UK EU Referendum count night… and morning… June 23, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Polls closed, show over. Now it’s the count. It looks, by all reports, as if it is going to be a long long night. I wake habitually around two or three for a few minutes. That may be a good thing.
Any thoughts now it is all over. Or is it?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
52/48 remain in you gov poll taken today. Farage saying it looks like ‘remain’
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I’m always curious how it works in polling booths. Do people go… ‘hey, let’s burn the house down’, or ‘ feck it, I’m taking out insurance’?
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dunno about you, but i’ve never made a snap decision in a polling booth. i always know exactly how i’m going to vote, down to the last preference.
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Pretty much. But we’re obsessives!
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So…got into work this morning, talked to someone, very bright, with a doctorate (the two aren’t necessarily connected) who made up her mind in the polling station – Leave- because it’s exciting. I give up
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I’m with somebody who tweeted that anyone who voted Leave should just not tell him they did. I don’t want to know which of them it was that did it.
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I’m fairly sure Nigel Farage didn’t mean this to come out quite the way it seems to…
It’s been an extraordinary referendum campaign, turnout looks to be exceptionally high and (it) looks like Remain will edge it. Ukip and I are going nowhere and the party will only continue to grow stronger in the future.
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One of the bigger mysteries of UK politics is how Farage, who has a media profile that puts him in the top five of UK politicians, can’t land a seat in the House of Commons. Even with FPTP how is it that someone with his levels of exposure couldn’t get elected in Thanet, a place which is sort of a ground zero for run-of-the-mill England.
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+1. Is it a trust thing or what?
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A total mystery. He’s a clown-like figure, I suppose. Obviously he is a very useful figurehead for a section of the UK establishment. His failure to get a commons seat is a sign that English voters are maybe more complex than much commentary would suggest.
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further to what we were talking about on the other thread, emily bayliss asks Chris Grayling if the UK will continue to negotiate with the EU after a remain vote – YOU ARE the EU ffs
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The former Dublin MEP Chris O’Malley, tried to capture that failure to understand in the title of his book “Over in Europe”. Ireland, he pointed out, was in Europe.
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Some of the coverage on BBC this evening by their correspondents in Europe is astoundingly condescending. Just amazing.
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Speaking of entertaining lines…quoted on rte…
“Lee Reynolds from the Northern Ireland Vote Leave campaign said he was feeling “good” but was reluctant to predict the outcome.
He said: “I don’t think you should count votes until they are counted.””
Really. So how do they get counted so?
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I wonder does the high turnout actually benefit Leave as there was a cohort of voters who usually don’t vote as ‘they are all the same’ etc etc …. and are now voting Leave to piss off the establishment!
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In the last hour the Betfair odds on Leave have gone from 14/1 to less than 2/1
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Sterling is in free fall and the trend is towards leave.
It is worth noting that many of the commentators are now suggesting that working class voters are going Leave on an anti-austerity basis.
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‘many of the commentators are now suggesting working class voters are going Leave on an anti-austerity basis’
I think it’s far more complex than that, I think we on the left will look for anything progressive if ‘Leave’ is victorious but much of the analysis and commentary I’m listening to and watching on ‘council estates’ and the ‘working class voters’ has been about issues around migration.
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+1 leftcooperation. Anything but progressive. In a way I don’t blame them given the relentless bombardment over immigration in the media etc.
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Looking at the early results and the general picture, I’m comfortable that the logic of older habitual voters swinging it for leave seems to be holding up. The consequences though, fuck knows what they’ll be…
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Still a long way to go but ‘Leave’ does seem to be developing a momentum..
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We’ll see. It’s now three. I wouldn’t want money on this.
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It’s leave.
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Just getting the round up of commentators and psephologists… As one said ‘they’re not calling it but…’.
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Sterling all over the shop.
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I’m tired and depressed, but listening to Farage being all ‘tomorrow belongs to me’, I’m very glad I have the choice not to live here.
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+1 his rhetoric is grim, but the forces he represents however inchoately are much worse. This is a reactionary moment, worst I’ve seen in a while.
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Wycombe votes remain – not even a crumb of comfort
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‘Without a shot being fired’ – what a scumbag
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That comment of his alone says it all.
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Obama should offer England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland the opportunity to become the 51st thru 54th states – maybe throw in Guam and Puerto Rico as sell for another 2 states.
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Oddly there was a strand of anti EU thinking over the years that used to raise not dissimilar lines of thought – not hugely seriously, but interesting they went in that direction.
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A remnant of grim economic gallows humour from the 80s. As the economy sank during that decade I think the humour began to leech and the thought of the weekly pay packets weighed more tantalizing.
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OK. Now what are the odds on Cameron paying any heed to Leave instead of cobbling together some face saving Remain outcome?
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Not very likely I’d have thought. He looks like toast. Johnson raised the idea of a renegotiation and reworking of relationship w/EU but I think that’s implausible too. Though I suppose if financial and economic turmoil was bad enough… But I think they’re gone for decades (at best).
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The referendum is only binding if Cameron decides it is. Parliament being ultimately sovereign and all.
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Whoops. That’s torn it. I was wrong as usual.
Looks like they’re out. Fallout begins.
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Fallout’s already beginning. I assume the North voted Remain because SF is calling for a referendum on it’s continued membership of Britain.
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yes but not by much – east of the province outside Belfast all Leave, west of the bann all remain.
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True, though I suppose a remain is a remain and along with Scotland the fact specific geographic and political entity in the Union voted to remain has certain implications. What’s striking are three things, first up markets screwed, second how incoherent Leave are Ie no actual fixed plan for what happens next, thirdly how the UK itself seems oddly contingent all of a sudden.
And that’s before we get to where matters stand on this island.
And already we can see the radicalising effects of the outcome. Problem is they seem to be energising the national rather than the socialist forces in Europe, AfD, Geert Wilders and others already out claiming they are next.
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I quite liked one EU persons line, it went like Crisis first, chaos second, sub optimal solution last. Welcome to the future.
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Absolutely – Le Pen especially will make hay out of this.
And when/if Le Pen comes to power the ordure will really hit the rotator in Europe.
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55.8/44.2 Remain/Leave.
Some back of the envelope calcs based off West Belfast – Nationalists went 85/15 R/L and Unionists went 20/80.
North Down, N/S/W Belfast went Remain otherwise everything east of the Bann Leave.
On those numbers that’s re-unification by a couple of percent if not 10% to 15%
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According to the Süddeutscher, the next steps are:
a) The British Govt. informs the European Council that they are going to leave.
b) The EC considers how this could be done. The negotiations with the British authorities begin.
and, here’s the interesting part
c) Two years after a) EU treaties no longer apply to Britain.
d) If they later want to join again, re-entry negotiations by Britain have to start from scratch.
Or should I say, England and Wales?
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Telling that some exiteers have been saying post victory exit process should not be initiated in a fortnight but delayed until matters are clearer. By the way, what’s your sense, UK fully out or goes for EEA / EFTA?
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I’d say the capitalist interests that really have control over the Brexiters will try to retain the advantages they have. Capitalist interests in Europe will probably co-operate.
But really, who knows. Schäuble may turn his guns on the Brits and block it – he’s unpredictable.
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Schäuble rules out EEA.
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Now the Lexit theorising gets to be tested. Good luck with that.
We will of course remain solid with any genuine anti-austerity movement that arises in Britain.
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We will,but it’s not difficult to see maintaining or extending links being more difficult and one major factor is that the British political environment has shifted visibly rightwards and in such a way as the right is increasing support and some of the worst manifestations of the right at that. To put it another way this vote sustains them because they can claim with some justification that it is their victory.
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Yep – Lexiters chose to fight at a time and in a place congenial to the xenophobic, racist right and now must continue to fight in that context.
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Whereas Left Remainers chose to surrender…you should reflect on that rather than implying Lexiters are somehow to blame for the result while simultaneously claiming it was entirely motivated by right wing racism. You can’t have it both ways
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No one is blaming Lexiteers for the result, and please don’t wilfully misunderstand what others say. Lexiteers had no political weight whatsoever in these discussions. They were as was said from the off an irrelevancy. So there’s no having it both ways unless you don’t understand what either myself or G actually wrote. Actually your use of the word ‘surrender’ would certainly call into question the seriousness of your approach to such matters.
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No – Left Remainer thought and think tactically and strategically that there is a better chance of building anti-capitalist movements and parties that can win within the (thoroughly Neo-Liberal) EU, than in small countries dominated by nationalist governments, legitimated by xenophobia and racism.
Which of course exist within the EU, but their oppositions benefit from an EU-wide opposition, weak though it is.
Anyhow, as I said before, the remainer left will support whatever non-racist, non-xenophobic movement against the dictatorship of capital develop in Britain as a result of the rupture.
