stm
The class politics which both Labour and representative democracy require are finished. As posters here demonstrate, the hunt for the Scapegoat (immigrants, public sector pensioners, whoever) has started. It will continue and intensify, becoming ever more brutal. Identity politics are beginning. Sometimes they seem pretty enough (like the SNP, although it's always had a drink problem) and sometimes, as in Poland or Hungary they are not.
Also what would be the position of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar?
http://ukandeu.ac.uk/starting-gun-to-a-referendum-or-a-ticking-time-bomb-implications-of-a-brexit-for-northern-ireland/
Speaking of Britain and Scotland, Andy Murray's in the French Open final against Djokovic. It'd be a surprise if he won, but if he did I think he'd just need the Australian Open to complete the Grand Slam career set.
At the same time those AB and top end C1s are increasingly mobile and international in outlook and increasingly regard AB and C1 classes from other EU states as far more their kith and kin than they do the C1(rest) C2 D and E of their own nation who they increasingly view in the same "enlightened" light that the protestant ascendancy Anglo Irish looked down on Catholic Irish Peasants who toiled on their behalf.
What is happening now is that the C1(rest) C2 D and Es in the UK are reacting in exactly the way the Catholic Irish Peasants did in the 1918 elections.
In other parts of Europe such as Greece we are beginning to see the signs of their C1(rest) C2 D and Es are starting to react like the Catholic Irish Peasants did towards the Anglo Irish and their large houses in the 1920s.
Of course Turkey are not joining the EU anytime soon but the same principle applies to countries a lot more likely to join soon such as Serbia and Albania as well as some who are already in such as Rumania. The relative poverty in those countries makes the UK an irresistible draw.
I am in the top1% in the East Midlands in terms of income (but not of wealth), so I too pay a shedload of tax.
Squaring the circle of keeping taxes affordable yet not breaking up the welfare state on the altar of austerity is a tricky one. It will be made worse by cutting down on working age migrants, and thereby increasing the number of dependents for each of us of working age. Remember that ONS forecast of the population growing to 70 million? The number of working age people remains constant and the increase is mostly in the elderly, and particularly in the very elderly. The 1945 -1964 baby-boomers are getting to retirement age and beyond. There is a twenty year gap before the bpopulation structure stabilises. Until then we have to choose between immigration in about the current numbers and austerity that ever tightens on those in need of welfare support.
The government (and market) has failed to prepare for both these demographic changes. We should be building housing, and schools as well as a viable system of health and social care, instead we have squeezed all these things.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/suddenly-the-anti-eu-left-wants-in-all-because-it-fears-the-british-voters-kpt0q6wks
And how many prefer power, or the trappings of power, without responsibility.
Likewise how many people want responsibility in their own lives rather than a nanny state and the magic money tree.
We are also not utilising our domestic supply of labour adequately because it is cheaper to employ qualified people from abroad than train them adequately. Doctors, of course, still get to retire at 60.
You can hardly blame the Germans for underestimating British honour when they were dealing with a contemptible weakling like donkey Dave. Their calculation that he would fold was accurate.
I suspect that the regional pattern of Remain/Leave will not be dissimilar to the regional pattern of YEStoAV/NOtoAV.
If Leave win I fully expect the fickle public to be blaming Brexit for all their woes within a year or two.
Obviously Cameron knew this, the renegotiation was a scam to get through the election without admitting that he supported the EU. And it worked.
Dave, however, achieved a formal opt-out of ever closer union, no discrimination between and against EZ/non-EZ and exemption from banking union. He didn't get much on immigration, and he got some fluff on competitiveness. But at least on PB, no one has a problem with EU immigration, do they?
He has not changed the EU, he has fundamentally enshrined the UK's special status within, or even perhaps if you prefer alongside the EU.
That's hardly nothing.