"We weren’t meant to win."
December 22, 2016 12:47 PM   Subscribe

"That line, ‘you were only meant to blow the bloody doors off’, it’s true. The plan was to run the remain side close enough to scare the EU into bigger concessions. None of us thought we were ever going to win. With the possible exception of Dominic Cummings, who just wanted to drive a car into the Camerons’ living room. It’s all such a mess. I want a second referendum now." Quote from a pro-leave Tory who worked closely with Michael Gove. Thirty Things You Didnt Know About The EU Referendum

The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow reads five Christmas books about the Brexit referendum and picks out the juiciest morsels.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable (29 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
These people played chicken with our lives. There are no words that do justice to just how fucking shitty these people are, and the ones that come closest I'm not allowed to use on Metafilter. Fuck Leave, fuck Brexit.
posted by Dysk at 12:57 PM on December 22, 2016 [50 favorites]


The utter incompetence of David Cameron as Prime Minister is so unfathomably huge it will probably never be able to be fully comprehended by a human mind.
posted by dng at 1:05 PM on December 22, 2016 [9 favorites]


"Banned from politics forever" shouldn't be a line that sounds like it came from a dream or a dorm room.
posted by rhizome at 1:06 PM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Leave vote was about politics, not Politics. Five books about the latter will learn you nothing about the former.
posted by Emma May Smith at 1:08 PM on December 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think Theresa May's legacy will give Cameron's reputation for utter incompetence a good run for its money, dng.
posted by ambrosen at 1:10 PM on December 22, 2016 [7 favorites]


Something something panthers eat your face off something something
posted by chavenet at 2:08 PM on December 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've been pissing about with Leavers on Twitter (what can I say, the housework doesn't take that long and the Toddler's in a decent nap routine) and what's endlessly fascinating to me is the amount of competely disparate issues that Leaving The EU is bound to solve. I'm starting to think it's the Brit version of the Rapture.
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:12 PM on December 22, 2016 [10 favorites]


Meanwhile Gove claims all is good and the economy is thriving post-brexit and even the Scots want to stay...

Gove claims Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is now the most popular politician north of the border.

I want some of whatever he's smoking.
posted by rocket88 at 2:13 PM on December 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, and the complete failure of any Leave politicians to stand for Con leadership speaks for itself.
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:14 PM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Couple comments removed; let's not immediately drag Trump/US stuff into this, however zeitgeisty it might be.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:43 PM on December 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


Meanwhile Gove claims all is good and the economy is thriving post-brexit and even the Scots want to stay...

It's like Gove decided that the best thing to do now is imitate the old Iraqi Information Minister under the final weeks of Saddam, what with his situation being analogous in so many ways...
posted by Dysk at 2:45 PM on December 22, 2016


No. 19: [Gove’s] set of friends agreed he wasn’t the man for the job, saying he was not worldly enough, and claiming, ‘This is the man who had to be stopped trying to unblock his loo with a hoover.’
posted by Kiwi at 3:09 PM on December 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think that the slim voting result in favour of leaving can be seen as a result of hypernormalisation. People know something is wrong, distrust authority, but are complicit in creating the narrative that somehow immigration is to blame. The leave vote allows them to protest vote against authority, 'do something' about immigration and has no perceived down side for them, unappraised of the facts as they are.
I heard an interesting interview (November 18th 2016) with Rob Ford (no relation) of Manchester University who has studied UK opinion poll results on immigration dating back 50 years.
Immigration has been a consistent 'concern' for the population, therefore a reliable political football. A YouGov poll after the referendum showed a marked reluctance to pay anything to 'solve' the EU immigration 'problem'. When asked what they would pay to reduce immigration 62% of respondents said they were happy with the level of EU immigration and would rather have that than suffer any depletion to their economic well-being!
posted by asok at 3:19 PM on December 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


The interview with Rob Ford (no relation) starts at minute 18 of the More or Less podcast from 18 November 2016, also linked above.
Tl;dr Immigration is a complex issue and most people in the UK support the immigration of people that they deem 'the right kind' of immigrant.
We wouldn't be in this situation if the EU and immigrants had not been scapegoated for decades by the populist press.
posted by asok at 3:28 PM on December 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Quebec on the other hand has executed separatist leverage masterfully and once they came dangerously close to separating they stopped asking for it.
posted by srboisvert at 3:45 PM on December 22, 2016 [10 favorites]


For me the key takeaway from 2016 is that the West has had stable economic growth and democracy for so long that its heirs just assume it is a default state that no political or electoral decision can undo.
posted by dry white toast at 5:08 PM on December 22, 2016 [59 favorites]


I think Theresa May's legacy will give Cameron's reputation for utter incompetence a good run for its money, dng.

And it will forever be written in the history books that BoJo JoJo was the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. The only bright side of that train wreck was at least he didn't become PM.
posted by Talez at 6:26 PM on December 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have a feeling that an even more empowered Putin (a Trump victory, "victory" in Syria) is scaring the shit out of these MPs. And if not, why isn't it?
posted by Brocktoon at 11:22 PM on December 22, 2016


Talez: "The only bright side of that train wreck was at least he didn't become PM."

Putting on my 2016 voice: "Yet."
posted by chavenet at 1:44 AM on December 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


Given my back catalogue of terrible electoral predictions, UKIP will probably be running the country by the end of 2017, but:

UKIP are spending a lot of money they don't have on coming second or third in the polls. They might beat Labour, but that doesn't get you anywhere, power-wise.

