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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Two nations: the Brexit chasm
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Two nations: the Brexit chasm
Many people my age will have been captivated as children by André Maurois’s fable “Fattypuffs And Thinifers”, in which two brothers descend underground to find themselves in a world where the plump and the skinny are divided into separate realms. The two sides eventually go to war before a compromise is eventually reached.
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Thanks, Mr Meeks.
...many Leavers see Remainers as treacherous degenerates....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/04/g20-theresa-may-warns-of-tough-times-for-uk-economy-after-brexit
It will all get better when the extra cash for our health service actually arrives.
Good article Alastair, although I won't be betting against the Con Maj quite yet. The only point I'd disagree with that the Remainers are sure they have lost. We saw Tory Blair on TV last week, almost in tears again, praying that there was a way that he could still achieve his ambition of leading the EU we could somehow remain.
Now what will Labour say to make today worse for him than it is already?
I Remain convinced that it won’t be as bad as we feared, nor the tight little island of milk, honey and contented Brits that the Leavers predicted, but I’m sad that it appears that for some time to come many of our best brains will be devoting their time to unpicking the work of the last forty years.
This is simply the metropolitan / non-metropolitan divide. Leave/Remain has just thrown it into sharp relief.
It's a divide that has persisted for centuries and, no doubt, will continue to persist.
The only thing that is unusual is that for the last 20 years (since Blair) politics has been utterly dominated by the metropolitan tendency with a very narrow worldview and the contempt that Londoners have always had for their country cousins.
That was simply unhealthy, and I'm glad that the natural order has reasserted itself. London has a hugely important role to play in the country, but its priorities and interests are different from those of the rest of the realm and it should never been allow to hold sway.
The people clambering for a second referendum clearly didn't get the memo!
One man, so much content.
To some extent it is inevitable when there is close to a 50/50 split in the electorate.
I think all we are seeing is a split between the average voter and the political/media class.
How many Tories, for instance, are really going to move away from supporting the Conservatives over the EU? I doubt it is many at all.
On all topics the highly committed minority punch above their wieght these days. Social media, blogs, access to tv news, current affairs, chat shows and printed media are greater than ever. Media outlets search out the more extreem views to make a story.
The majority are learning to filter out the increased level of hyperbole and get on with our lives harmoniously. The committed activist will remain so on both sides.
The freedom of expression and the ease with which trenchant views can be expressed on line will cause some fracturing of family, club or community relationships. People express views without seeing the body language of the other party and are much more likely to express views without fear or consideration of the implication of those views on others. In a world of social media rather perversely relationships and friendships will sometimes suffer.
Frankly I cannot stand the man, far too tricky an individual and unless he has the skin of a rhino, its going to be very costly personally.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/04/barack-obama-says-britain-was-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu-at-g/
It's said on journalists' eithics courses that's there's a big difference between something that's in the public interest and something the public may find interesting.
The head of the Home Affairs Select Cttee has policy on prostitution and drugs as two of his areas of interest, and today's story says he is not exactly an impartial observer on those subjects.
A friend of Mr Vaz said that while the politician accepted he had been foolish, he believed he had been the victim of a newspaper sting.
He also suggested he might have been drugged during the encounter with the two men.
The friend added that Mr Vaz had first met the men while they were working as decorators.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3772784/Let-s-party-started-Married-Labour-statesman-Keith-Vaz-met-male-prostitutes-London-flat-wanted-man-drugs.html#ixzz4JGf3qLDU
OH .. C 43 .. T 46
PA .. C 48 .. T 42
FL .. C 48 .. T 45
VA .. C 50 .. T 37
NC .. C 49 .. T 44
GA .. C 41 .. T 47
AZ .. C 41 .. T 45
WI .. C 38 .. T 38
MI .. C 42 .. T 42
SC .. C 45 .. T 48
MA .. C 42 .. T 42
UT .. C 34 .. T 35
IA .. C 41 .. T 44
NV .. C 43 .. T 35
CO .. C 45 .. T 39
NH .. C 44 .. T 35
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/updates/
I don't swallow your view that is a mouthful
Multiracial society - fine - we have always done that - but from the 60s onwards assimilation of immigrants into our culture was replaced by emphasising difference.
Partly due to the establishment losing its confidence after the post world war decline of empire (meaning they became very useful idiots), and partly due to secular leftists activists seeing immigrants as a useful trojan horse which they could use to undermine the reactionary British culture and religion and bring about their Gramascian fantasies.
Two nations?
Seventy-five people turned up to whine in Cardiff. A few thousand, at most, in London.
It's not two nations. It's a tiny percentage of people who think democracy should be overturned if people vote a way they dislike, and everybody else.
Does your back ache from lopsided gait? Heavy wallet causing hip pain? Lighten the load by following Morris Dancer's F1 tips:
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/italy-pre-race-2016.html
I still can't understand how poppers aren't illegal highs. That they improve anal sex really doesn't seem like a trump card to me. Best stop there given it's Sunday morning...
How long will it take the BBC to mention his difficulties?
Passports and Labour donors, large sums of money lying in bank accounts have featured in past headlines, yet he has had more political lives than a cat.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-37269239
http://news.sky.com/story/sundays-national-newspaper-front-pages-10564420
Hmm
Plato, be carful using trump in a sentence with anal sex. I would hate you to be sued by an American
Twenty five years ago there was just the bbc, ITV and a handful of printed newspapers.
All of which bar a couple of newspapers perhaps were dominated by a metropoltan progressive world view.
The progressives finally woke up to this new reality - that their received view on the BBC etc. is no longer just accepted by millions because of new media competition airing alternative views - on June 24th- and they are aghast.
He definitely doesn't sound like a washing machine salesman called Jim.