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I think it was a ‘surrender’ to campaign for people to vote for the neoliberal straitjacket of EU membership. And that it was even worse to pretend, as so many Left Remainers did, that the EU has been good for workers and to bolster the myth of a progressive ‘social’ EU even after its destruction of Greece.
Opposition to austerity will still exist across Europe, whether or not the EU exists. The idea internationalism is in some way dependent on the existence of the undemocratic, technocratic structures of the EU is nonsense. As is the notion that it’s more realistic to focus on reforming the elite suprastructures of the EU than to seek major change at the national level where workers practically speaking have more effective power.
This is a major historical event that will have all kinds of unforeseen consequences – it blows open the whole political status quo in all kinds of ways, not only in the UK but across Europe. This can open up huge new opportunities for the left, but only if it develops the correct analysis and programme and uses that to build a real Europe-wide movement.
The situation cries out for a dialectical analysis rather than simplistically assuming that because the media Brexit campaign was dominated by the right, automatically all the historical outcomes will be right wing. Perhaps the dominant factor was a broad anti-establishment vote – and that includes in Scotland where much of the Remain vote goes hand in hand with supporting Scottish independence. On the other hand, Britain is more likely to implement this anti-EU result because a section of the establishment has backed it whereas here the establishment was united and forced us to vote again in Nice 2 and Lisbon 2.
The politics and potential outcomes of all this are hugely complex and contestable. Hopefully now the referendum is over, we can get over the ‘if you vote leave you’re siding with the racists!’ emotional blackmail and analyse things properly from a socialist perspective.
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Today dmfod there are actual workers, not hypothetical ones, in actual places in the UK, who are left in situation where actual left forces, not hypothetical ones have absolutely minimal weight (those same workers due to consequent market and economic and political volatility are also grievously exposed to job losses and so on – and that is true of many workers in this state and elsewhere in Europe) and where right wing forces are in the ascendent.
There is no vehicle for them to link up with in any meaningful way and yet your response is built on aspiration and rhetoric with little or no actual connection to the situation of those workers and to implicitly – in your first, not your second or fifteenth, but first instinct is to misread and misrepresent and blame those on the left who counselled against these actual facts and those of us here who warned about them too.
Unfortunately this isn’t unique. Last night you were telling us, entirely seriously, that Brexit was something that was happening ‘in another state’ – apparently oblivious to the fact that that ‘other state’ is one we share a land border with, have massive economic exposure to, hundreds of thousands of our citizens in and vice versa etc, etc. This morning you completely misunderstand, or choose to misunderstand, words myself and G pen about the challenges facing the left in the UK, how isolated and marginal Lexiteers will be and how we offer them solidarity.
All the stuff about correct programmes and analysis and the usual garnish of condescending comments about ‘simplistic thinking’ etc is rather undercut by that sort of stuff. But to each their own I suppose.
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@WBS exactly right. This is a fairly standard Lexit position:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/23025/16-06-2016/eu-referendum-political-turmoil-ahead-whatever-the-result
We are supposed to believe that those woulds and coulds count for something against are and shall.
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Corbyn already given ground on immigration.
The victors will keep the focus on that, if they can.
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+1 G and WBS. In the UK this vote represents a massive upswing for racism and nationalism, and we will see that across the body politic over the next few years. It comes on top of the long-term effects of Thatcherism which have made the UK one of the countries where labour movements are weakest in Europe. PLP ditching Corbyn for some neo-Blairite already seems on the cards.
Staying in the EU would not have been great but there is (not least in this state) a certain left opposition organising transnationally on the periphery, and badly needing allies in core countries where anti-austerity sentiment is not directed against migrants (France a much better model here than UK or Germany). This gives fuel to nationalist and racist anti-austerity sentiment in other core countries.
The anti-austerity of fools.
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It’s weird lcox, the socialism of fools line kept going through my head the last few weeks. I think your line is even more appropriate.
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any one want to start a countdown for the first suggestion that we need a national government here to provide ‘stability’ in the turbulent times ahead? It would be a way MM could sell coalition to FF and a chance for Brendan Howlin to top up his pension…
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Farage on the BBC this morning (~7am) saying that the Leave win was thanks to the old Labour voters who had taken enough BS.
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Clearly not quiteenough or they wouldn’t be listening to him
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Nigel Farage – champion of the working class.
Pukeworthy and dangerous. More NSDAP than Left Opposition.
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Got to say some of what he was saying and doing looked seriously dodgy even by his standards.
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Once Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has be invoked, the question is, why should British representatives have any presence or vote in EU decisions making bodies.
Are British MEP’s mandates still valid?
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That’s a great point. Cameron says he’s not going to invoke Article 50 – it’s going to be his successor. That’s months away. Jesus Christ.
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There was a long article in the LRB by James Meek about Brexit and CAP.
Presumably farmers in the north will loose CAP subsidies. Will the Brexit government want to or be able to replace them? Or will they go for a massive increase in the already large sizes of land holdings that would result from the end of CAP.
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There will be a significant re-configuration in military and financial power in Europe.
The US will bypass Little Britain and go straight to Berlin and Brussels. GCHQ will still be vital because so much fibre goes through Little Britain.
Finance capital will relocate because of changing tax and legal arbitrage conditions. Some to Frankfurt, but some to festering intra-EU tax havens like the Dublin, Luxemburg and Amsterdam.
I’ve no doubt the post-Brexit government will play the corporate tax arbitrage card, sinking the nominal rates even further. But the question is, is there much further to go, and does not the legal advantages of being within EU outweigh what is to be gained in robbing the public of taxes?
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Cameron gone (8.22) Going, anyway.
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Well that’s fast.
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And as someone put to me, there’ll be someone worse along to take his place.
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Cameron is 50 this year – and rich. He doesn’t need the job, and anyway plum directorships will be his for the asking.
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Probably only on the boards of pro-Brexit firms. I’d imagine international finance will see him as something of a bad egg.
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If he’d had any sense, his speech would have read: ye got what ye wanted, enjoy it. I’m off.
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Morgan Kelly time again ?
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I imagine the FED & the ECB are phoning around trying to stem the flows. My feeling is that this won’t be the start of the next big financial crash, but who knows.
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Those markets are certainly cooking. I think you’re right, it’s containable, but away from that drama a fair number, perhaps a lot, of working people both here and in the UK are likely to lose jobs, etc as the economies are battered and ‘reconfigure’.
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I think Ireland could benefit short-term with some outfits relocating, assuming the ongoing crisis doesn’t go into an acute phase again.
I wonder how busy the passport office is going to be as a result?
Could we see some significant Little Britain -> Ireland emigration. I’ll certainly be advising my relations there to keep the option of Irish citizenship open.
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Here’s the trend for searches for Irish passport in the UK on Google. It’ll be an interesting effect.
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Me and my lads thankful we have ours. The misses is English, but pissed off with the result.
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250Bn Windsors promised to Little British banks by Carney.
By the time the pound has stopped falling that will be worth about 3 months of the Draghi give-away to the rich.
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Tusk quoting Nietzsche. What a plonker.
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But significantly says that EU laws hold until Little Britain finally exits. Which suggest that he at least wants to take a softer line.
But Schäuble has presumably still to give judgement.
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Salmond wants another referendum soon, Sturgeon wants reportedly to wait a bit.
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You know until I saw that sentence, I never realised the fishy nature of the SNP succession.
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Don’t be codding now.
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Sorry, I know – neither the time or the plaice
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We’ll hake our consolation where we can at the moment.
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We’re all feeling a bit crabby this morning.
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Wow – there’s a real rural(ish)/urban split in England – most of the major cities favouring remain.
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And university towns – though not all: Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester have two big unis each and went ‘leave” – as did Canterbury, a small enough town in which the two unis are big employers and have high student numbers from France and Spain.
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Liverpool was fairly strongly Remain.
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Some UKIP tosser on R4 said it was ‘the links to Ireland’.
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It figures.
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More demographics here.
Negative correlations between youth, education, income and social grade and leave.
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My friend in Leicester told me he was surprised at how many British Asians there were Leavers. On anti-immigration.
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Majority of under 50s voted remain, over 50s out. I wonder how many younger people voted?
Anyone have figures?
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Still, most of the financial gamblers mis-called it, like me and the bookies. There will be big losses there. Perhaps a positive.
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Hedge funds commissioned polls who got it spectacularly wrong. Thus the rise in the pound yesterday.
At least they got shafted as well.
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If you have shares in a UK polling company, I would urge to carefully consider that position.
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There’s a push against Corbyn from the Blairites. Will his people be able to fight back?
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That’d be even more ironic, and I hope it doesn’t come to pass, the BLP having a leadership change to a Blairite – and by the by, the language on immigration would surely change too.
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Yes, Mandelson has just more-or-less called for Corbyn to be ousted.
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This is presumably a Lexit bonus. Sharpening of the contradictions and all that.