They are apparently in debt, although it's not clear how much by. They've just been handed a fine for the inappropriate use of European funds which they've apparently defaulted on.

A lot of the party faithful aren't invested (meant to type interested but that works too) in anyone but Nige. He's the one with the "links to Trump", he's the one who gets the people out.

Nuttall's said he's not going to stand in the Copeland by-election. A lot of them are taking this as a tacit admission that they aren't going to win, when it's exactly the sort of place they think might go Purple. (I think it's reasonably likely to go Conservative).
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:43 AM on December 23, 2016


a Scottish National party that by definition doesn't give a shit about anyone living south of the border

This is almost axiomatically true of the SNP itself, but I get the impression that a lot of the support they're getting is Scots throwing up their hands on frustration with everyone living south of the border and their Tory Kippering (and Liberal betrayals, and Labour foot-shooting ineffectiveness) and deciding to go it alone because there just isn't any other way to have an even halfway sensible politics that includes England anymore, more than it's a genuine not-giving-a-shit. It's more of a "oh fuck it, I bloody give up!" than a "fuck all of yous".
posted by Dysk at 3:10 AM on December 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


Brexit, Trump, Putin, Modi... What I worry is that these are merely the first pings of how things are going to be when climate change speeds up and mass migration becomes even more salient in politics. Also that the lip service the Western powers paid to liberal democracy in the 20th century will turn out to be a short lived artefact of postwar economic conditions rather than the way things will always carry on being. I hope I'm wrong.

So yeah, merry Brexitmas everyone.
posted by Mocata at 3:31 AM on December 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


But winterhill, I would argue a bit with your comment that the British system is like Putinism, I think that's too pessimistic. It's true that we have a big right wing media machine that's too powerful, but it isn't directed from No 10 in the way the Russian equivalent is by the Kremlin. It's more a mess of competing moneyed interests and rich ideologues. Also we have an independent judiciary and a set of fairly strong democratic or at least quasi-democratic institutions. And The Establishment isn't as monolithic as all that. Plus the PM can't have political opponents whacked or imprisoned so easily. So there at least we've got a bit of a way to go.
posted by Mocata at 3:46 AM on December 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


just like Scottish independence would likely be curtains for the SNP

I really don't think so. The days of the SNP as a single-issue coalition that fully intends to dissolve after Scotland becomes independent are long gone - they're not that party any more. And they have, let's not forget, been in power for now three consecutive terms in a non-independent Scotland, which they've done in large part by picking up a lot of support from centre-left voters that previously went Labour. I think that from England it can look very much like "well, they're UKIP! but Scottish!" but they're really not. At this point it feels like they have more in common with Labour in around 97/98 - not so much in terms of policies (although some of that too), but in terms of where they've staked out their political landscape and how they're presenting themselves relative to their opposition.

I think one potential future for UK politics, in a future where we still have an actual UK anyway, would be true federalisation. Devolved parliaments in Scotland/Wales/NI get more (and equal, devolution is a bit uneven at the moment) power, and England gets its own. UK parliament continues to sit at Westminster, or wherever (perhaps somewhere not as much in need of expensive repairs!), and rules on whatever matters are left as UK-wide - maybe defence, foreign affairs, overseas aid, general co-ordinating stuff between the nations?Labour have been making noises about this for a while, and Scottish Labour are really going with it at the moment.

I don't know if this has a realistic chance of happening, or how England in particular would weather that storm - it would mean quite a shift for England in terms of what national identity is, and there's no party like Plaid or SNP to pick that up and run with it. But I feel increasingly like a UK without federalisation is a UK that isn't going to last.
posted by Catseye at 3:57 AM on December 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


(oh, and an English parliament should be in somewhere that's not London, or anywhere in the south-East. Maybe York? We've had a parliament in York before, albeit some time ago...)
posted by Catseye at 4:38 AM on December 23, 2016


I'd prefer for an English parliament to stay in London but the UK one to go somewhere more accessible from all four territories, like the North of England.
posted by Dysk at 5:51 AM on December 23, 2016


Crewe might work as a reasonable midpoint- decent transport links!
posted by threetwentytwo at 6:13 AM on December 23, 2016


OTOH, if it goes somewhere that doesn't have decent transport links, the transport infrastructure will start improving very fast. Maybe put it twenty miles north of wherever HS2 is due to stop at the moment, and keep moving it northwards every decade?

(Longer term I would like a New Deal-esque work programme to roll back the Beeching cuts by rebuilding the rail lines we've lost. That would be cool.)
posted by Catseye at 6:28 AM on December 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


I will repost what I posted a couple of days after brexit. I believe it more now than ever.



The EU also tied together in a neoliberal WORLD.....one of the few places where enlightenment values have seriously taken hold.....into a mutually dependent trade-and-cooperation-enabled anti-war-pact by default.

Left or right, socialist or not, if the countries separate - which they will - and they come under resource, migration or environmental pressure, they will fight. Look at the last thousand years of European history for your proof.

If you can keep countries from war, then you can do the democracy and society building slowly.

If there is war, ALL of your alternatives go to strongmen and chaos. The End - at least for 10? 50? 100? years? By which time other factors will have taken over.


And this is while the world had better things to do than revisit imbecilic nationalism. It's not like global warming, species die off, pollution, and other lower probability but serious existential threats are going to be focused on MORE now that we have another immediate emergency to deal with.

Sorry people. The truth hurts. They may not know it, but leavers are Complicit in a terrible crime.
posted by lalochezia at 7:21 AM on December 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


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