Clinton 29 .. Trump 39
http://midnightsunak.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Memo-AK-Senator-Murkowski-Aug2016.pdf
The bits annexed from the home counties in 1965 - which is about half the population - were much less remain with many boroughs voting leave outright.
Strong remain areas were areas where social values are uber progressive - Inner London, Parts of Manchester and Brighton.
I suspect that what worries them most is that the brexit result may indicate that Blairite social reforms are not as widely accepted as they thought and therefore far more fragile and they fear waking up one day and discovering things like section 28 have returned.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/new-corbyn-ally-in-false-voter-registration-row-kkgm9q56d
The EU was seen by many as another layer of government on a population who resent having layer upon layer of government. It was not seen as having our best interest at its core, do millions said Out.
I'm not sure there is a connection with social views.
Many of the things mr meeks outlined in his article are social values - even the differences in preferred brands. The referendum has exposed a fault line in social values with the luddites being in the majority and as a result, through progressive eyes there is the fear of half a century of progressive reform starting to unravel, especially bearing in mind how much european institutions were used to entrench such social reforms.
Either go with the hardline Thailand/Singapore/Dubai rules of zero tolerance, or with the Portuguese rules of acceptance. The current drug laws are really not fit for purpose.
Unless you make a circular definition where Remainer = metropolitan elite and Leaver = sturdy yeoman/hillbilly, then these terms are clearly inadequate. Age breaks down similarly too with substantial numbers of elderly Remainers and young Leavers, albeit both minorities.
I don't think that the national politics will split on this issue, as not that many are bothered about the EU either way, and for many it doesn't impinge on daily life. Apart from worsening our recruitment crisis Brexit doesn't affect me much at all. It will remain what it has been for a long time, a running battle between factions of the Tory party, but that is of little interest to most of us, even most political nerds.
To me Brexit was a futile vote against one aspect of globalisation and the modern world, a self inflicted wound but not one to be picked at.
If the Mail is right, admittedly perhaps for only the second time in its history (the first being about Giscard being inappropriate to draw up the EU constitution) then Vaz is in very serious trouble. Even if the police decide not to prosecute, it's hard to see Labour's leadership not exploiting it to the full. Any bet on a by-election in Leicester suddenly looks good.
Vaz has a crypt full of skeletons, how he's oiled his way out of them so far amazes me.
(there are sheep in Alaska and they have reason to be scared... http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=sheephunting.opportunities )
http://order-order.com/2016/09/04/244563/
I'm not going to type out that allegation here but that certainly wouldn't just be his own affair.
In reality, it is the demographic changes that they themselves champion that is most likely to lead to extreme social conservatism, as well as political extremism. In rubbing the country's face in multiculturalism, not only have they imported a significant slice of third-world misogyny, homophobia and other intolerance but have prompted a backlash on the populist right which not only drew some of their own supporters away (and perhaps in the process cost them at least one of the 2010 and 2015 elections), but is likely to have been one of the more significant factors that prompted the Brexit vote.
Not entirely of course, as all groups had substantial dissenting minorities.
http://order-order.com/2016/09/04/244563/
In another decade, EU supporters will be a small minority. The pathetic turnout at their so-called demonstration yesterday, fronted by weirdos, already demonstrates their lack of any real popular support. Most of the REMAIN vote was a fear vote.
Nice to see Vaz finally exposed as well.
It had the status quo, the advantage of office, months of civil service abuse, the aid of foreign or Supranational organisations, the machinery of the broadcast media.
In any second vote, that advantage would be gone. The playing field would be much more level.
Why just not stick to Remainer and Leaver without trying to attribute other properties?
We live in a small-c conservative country, and one where there is very little actual enthusiasm for the EU, either. The referendum result may have split almost 50/50, but I reckon that there were an awful lot of people who really wanted rid of the EU on the Leave side, whereas at least half of Remainers were backing the status quo purely for reasons of economic stability. Look at the rich core of southern England outside of London, all around Hampshire, West Sussex and the Thames Valley, where safe Tory voting areas and Remain majorities coincided: if all of these people hadn't done better than practically everybody else in the country out of the pre-referendum economic situation, then there is no reason to suppose that all of these counting areas (Oxford probably excepted) would not have followed almost the whole of the rest of rural England out of the exit door.
There are committed Europhiles, but I doubt if many of them supported the Tories even before this referendum. And there is no reason to suppose that all the voters who both backed Remain this year and the Tories in 2015 won't continue to vote Tory in future. As has previously been pointed out, these pragmatic voters have already done what the new PM has - effectively, shrugged their shoulders, accepted the result, and resolved to move on and make the best of it. There's no mileage in trying to woo these people with a passionate pro-EU pitch, when they were never passionately committed to the EU to begin with.
IMHO, the political situation remains much as it was before the referendum, with a badly divided opposition and a Conservative Party with the means to win big next time. Labour seems determined to follow a radical, regressive Left path that will be given serious consideration by no more than a fifth of the electorate - those with a natural ideological bent towards the Hard Left, metropolitan left-liberal utopians, disenchanted students, and parts of the unionised public sector workforce. It will be reliant on the support of a few other niche voter groups (poorer black and Muslim voters, working age people who are long-term benefit dependent, and the shrinking cohort of elderly habit voters) to get it up to the 25% mark. Labour is currently polling below 30%, and there is no particular reason to suppose that (a) the pollsters aren't still overestimating its support, and (b) it won't underperform when Corbyn and McDonnell are subjected to the full rigours of a general election campaign, and voters are confronted with the stark reality that backing Labour means putting that pair in charge of the country.
Edit: looks like Mr Staines has started already, and the Mirror story is now the least of his problems. He is the proverbial cooked bread, possibly even as an MP.