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Of course the Blairites are going to shaft Corbyn. Once Corbyn caved in to the Blairites and joined Remain they were always going to move to shaft him no matter what the result.
As for why Leave won – it was abundantly clear last night in coverage of the result that working class people voted Leave in order to 1 kick the Tories 2 kick the EU elites 3 against austerity 4 because they didn’t feel any recovery and 5 thrown into the mix was the issue of migration (and this was allowed to happen because Corbyn capitulated to the Blairites rather than campaigning for Lexit and for an EU wide campaign against austerity and the rule of the 1%)
Not surprisingly SF are now calling for a border poll – big mistake – it will drive deep divisions in the North and, unlike in Britain, if it were to happen it will be fought on an openly right wing unionist / nationalist basis that could drive the North back into sectarian violence.
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There is an EU-wide campaign against austerity. Corbyn was and is part of it.
But enjoy your rupture.
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‘Of course the Blairites are going to shaft Corbyn. Once Corbyn caved in to the Blairites and joined Remain they were always going to move to shaft him no matter what the result.’
I agree but they are going to shaft him either way. Corbyn was clearly a reluctant member of the remain camp and that was reflected in his and Labour’s campaign.
‘As for why Leave won – it was abundantly clear last night in coverage of the result that working class people voted Leave in order to 1 kick the Tories 2 kick the EU elites 3 against austerity 4 because they didn’t feel any recovery and 5 thrown into the mix was the issue of migration’
How can you say that with such certainty? There is no doubt that all of the issues that you cite were all crucial factor in the exit vote but I think you’re ordering of them is somewhat disingenuous. Where is the evidence that makes you so sure of the above assertion. I think all of us on the left can and did make progressive arguments for ‘leave’ but they were drowned out in a sea of regressive right wing xenophobic propaganda and I don’t think even if Corbyn had chose the leave side that he would have altered that debate dramatically.
‘Not surprisingly SF are now calling for a border poll – big mistake – it will drive deep divisions in the North and, unlike in Britain, if it were to happen it will be fought on an openly right wing unionist / nationalist basis that could drive the North back into sectarian violence’
I agree.
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It doesn’t matter a damn which `abundantly clear’ reasons people voted for: the country will now be in the hands of an even more reactionary elite, with undertones of Fascism, and the fairly accurate perception that people have voted against immigration.
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And the European Union governing institutions have lots of people in positions of authority and power who are far to the right of Farage, Johnson and Gove.
Fico, Urban and Tusk all sit on the European Council; Farage will never sit on that body. Marine Le Pen could well be joining them. The Euro Parliament has dozens of outright fascists sitting there. EU policy will remain increasingly anti-immigrant regardless of the Brexit vote.
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You may well be right. But resistance against the fascification of European politics will occur at the European level not at that of Little Britain.
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Nobody is saying there aren’t reactionaries and Fascists in positions of power elsewhere in the EU. The problem is that this was a vote to strengthen them in the UK, so that’s one more country becoming more reactionary, and it’s a country that doesn’t have a left strong enough to put up much resistance at the moment.
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And even if there were a lovely fluffly ‘Remain’ vote these hard Right forces in Europe would continue to grow and consolidate. Austria very nearly returned a fascist President, Danish politics is dominated by the Right an anti-immigrant sentiment; the Right is growing in the Netherlands, Flanders, Sweden, Finland.
When Jorg Haider was elected in 2000 the EU automatically put Austria outside the back door in the cold and gave the Austrians time to consider their decision.
Now there are countless Euro politicians as bad or worse than Haider at all levels of government both in nation states and in the EU institutions and these people are not putting all that effort in to build a kinder, gentler, immigrant or worker friendly EU.
Incidentally, Tusk and Urban were for Remain and, I’m open to correction on this but Slovakia’s Fico (who was clear that Islam is incompatible with ‘European Civilisation’) was also for a Remain. The Right are astute enough to know that EU offers no barrier to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. The pious sounding articles of the EU treaties on the ‘rule of law’ and ‘human rights’ are dead letters and the European far Right know it.
Anyway, we are where we are and the UK left has a huge task ahead of it.
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JRG- it doesn’t feel like a ‘new dawn’ to me. The electorate could have kicked the Tories 12 months ago for five years of austerity but it waited for today- I don’t really get that rationale.
Now that you know why the British working class voted to leave can you explain why toffs like Bojo, Gove, Farage did?
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Well, I have no pleasure in saying ‘I told you so.’ My only consolation is that I put my money (or a small bit of it) where my mouth was and will be collecting my winnings.
Two points for our jolly red friend. It remains true that the overwhelming pressure for Brexit was for the wrong reasons. This is shown in his list of causes for it; they are all negative ones, however the migration issue was portrayed all too easily as a positive excuse to break with the EU. Now, cautious corporate Remainers will be writing cheques for UKIP which performs a useful job in blaming the foreigner down the road for their own crimes.
Secondly, I am rather puzzled by this insistance on the Blairite nature of the Labour remain camp. As far as I could see, the party (like ourselves) was split across the new/old Labour division. Certainly, two of the most vocal Lexitites, Kate Hoey and Gisela Stuart would be classed with Blair.
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JRG, let it be said, you came on here a week ago peddling this ‘capitulation’ line and failed miserably to back it up with evidence. You were asked for evidence, you failed to provide it, you dodged and weaved and wriggled and eventually retreated in total disarray while still dismissing other points of view as ‘utter nonsense’. So please do us all the courtesy of not coming back here a week later and pretending that your argument has not already been shot to pieces. Our memories are not that short.
My view of what’s likely to happen from this point probably isn’t as gloomy as some people here, but I’m not so gormlessly optimistic that I would try to claim, as you do, that immigration was a minor issue in the Leave vote, ranked fifth in a list, after anti-Tory and anti-austerity sentiments, almost as an afterthought. But I guess you’re a bit like De Valera – all that you need to do is look into your own heart and that tells us exactly what people are thinking.
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From German sources:
Meeting of five core EU states planned for Saturday in Berlin. That’s when the EU approach will start to be decided.
China signaled that it’s more interested in the EU than Little Britain.
AfD not slow off the mark to profit.
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Merkel to say something (probably not a lot) at 12.30.
No Austrexit referendum planned.
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CDU chair blames the Tories, who are no longer part of the EPP, remember. In Germany no such referendum would ever be allowed.
You gotta laugh.
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Arlene Foster agrees fully – referendums suck.
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But Le Pen and Wilders want a referendum of their own.
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Airbus considering whether to continue production in Britain.
German academic fund considering whether it will continue to pay inflated British course fees. And presumably ERASMUS will no longer be available to British students after exit.
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I am struck by the fact that there was an overwhelming drive for the Remain vote by the establishment. The business leaders, academia, varied experts and political leaderships all came kicking and screaming for this vote. Everything and anything was thrown into it.
What does the Leave vote at 52 per cent tell us? Bet this was due to the demagogues who tapped into the raw sentiments of disaffected and angry people, bringing loathsome prejudices to the fore. Leave leaders went peddling their lies shamelessly and embedding confusion, fear and even hatred, as well as promoting their media profiles nicely. With one giant leap, the tricksters won the day. It’s incredible and disgusting.
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One of the reasons that remain lost was precisely because the establishment were so vocal in favour.
A smarter, lower key campaign would perhaps have been more successful.
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There’d have been no ‘Leave’ if the EU could be stood up as a cause of higher and better living standards. Yes, the answer will be that the Tories’ austerity attacks were not dictated by the EU but that is besides the point. If these self-same business leaders, academia and political leaders had given a fraction of their time to ensuring that living standards and working standards continued to improve over time, or at least didn’t decline, then they wouldn’t be facing their nightmare scenario of a Brexit.
The UK labour movement is the most cowed and timid in Europe, and that includes the Labour Party, after the defeats of the 1980s. They refuse to chart any independent position for fear of even further defeats. They’ve vacated a space into which Farage, and unelected demagogue and tool of the establishment, have flooded.
A Brexit referendum where there hadn’t been six years of austerity and instead six years of modest improvements in standards of living, would have yielded a different result.
The UK establishment can’t expect to attack the living standards of people there and not provoke a response. The general election was fought within the FPTP two party system and had little scope for shocks; this referendum is had the most potential for a shock and it delivered.
Interestingly, there was a great article in the Guardian yesterday about a law firm which tweets boastful statements about how it has won cases denying autistic and special needs children council funded educational supports. UK councils working with radically reduced and reducing budgets are fighting parents of these children every step of the way. Some parents ending up needing psychiatric care after their experiences. That’s just one snapshot of the grassroots situation where anger is being built up towards an establishment who make a point of parading their sociopathic tendencies.
I would have campaigned and voted to leave but I won’t be popping open the champagne; there is now serious work to do for the UK left and the Labour Party and trade union movement.
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With you all the way on that CMK
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None of the anti-Brexit left I know disagrees with your points. However the UK left and trades union movement are (very probably) in a weaker position still after Brexit.
Immigration will continue to swamp class issues.
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You are seriously underestimating the FACT that a lot of people can and actually think and work out for themselves what to do.
That you think even that the tricksters won the day shows as a reflection the establishments response.
The people have spoken, the bastards, sums you up well.
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That was to Alibaba.
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And I took it as such.
Look now is the time when, as I said before, Lexit theories are going to be tested. I hope you are right about it benefiting the left in the longer term.
I suspect however, that you are wrong.
Only time will tell.
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Yes, Lexit theories are now to be tested. Just like the Lemain theories would have been tested if things had gone the other way. Both approaches are world historical in scope and scale and, as you rightly say, only time will tell.
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Oh but surely, Tawdy, you didn’t get the impression that I underestimate how people think or consider them some kind of cretins. I certainly did not intend that effect and I regret if my clumsy sentences led you to think so. I was just stating a fact: the Leavers won, and against expectations. The momentum was reactionary.
It should go without saying that there were progressives on the Leave side. Take, for instance, those who had concerns about the anti-democratic aspects of EU. But I believe those who think the push for the Leave vote was anti-austerity driven are putting themselves laughably at odds with reality. This is not a defeatist view. It is one that reflects the truth of what happened.
Well, how this did this setback happen? Demagogic pressure can and did force political change. The demagogues swayed many people, like it or not. So too can Left popular pressure and I live in hope that it will be so. But as noted by Gewerkschaftler only time will tell.
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Seymour:
http://www.leninology.co.uk/2016/06/eu-referendum-vote.html
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Hard to argue with this:
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‘You still think you can control them?’
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Boris:
“Above all we can find our voice in the world again. Powerful, liberal, humane, an extraordinary force for good”
Gove:
“Britain can move forward in the spirit of the warm, humane and generous values that are the best of Britain,”
Not all at once, please…..
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Sturgeon was excellent though and she says the legislation for an independence referendum is being prepared now.
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A stockbroker writes:
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Thanks to ‘ordinary people’ eh?
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Motion of No Confidence in Corbyn put before Labour Parliamentary Party.
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And the Lexit argument was that a Leave vote would lead to turmoil in the Tories, the collapse of the government, and a jaunt down the yellow brick road to fully automated luxury communism.
Well done lads, well done.
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Michael, that’s silly stuff really. The Labour Parliamentary Party have had their knives out for Corbyn from the start. They are taking their chance now. That Labour Parliamentary Party, as you know well, had no compunction in using ‘concerns over immigration’ to try to counter UKIP advances. Its a parliamentary party that lost Scotland for Labour and looks like it will lose a fair chunk of the English working class to Labour too.
I’d like to see anyone who mentioned that a Lexit would lead to a ‘jaunt down the yellow brick road to fully automated luxury communism’. Most of the Lexit positions were fairly sober and, I would point out, the Owen Jones/Varoufakis perspective of fighting within the EU to improve workers rights is no less challenging that building the Left with a UK outside the EU.
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God love you, you’re very literal minded.
On the other hand, this was said:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/23025/16-06-2016/eu-referendum-political-turmoil-ahead-whatever-the-result
Actual net effect so far: Corbyn under threat, collapse of pound, resurgent right, Farage leading `Tomorrow belongs to me’ singalongs (that last one isn’t literally true). Of lifted confidence, defeated capitalists, and a general strike, there is no sign, nor even the sign of a sign.
I’ll stop there before I set off on the path of professional ex-Trot.
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Micheal, I knew where you were coming from, but admit I may be a tad literal minded.
Em, it’s not even 24 hours since vote. It’s day 1 of a long, long process.
The piece is phrased in the conditional ‘would’, ‘could’ etc, not ‘will’, ‘can’.
I can understand the heated emotions arising from this but it’ll take a long while to fully see what this vote actually means.
Farage and the rest of the scum will have their day but that’s all it will be is a day, or two maybe. The result poses probably even sharper problems for them than they perhaps really. An overpromoted bullshitter who now has to put his money where his big mouth is: Farage hasn’t got it in him to make good on this.
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Funny – I hadn’t heard about the general strike either. When’s it planned for?
Or is that a secret known only to the vanguard of the working class?
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“I would point out, the Owen Jones/Varoufakis perspective of fighting within the EU to improve workers rights is no less challenging that building the Left with a UK outside the EU”
I have to disagree there. It’s not that there’s no challenge, it is that it is self-evidently less challenging in a range of areas – not least and first and foremost that there’s the actual physical and political space between the member states of the EU as against the barriers between states in and out of the EU. And that’s only one aspect. Paul Murphy, could rightly go to Greece and speak and (for example, one single) part of his authority was as a member or ex member of the European Parliament he had fought with and on the same issues as Greek comrades from a variety of left backgrounds. Their struggle was quite literally, not figuratively but literally, his and our struggle. And there are many other examples, shared legislative area – which makes counter struggle easier and more effective (if people go for it), etc.
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And no word for any of their usual Irish surrogates — JRG is usually so loquacious. Is this “democratic centralism” in action? I.e. — if you disagree, you better keep your mouth shut.
By the way, if anyone can be bothered to digest a full-helping of Lexit delusion, check out the editorial in the latest NLR, which is peppered full of errors and misleading statements. Watkins even manages to view Beppe Grillo as a left-wing figure:
https://newleftreview.org/II/98/susan-watkins-oppositions
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I didn’t think it was bad as that, but I thought the characterisation of Grillo was problematic, even if there was a bit of ambiguity as to his and the movements political orientation.
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The NLR was founded on the admirable Gramsci formula about the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. Now they come out with this sort of drivel:
The mechanics of exit negotiations, involving a two-year countdown once the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 has been invoked by, presumably, a new—Corbyn-led?—uk government, might themselves provide one of those unexpected frameworks for democratic awakening, as with the 2014 Scottish referendum and the Labour leadership campaign: the opportunity for a real debate on alternative futures for the country.
“Frameworks for democratic awakening”, “real debate” and “alternative futures for the country” are the sort of glib meaningless phrases you’d find in any New Labour or Tory manifesto. And note the insouciant question mark after “Corbyn-led” — a bit like the Webbs’ hagiography of Russia under Stalin: “A New Civilization?” (CLR readers will probably know they removed the question mark in the second edition).
It’s an appalling display from one of the few left-wing publications of long-standing heft and credibility.
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There’s a lot of aspiration in the article, that’s for sure. I’m pessimistic tbh. I’m old enough to remember what it was like in the late 70s and 80s just between Ireland and the UK which had fairly tight travel and other integration compared to the rest of Europe. The sort of blocks on movement are something that I wonder whether people appreciate. And that has massive knock on effects on building campaigns, solidarity, etc. Not that it’s impossible, just that it is much harder – and all that before we factor in the retrospective turn states tend to take on foot of decisions like Brexit.
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The extent to which the BBC panel had decided last night that it was Labour who lost it and Corbyn had to go was a bit much. A loss for them, certainly, but they had to find space in a Tory civil war.
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The war criminal himself has spoken.
Does there have to be another party wide vote on the leadership now? What’s the chances they could vote Corbyn back, supposing he runs?
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Ah – it has no constitutional meaning within the BLP if the war-criminal’s followers get a motion of no confidence.
Corbyn should just sack every last one of them from all cabinet posts.
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Dopy leave-voter on BBC complaining that Sturgeon is being divisive in talking about a second independence referendum. “They’ve had their referendum.”
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The snakes were just waiting for the chance. This will be a big test for JC. Please let them be crushed
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+10.
Sack the lot of them from any opposition posts and let the ones who want to resign their seats do so.
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Btw you’re all ignoring a big question: who won the SOS predict-Brexit competiion?
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I think I got closest 51-49 Leave (actually 51.8-49.2).
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Your pessimistic intellect has shamed us all Michael.
I guess you have you ear closer to the ground.
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Not really closer to the ground. Where I am is a pocket of Remain in a big blue sea of Leave. I just thought Leave would edge it.
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I think you’ll find Michael that I predicted 52% – 48%, though with the same logic.
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Sorry. You win. Here, have the virtual laurel wreath.
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Depending on what happens next that might not be the correct sort of wreath.
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Spurn the dust …
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Hail Liberius!
Could you let me know the finalists of the Footie-Yoyos while you’re at it. I’ve got Spain to beat Belgium, but could easily place another bet.
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Draghi promising even more electronic money for the sick holy-cow banks of Europe.
Paul Mason is interesting here:
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And Mason’s plan is here:
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Merkel seems to have signaled a slow exit for Little Britain (= England and Wales – Scotland (NI who knows)).
I think more because she wants time to renegotiate something with the rest, than that she needs British votes for anything.
That might fit with the idea of a British general election.
Junker etc. seem favour in something faster. Schäuble yet to prognosticate.
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Great to see EU democracy in action: Merkel, Junker and Schauble get to decide between the pace of UK exit. Lovely.
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Who said the current EU was much of a democracy?
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And who would expect a union of 27 countries to tell the UK `in your own time, don’t mind us’?
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Which is it then: an institution of 27 countries deliberating as equals or an institution where the prime minster and finance minister of the biggest member state get to decide the pace of events?
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CMK, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you seem to be positing the view that some of us here see the EU as best. Anything but. To me it is incredibly flawed. But… there’s worse than the EU, or rather the context upon which it operates.
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No, I know that very few think that here. But from the tone of some of the Left remain commentary today you’d swear the world had ended and the Left has been decisively crushed forever and a day. The CLR, frankly, has been, as always, a decent space to argue the points; some of the facebook debates are just poisonous (‘Lexit vote was racist’ blah, blah, blah).
The question for all of us now is what we do next and, one way or the other, we are going to have to work together.
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@CMK “The question for all of us now is what we do next and, one way or the other, we are going to have to work together.”
I’d say grab a copy of Richard Morgan’s Market Forces, currently fiction but not for much longer.
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Great book, gendjinn. Great writer.
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@WbS Altered Carbon picked up for season on Netflix. Talking about a 5 season arc.
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Fantastic news. Cannot wait. I wonder if they’ll ever do his sword and sorcery novels (which have perhaps a crossover into his other novels)?
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I would be concerned that what made the S&S series great would be the hardest to keep true in an adaptation.
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Yeah, very true.
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For that matter who said any proto-democracy under capitalism could be much of a democracy?
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Boris booed in London! Heheh…
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CMK, so you support the sovereignty argument then? Didn’t think Trots took that line (I don’t).
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Fergus, no, I don’t and I haven’t. Sweet jesus that that even has to be pointed out.
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Britain Votes to Leave EU: Seamus Healy TD Statement
Full Text: http://wp.me/pKzXa-tz
Mutualise Cost Of Bank Bail-out Now!
Terminate Application of Fiscal Treaty To All Ireland!
Ireland made Powerless to Deal with Crisis by FISCAL TREATY and borrowing to bail-out bondholders
Stand up to EU!
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Interesting statement Paddy.
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Momentum has put out this statement; I think it strikes most of the right notes. Better than just berating everyone who voted Leave or calling them racists or idiots, which won’t get us very far from this point:
“Yesterday, the British people voted to leave the European Union. Momentum, which campaigned to remain in the EU to transform the EU, respects the decision taken by the electorate.
“We recognise that people voted ‘Leave’ for many reasons. Much of this vote reflected anger in communities which have experienced many years of industrial decline with the subsequent loss of secure employment. Many such working class communities have been utterly neglected for years by those in power. Millions appear to have chosen ‘Leave’ to vote against the unfettered globalisation that has seen living standards stagnate or fall, as the cost of living rises. We share this scepticism of big business dominance, austerity and distant elites, be they British, European or Global, and share that demand for a country where working people have control.
“Many ‘Leave’ voters usually vote for Labour or are working people Labour should represent. Now the Party and the whole labour movement needs to show the country that it alone can offer working people genuine control over their lives, workplaces and communities.
“Labour must clearly demonstrate how it will improve lives through policies that will increase wages, tackle the housing crisis, and give people a greater say at work and in their communities.
“If we do not, we will not only be failing to advance the policies that will benefit working people but also could enable the populist right, who blame immigrants, not the powerful for the problems in our country. Part of the Leave campaign empowered these racist, reactionary forces, who peddle hatred and offer false hope. We must redouble our efforts to stop migrant scapegoating, focus our attention on the needs and desires of the overwhelming majority, and offer a real programme of hope for our people.
“Although we will leave the EU, our movement remains an internationalist one. We must continue to work with our friends, partners and allies across Europe in the shared struggle against austerity, to tackle climate change and to build a sustainable economy with full employment for all the peoples of Europe.”
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Not bad. Best of luck to them.
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Agree with the above except with the lack of emphasis on open door immigration as the main mechanism for a planned redistribution in favour of the rich and increase in inequality with the inevitable undercutting and depressing of wages among the weakest. This is well recognized among working class communities but not by the middle class middle aged leaderships of left of centre parties and consequently left voters are passed by default to right wing populists. The issue is suppressed among the left wing establishments with constant and vicious name calling and references to bigotry instead of addressing the central question of economic damage being done to the most vunerable in the labour market. Left wing establishments across Europe are not fooling anyone but themselves over the last 20 years or so in insisting on that outdated orthodoxy.
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SF are sectarian bastards for suggesting an escape mechanism but the Scots are great fellows altogether for trying for a second time!
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your predictions re the north were bang on, Roddy
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Yeah they were. Nice one.
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I’ve just had a drink with a couple of union colleagues, one Syrian in the country about five years, another American here since 1985. We’ve all looked at this and thought `some people really don’t get that it’s different for immigrants’.
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Most of the people I know in London are Irish, but through friends and acquaintances I also got to hear the opinions of people from Finland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Italy and Brazil during the run-up to the referendum. Every one of them had a deep sense of foreboding about it. I think some of their fears were exaggerated – I don’t think it’s going to be possible for the right-wing Brexiters to scrap free movement of workers in a short space of time, for one thing – but I can’t really respect any left-wing argument about this that doesn’t at least acknowledge those fears and recognize that they’re based on something very real (the SP’s statement blithely informs them that this was ‘fundamentally a working-class revolt’ and there’s nothing to be worried about really).
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I was thinking, there seems to be a misapprehension, or perhaps a lack of direct experience of what it used to be like to travel across Europe from one state to another pre Schengen which although the post 9/11 dispensation has altered somewhat hasn’t gone entirely.
But freedom of movement to work from the EU and into the post-exit UK is absolutely on the agenda of Leave in the UK.
I can’t honestly see how they can evade that unless they go the EEA/EFTA route and even then I can’t see how they won’t constrain it significantly. Consider how difficult it is to get to the US to work (and how hassle filled it can be just to travel there) and for many (probably not those of us here in this state due to very specific reasons, though that’s not a given) across Europe that will be baked into any new relationship.That’s core to their agenda.
So, while it is possible the more extreme fears are exaggerated as you suggest, the sheer difficulty of the practical aspects of future relationships is going to present real problems.
Though just on free movement that has to persist through the two years of the Article 50 negotiation period. So my advice is if you’re keen to visit the UK today and particularly if you’re outside the ROI it might be no harm to schedule visits in the next 24 to 30 months.
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BTW, I like this. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/brexit-britain-disintegrating-eu-yanis-varoufakis
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Yeah, I was looking at an old passport of mine from the ’80s the other day and the stamps from various border crossings, and remembering the associated customs hassle that went with touring then – the carnet for each country listing all your instruments, down to drumsticks etc, that had to be checked on the way in and the way out…..and if you got to the swiss border after 6pm that was it until the morning.
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Snap. It was no fun, and multiple states in one journey were a massive pain. It must have been miles worse with a whole group, associated equipment… 😦
What’s your feeling on how ROI and UK will interact in relation to that now?
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I don’t think people are too worried about free movement of workers: there will be some system of permits and employers will work the system.
The problem is the atmosphere this result has brought about. There’s poison in the air.
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3 million EU nationals living in the UK representing 7% of workers.
1.2 million UK nationals living in EU.
Has anyone suggested a best out of 3?
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Hugh Laurie – I kid you not!
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Worth a try. Jesus, this is bad. Toss up between Market Forces and Ken MacLeod’s latest.
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I haven’t read his last one. Any good?
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Just a 100 pages in, I have a feeling I’m being lied to so waiting for rugs to be pulled. Great so far.
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With regard to a “lexit”, a quick perusal of the West Belfast figures knocks that on the head.PPB’s Gerry Carroll got 23% just a few weeks ago.When Unionist brexiteers are accounted for,Carroll could,nt even muster half of his vote share to vote leave,This from a man at the top of his game ,”the story of the election” just 6 weeks ago.
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Interesting stats there roddy.
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This is very interesting.
http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/
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Thanks for that.
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Yeh v interesting, esp the point regarding the referendum as a free hit by those who feel that there”s little to gain either way.When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
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+1 re the free hit point.
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Some interesting straws in the wind up here today.A unionist farmer on the radio admitting he never thought when he voted “leave” that leave would actually win and was now “shocked”,A civil servant livid at Unison support for Brexit and claiming her entire office were furious at their union.And a ten fold increase in demand for Irish passports at a Belfast post office.When reality kicks in this place will be in turmoil.!
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Slate has a tragic and hilarious collection on Leave ‘we never thought it would happen voters’. Not sure how much store I’d put in it though no discounting the performative aspects of the vote, and the run up, but Jesus, what a world we live in.
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they must have thought it was all about conscription
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You think?
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Next week’s New Yorker cover
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Before yesterday I read a blog entry by a guy called Neil Kulkarni, bemoaning the subterranean level of “debate” compared to 1975 and how angry he was that he felt no choice but to go Remain due to the toxicity reeking from Farage and Boris. His point being: at no time was there anything persuasive from either side, just invocation of fear and paranoia and prejudice. No point going into all this with an open mind. So anyone optimistic the other side of this should get pessimistic instead, it focuses the mind. If for argument’s sake the left had done all the running on this instead of the right they’d have lost. Fear of immigrants provided the jouissance for the right. As for the attitude of “Leave won’t win because people will cop on near the end…” or worse, what roddy just described…😞😞
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Neil kulkarni used to write for melody maker or the nme, a good guy as I recall. Buyers remorse, gets them every time. But too late, too late…
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The civil servant was reserving her ire for NIPSA not Unison (Apologies to Patricia McKeown!)
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I see the Shinners populating Facebook calling NIPSA a ‘scab’ union and other similar terms of abuse.
Of course the Shinners have also been attacking the NIPSA left-wing Executive for opposing the austerity being imposed by SF/DUP at Stormont and supported the right-wing candidate in the recent NIPSA general secretary election.
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Do these posts serve any purpose apart from point scoring? The SP have been populating Facebook in big numbers all week attacking the WP, yet you haven’t posted that here (for the record I’m not in the WP).
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“People talk about reluctant remainers, but I think there have been a lot of reluctant Brexiters around, people who voted leave thinking it wouldn’t happen but they’d be able to vent and to tell all their friends at dinner parties they’d done it,” said one Tory minister”
The last sentence tells you a lot about how the Tories imagine the world to be.
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‘dinner parties’… ‘dinner parties’… ugh….
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I’ll stop soon, but just had a look at Liberation’s website for a glimpse into French views of all this and see Tony B. looking pensive with a headline ‘ we are entering an era of great anxieties’ – and whose fault is that?
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I was taken and surprised by the response of Paul Murphy and RBB yesterday on RTE news describing Brexit as a ‘working class revolt’. I mentioned in an earlier comment that we on the left may look for progressive features of what was an overwhelming reactionary ‘Leave’ campaign. However we need some perspective and realism in my view. They also claimed a political revolution at the ballot box after the general election this year which I felt at the time was over the top given the actual results.
I’ve no doubt that many workers voted against the Tories, voted against austerity but can Brexit really be a ‘working class revolt’ when cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, Leicester, Newcastle with their big working class populations and also areas in London like Tower Hamlets and Hackney all voted to remain? The whole of Scotland too? Clearly cities are made up of diverse populations divided by races and class but surely a revolt of the working class would have carried ‘Leave’ in these areas?
Given the ‘Leave’ campaign was led and dominated overwhelmingly by the ‘right’, and the ‘left’ were broadly a footnote in the campaign, I’m not sure it would be a good thing that the right could influence the working class to the degree that they won it for ‘Leave’.
I think the reasons why people voted ‘Leave’ are diverse and I think analysing this is quite complex so I’m not sure rushing to claim it as a ‘working class revolt’ is the way to go….am I wrong or unfair, I’d be interested in the views of others.
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I agree with the complexity line, but saying it was a working class revolt is way off.
The point was made to me by someone whose views I would respect considerably, that the working class line is madly overdone. That – and this really stuck with me, the whole map of the referendum looks largely like the old Tory electoral map of the 1980s and before, Labour/Remain in the cities, Tory/Brexit in most of the other places.
And the point was also made to me that UKIP’s strong areas are actually mainly in places where the Tories were in the ascendent in the past and only went Labour at the 1997 New Labour election. Clacton is an obvious example.
Finally the breakdown of voters themselves is significant. Labour identifying voters voted for Remain in figures of over 60%. Tories, UKIP went the other way. So, unless we’re saying that the working class comprises that less than 40% of the actual Labour vote the argument of it being a working class revolt is deeply flawed.
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And just to add, if it was a working class revolt, given the fact immigration was high or highest on the list of concerns articulated to pollsters then the reasons for such a revolt would have to make one pause for thought.
Because it’s not just the substance of a revolt but the nature of it. The why as much as the who.
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There is always humour in the middle of these momentous events.This morning I called at a “garage” where the result was being discussed by a handful of locals.I say “garage” because in reality it is a “tin hut” at the side of the mechanic’s house where he has eaked out a meagre living for decades.The radio was mentioning “exchange rates”, “the footsie”,”price of gold” etc when one of those present (a retired teacher) informed the rest of us that “the markets would be all over the place for a while”.At that point the “proprieter” emerged from under a car, his face covered in grease to announce “I’m all worried!” and then disappeared under the vehicle again to howls of laughter!
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Interesting suggestion here for a reverse Greenland strategy for Scotland abd NI – presumably Sturgeon will only consider it if Indyref polling proves negative, but the North may well welcome it as a palatable alternative to a Border poll?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/adam-ramsay/reverse-greenland-letting-scotland-stay
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An excellent comment on the Guardian:
“If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
How?
Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten … the list grew and grew.
The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.
If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was “never”. When Michael Gove went on and on about “informal negotiations” … why? why not the formal ones straight away? … he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jun/25/brexit-live-emergency-meetings-eu-uk-leave-vote#comment-77205935
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The night of the rubber knives has begun and Corbyn has fired Hilary Benn.
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Heidi Alexander, shadow health secretary has also resigned. Seems to be a coordinated attempt to force Corbyn out.
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LabourList is live-blogging it.Update: Both the New Statesman and Labour List are live-blogging it.
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Corbin is being given another opportunity to do what he should have done when he was first elected – take on the Blairites and build a mass anti-austerity movement with all those who joined the LP to vote for Corbyn and with all the anti-austerity forces both inside and outside the LP – and join with the anti-austerity forces on a European wide basis – like the Left-Bloc and IU who both welcomed the Brexit vote last night – and most importantly, the mass movement of millions of workers fighting the ‘labour reforms’ in France.
If Corbyn does this – and does it effectively on a class basis he can effectively lead a mass movement that can completely undercut the right-wing Brexit campaign that dominated the media for months and take advantage of the opportunity caused by the Brexit vote and the deep political crisis unfolding in Britain and among the EU elites.
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If IU means Izquierda Unida, it didn’t welcome Brexit. It said it was the result of the neo-lib construction of the EU and called for a rebuilding of Europe along democratic and socialist lines.
Read the communique (In Spanish).
Perhaps IU means some obscure Trot group I haven’t heard of, however.
I can’t find a Left-Bloc statement and I don’t read Portuguese, unfortunately.
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JRG I really like Corbyn and his style, but do you realise how detached from reality your analysis sounds? He is in no position in terms of political weight to impose his writ on the Labour Party let alone to do any of the frankly epochal stuff you’re setting out that he should do in the UK and Europe. And with the best will in the world even putting aside the stuff in the LP, his popularity and favourability suggests he’s in no great position at this time and likely for quite a while longer in relation to the UK electorate or population more broadly (and just to be clear I think that given time that will change for the better).
I also think that if one mapped it onto other circumstances closer to home one can see how facile a line it is. Replace Corbyn’s name with that of… well, who, Adams, Howlin, or the leader of any particular party and assume they had a massive change in political orientation and then work through whether in doing so they could bring not merely their own parties but people who supported others or none and it’s obvious from the get go that this is fantasy politics.
Because that’s what you’re saying. You’re saying that if Corbyn says x then inevitably people will agree and follow him. But there’s no evidence for same at all, that x is so overwhelmingly persuasive or indeed that Corbyn is so overwhelmingly persuasive that if he only but started saying x he would carry the day.
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And JRG you persist in ascribing to IU statements and policies they don’t actually have. Your point re them and Podemos in and earlier comment in relation to Europe was easily disprovable simply by looking at the shared programme for the two which can be seen here.
Click to access 50_Pasos_Para_Gobernar_Juntos__EN_final.pdf
I’d happily accept it was a misinterpretation or misunderstanding on your part except from the off ejh, and others have been continually pointing this out to you that you’re presenting matters incorrectly.
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I think we can gather that the SP are not too happy about the alliance of IU and Podemos. 🙂
Those were ‘their’ people, from a respectable Leninist tradition, after all.
Anyhow, let’s see how the election goes.
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True, it’s not a bad old org, some Trotskyist strands, some orthodox strands, nice sort of blend in there – though a friend of mine who would be a lot more orthodox than me (or rather where I started out) would consider them hardly Leninist at all – apostates was not quite the word, but close enough.
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There are (what I would regard as) two falsehoods which are populating CLR over the past period relating to Brexit – 1. that the Brexit vote was based on reaction and an anti-immigrant outlook and 2. that there has not been a shift to a left anti-EU stand by left anti-austerity movements in Europe.
Specifically in relation to the reaction to Brexit –
The Congress of the Left Bloc in Portugal is taking place this weekend. Among those attending is Paul Murphy representing the AAA and representatives of the CWI. In response to Brexit at the Left Bloc congress
Catarina Martins – Leader of Left Bloc “Brexit has changed Europe…consequences everywhere…Reducing the leave vote to racism or xenophobia is wrong and in fact is what strengthens racism and xenophobia…The left needs to assume the task of opposing the EU to cut across Farage, Le Pen…”
Zoe Konstantopoulou (former Syriza president of Greek parliament). She compared Brexit to the Greek referendum of last summer. “It shows that the people have the power and can overcome fear…Part of the struggle for a new Europe”
Eric Toussaint (left-wing academic and anti-austerity activist from Belgium) Brexit “Lays the basis for future exits around Europe on a radical left basis”.
Miguel Urban Crespo (Podemos MEP) “The Europe we have has had several coups without tanks.”
I have to go and do the shopping but I will then come back and address what is happening the left in Europe if I have time before the match.
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Kind if evasionary JRG, for a start no one has said any such thing as 2 albeit some might differ as to the actual weight of these movements as against your belief in regard to same. As for 1 I’m simply going on the stated opinions in polling expressed by Leave voters during the campaign where immigration was one of the primary aspects fuelling their vote. One can also look at the weight of party allegiance where overwhelmingly UKIP voters were Leave, 60% or so of Tory voters whereas a clear majority of LP voters were remain 60% plus. I can’t do better than that in terms of underscoring the reactionary nature if the vote. Knock yourself out though, you’ve decided it was not immigration, that it wasn’t reaction from your lofty view on the west coast despite people on herewho are actually in the UK on the ground there seeing a completely different picture.
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If I was basing my opinion on my personal location then your claim would have legitimacy – I am not – I am basing it on active discussions with many people on the ground in Britain – including family, personal friends, members of the CWI, others on the left and trade union activists.
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Typical nonsense from Gewerk – the CWI fully support the IU/Podemos platform – indeed the CWI in Spain has been arguing for such a platform since the foundation of Podemos.
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@JRG – ‘ 1. that the Brexit vote was based on reaction and an anti-immigrant outlook’ – you say this is a falsehood…
It just was – anyone who lives in England and actually talks to people about how and why they voted knows that. The idea that just because working class people largely voted one way that this represents something emancipatory or progressive is just nonsense. Working class people in Ireland vote for FF and for the DUP in large numbers; as indeed they do in large numbers for the tories here
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This has a really interesting & very detailed breakdown of how different groups of people voted. Only the middle and upper middle class voted remain, as did millennials. Renters (including council/housing association tenants) & home-owners voted leave, people with mortgages and private renters voted remain. The 2nd biggest group of respondents by religion had none; people with disabilities voted leave. 43% overall think capitalism is a force for ill; a small majority thought this about immigration 😦 although this was much higher among leave voters. The number one reason for voting leave though was not immigration but ‘the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK’. Significant differences among age groups, social class and ethnic groups. http://lordashcroftpolls.com/
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Interesting stats indeed dmfod. I said originally about immigration ‘going on the stated opinions in polling expressed by Leave voters during the campaign where immigration was one of the primary aspects fuelling their vote’. One of. Not necessarily the first. And I think that stands given that 1/3 of those polled who were Leave expressed the main reason was immigration. It’s entirely possible, indeed probable that, immigration was the secondary or tertiary reason for those who said ‘UK decisions should be taken in the UK’ though I would also argue that given Leave’s emphasis on immigration being a decision that should be taken in the UK there’s implicitly a certain shading between the two issues in those two areas.
The nature of national identity, where of those who were Remain fully 79% considered themselves English not British, is intriguing.
Then we come to social and economic attitudes (from where the capitalism stat comes from), to multiculturalism, social liberalism, feminism, green issues, globalisation (obviously there’s a degree of ambiguity, that term covers multitudes) and immigration. Note that Immigration is joint second for Leave folk who believe it is a force for ill with… social liberalism and just after multiculturalism.
I do not believe any reading of those attitudes can do anything but point to those who voted Leave as being anti-multiculturalism, anti-social liberalism, anti-immigration and antifeminism, anti-envrinomantlism. I think it’s entirely reasonable to argue that those are reactionary views in the main. I would also argue that the divergence between that anti-immigration aspect expressed there and the attitudes to immigration in the which was the most important issue points to some self-constraining on the part of those polled in regard to presenting this as an anti-immigrant decision first and foremost (the discrepancy in the numbers is concerning, 81% believing it a force for ill when given the choice on a list, as against 33% making it their second reason, or part of their second reason for voting Leave). I could be wrong, but the details here are suggestive and require further research and analysis.
Above and beyond that it’s also necessary to restate that even if significant portions of the working class voted Leave the motivations for the vote are hugely important. The Irish working class for generations overwhelmingly voted for FF. No one here would make a case that that was a progressive decision.
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“The idea that just because working class people largely voted one way that this represents something emancipatory or progressive is just nonsense. Working class people in Ireland vote for FF and for the DUP in large numbers; as indeed they do in large numbers for the tories here”
Sorry, I made the same point SoS in my response later not realising you’d made it too in the above. Though it’s such an obvious point I find it surprising both you and I are having to make it here.
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Actually you’re reading those stats re multiculturalism & social liberalism wrong WbS – less than half of Leave voters said multiculturalism was more a force for ill & only 37% said that about social liberalism: http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How-the-UK-voted-Full-tables-1.pdf (p. 112 & 120)
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This is what Ashcroft says on his site:
By large majorities, voters who saw multiculturalism, feminism, the Green movement, globalisation and immigration as forces for good voted to remain in the EU; those who saw them as a force for ill voted by even larger majorities to leave.
And this graphic outlines the broad figures.
The net figure that Ashcroft himself used in the fieldwork stats says: NET ‘A force for good’ 28% in relation to Leave voters pp120.
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http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/06/26/everyone-is-reading-that-infographic-incorrectly/
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I’m happy to tick Ashcroft off for his graphic but the net figures stand on either side. Sure the graphic is misleading but the stats do indicate a spectrum ranging from force for ill through mixed blessing to force for good. The numbers who believe it a mixed blessing through to force for ill are clearly expressing doubts through to outright hostility, the net figures for those whom it isn’t a force for ill or believe it’s a mixed blessing are as described above 28%. And vice versa. If you prefer one can say that the negative feelings in relation to such issues are greater on the Leave side. Negative feelings to very negative feelings.
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You said above that 81% of leave voters thought immigration was “a force for ill” & that you “do not believe any reading of those attitudes can do anything but point to those who voted Leave as being anti-multiculturalism, anti-social liberalism, anti-immigration and antifeminism, anti-envrinomantlism.”
It turns out that you based all that on misreading the above graphic and on misreading this sentence “By large majorities, voters who saw multiculturalism, feminism, the Green movement, globalisation and immigration as forces for good voted to remain in the EU; those who saw them as a force for ill voted by even larger majorities to leave” which means that a majority of people who had those attitudes voted leave, not that a majority of leave voters had those attitudes.
But you just can’t bear to admit you’re wrong! Why such determination to demonise Leave voters?
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I haven’t any problem in saying that my reading on foot of that graph was wrong. What I’m saying though is that the net figures still show broad attitudinal differences between Leave and Remain on certain issues. Indeed the blog you link to says precisely that too!
The graphic would be more accurately labeled if it said that “How did the people who thought he following were a mixed blessing through force for ill to very much a force for ill vote? The space from mixed blessing through force for ill to very much a force for ill is obviously a space where ever increasingly negative attitudes exist. It’s not as blunt as ‘force for ill’, but the broader conclusions drawn don’t strike me as incorrect. Those on the Leave side have in the main negative attitudes to multiculturalism, social liberalism, feminism, the green movement etc. Freddie on his/her? blog notes ‘I don’t think these numbers are good’ in relation to feminism where most are on the mid range ‘mixed blessing’. And he’s right. To even say Feminism is a mixed blessing is a terrible position whether held by Leave or Remain.
Again, I think s/he’s being a little unfair on people who would assume Ashcroft might label something correctly. Freddie’s right though that the media should get it right and if it is indeed being mentioned in the media in an unvarnished way that’s bad.
And by the way, it was you who introduced the Ashcroft figures in the first place.
I’m certainly not demonising Leave voters, I’ve continually pointed out that in the febrile context of the UK media and political mix it is unsurprising that matters like immigration are misinterpreted by people or fears are heightened unnecessarily. But on the other hand I have no fear in suggesting that such fears do exist and that misinterpretations do exist. Nor does it surprise me that Conservatives who in the main voted Leave and UKIP voters who in the main voted Leave would likely have less progressive views on a range of issues than Labour or other voters who voted Remain. The clue is in the name. Why, I could ask, do you have such a determination to argue otherwise?
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And by the way, why shouldn’t I demonise Tories or Tory voters? It’s been the cornerstone of my politics across forty odd years. And likewise with UKIP?
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One of the features of thr UK political landscape is the absence of any significant impact by the traditional non-social democratic left. Despite years of austerity the British Communist Party, The Socialist Party, The Socialist Workers Party have failed to develop any significant mass support among workers and the poor. UKIP the fascists, and other right wing forces have an uncontested field.
It is time to recognise that this is a serious problem necssitating a serious discussion rather than factional point scoring
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serious disfunction on the British left cannot fail to have negative effects all over the world but particularly in Ireland
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Paddy – your first comment warrants discussion – your second is snide and unnecessary.
The non-social democratic left has now made a significant impact in electoral terms – but that is not the whole story. There has been a significant shift to the left among many trade unions in Britain – in particular the RMT, PCS, Bakers Union and CWU (among others) and a growing left opposition in unions that have been traditionally more to the right – Unison and NUT for example. There has also been countless campaigns, many successful, on a local basis against austerity cuts. These campaigns are still in their infancy but have the possibility of developing if the left can gain traction during the current political crisis in Britain.
In the electoral sphere I would argue that the election of Corbyn demonstrated the mood among large sections of the working class in Britain for building an anti-austerity movement. Unfortunately Corbyn has made significant mistakes since he was elected – none more than allowing himself to become the hostage of the Blairites instead of confronting them (and the chickens are roosting on that one). Corbyn’s supporters consciously excluded the non-LP left from any involvement in trying to build a support base for Corbyn and then attacked the left for standing local election candidates against right-wing Blairites implementing Tory cuts. Corbyn also made two serious errors in relation to referendums – 1. not backing Scottish independence which gave the SNP a free run and cause a collapse in any potential to rebuild left LP support in Scotland – and 2. Not leading a left-wing Lexit campaign and allowing Boris and the right-wing Tories set the agenda for the Brexit debate.
There is one final opportunity opening up in relation to Corbyn – the attempt to shaft Corbyn by the Blairites creates an opportunity for Corbyn and his supporters to fight the Blairites – but he will not succeed if he confines that fight to the LP. Corbyn has to go outside the LP and go back to the grassroots movement that swept him to the leadership – fighting on an anti-austerity platform, calling for unity and cooperation among all anti-austerity forces and campaigning for the building of a European wide left-wing anti-austerity movement (with a programme of opposition to the EU).
There will be many ebbs and flows, many peaks and troughs, over the next period – we will see if the left can capitalise on the unfolding crisis.
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You haven’t even admitted there is a problem let alone answer the question. UKIP got c.3million votes in the British general election? How many did SP, SWP, CP get?
The main problem on the British non-social democratic left is FAILURE TO RECOGNISE THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM.
This means there is no attempt to find a solution!
Capitalist politicians are infamous for refusing to answer questions using spin
HOW is this for left wing spin to avoid serious issues?
“There will be many ebbs and flows, many peaks and troughs, over the next period – we will see if the left can capitalise on the unfolding crisis.”-JRG
All criticisms and serious questions are “snide”
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“The non-social democratic left has now made a significant impact in electoral terms” TUSC, really deluded nonsense. It should dissolve and join Labour.
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Jim – it should have said ‘not’ – instead of ‘now’ – autocorrect on the iPad that I didn’t spot. It should have been obvious reading the rest of the post.
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Just watched RTE news.Their anti Corbyn bias is overwhelming.
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If anyone wants a feeling for what Brexit is really about they should talk to REAL people on the ground in England.A ten minute conversation with an Irish building worker home for a couple of days within the last fortnight was all I needed.He told me anti immigrant feeling was frightening and was THE issue.I relayed that on here at the time.
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True and the Lexiteers don’t get that.
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+1 to you both. And let’s not pretend this is restricted to immigrants. The anti-‘chav’ rhetoric I heard in the last few years is another side of that coin. I don’t find this all that strange given how the British media and political class have used both class and immigrants as a means to further their own political ends.
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Somebody put it well: it’s not that half the country is racist, but the racists think half the country agrees with them.
Already, there are openly racist demonstrations, and worse.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales
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Border Poll? RESPONSE OF SINN FÉIN TO BREXIT VOTE IS GROSSLY INADEQUATE. MORE: http://wp.me/pKzXa-tz
No Demand for an End to Fiscal Treaty to Avoid New Austerity in the Southy
No decision to stop implementation of cuts in the North
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Good Friday Agreement Does not Provide for a binding All-Ireland Vote on Irish Unity
Read the text at the link below
Click to access good-friday-agreement.pdf
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Paddy,Paddy, Paddy, SF have issued that many statements against the fiscal treaty that I have lost count.Type in”SF and the fiscal treaty” into your computer some time.Have you still not got over your fantasising about a FG/ SF coalition.You’re starting to sound like JRG and believe me that is not good!
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That was then and this is now. I have often quoted Caoimhín O Caoláin in the Dail “This (Fiscal) Treaty flies in the ace of the 1916 Proclamation”
However the Sinn Féin manifesto in the recent general election was entirely within the Framework of the Fiscal Treaty. In the recent recommendation of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness, The Sinn Fein members assented to a recommendation that “flexibility” be sought from the EU under the TREATY to allow the 26-county government to build houses.!! Irish Sovereignty how are you?
By contrast,In her minority Report,Ruth Coppinger demanded that the Treaty be breached in order to house Irish People. To fail to call for termination of the application of the Fiscal Treaty to Ireland in the wake of the BREXIT vote is inexcusable.
Dev made numerous statements against partition but ended up operating it and enforcing it!!!!!
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For any fans of evidence-based politics this survey by of Brexit voters by Lord’ Ashcroft’s outfit is useful.
Headline figures:
The religious and racial breakdowns are particularly interesting.
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Yep, the questions re ‘force for ill’ merely underscore how reactionary a moment this is and how most (not all) of those who voted for remain cleave to more rather than less reactionary views in relation to immigration, feminism social liberalism and nvironmentalism. Again given the media weight in tilting the discourse on immigration etc no surprise and its not difficult to understand how those who are marginalised by economic and other circumstances might be increasingly open to such viewpoints.
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That part of the poll is misleading in the way that it’s presented, actually – it tells you how many people who think feminism, multiculturalism etc. are a bad thing voted Leave, but not how many people who voted Leave think those things are bad; I believe if you look closer at the data, those people are not the majority (on either side) by any means. The ethnic breakdown is more striking, and suggests that black, Asian and Muslim people weren’t at all comfortable following the main forces on the Leave side, and understandably so.
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Ah, I see somebody had made that point already. Anyway, I’ve seen several SP members citing the Ashcroft poll to back up the claim that it was a ‘working-class revolt’ plain and simple; I haven’t seen any of them address the fact that overwhelming majorities of black, Asian and Muslim people voted Remain, so it seems to be a case of cherry-picking the evidence to suit yourself.
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Yeah I got that wrong too, the dangers of not reading the underlying data. There are differences, not insignificant ones either (and even within former 2015 LP voters they’re fascinating in relation to social, green, multicultural etc) but certainly the bluntness of the original chart is incorrect.
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Worth adding that the Ashcroft data shows not just that racists overwhelmingly voted Leave and BME were far more Remain, but also that there is a strong relationship between self-identification as “English” as against “British” or other and voting “Leave”.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t class and age dimensions as well (clearly there are) but the nationalist / racist dimension is very strong.
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Paddy,see Liadh ni Riada MEP June 6 2016. (DENOUNCES FISCAL TREATY)
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Roddy, Roddy, Roddy! Talk is cheap. It is actions that count!
SF agreed with FF, Fg, Lab, Independents for Change that housing the Irish People was at the discretion of the EU
Dev ritually denounced partition while enforcing it!
Republican supporters have always had undue regard for the POLITICAL views of former Heroes(including real heroes)
Cathal Goulding was god until the loyalists and the Specials burnt out the nationalists.
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Interesting take from Glenn Greenwald:
“All of this can be invigorating, or promising, or destabilizing, or dangerous: most likely a combination of all that.The solution is not to subserviently cling to corrupt elite institutions out of fear of the alternatives. It is, instead, to help bury those institutions and their elite mavens and then fight for superior replacements
…Corrupt elites always try to persuade people to continue to submit to their dominance in exchange for protection from forces that are even worse. That’s their game.”
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I think we are now at the point on the left where this result is beginning to be as divisive as 1956.
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It’s certainly striking how different the analyses are.
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I was thinking of the personal animosity.
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Ah, really? That’s not good. Is this very widespread?
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The vote is done and dusted at this point – the important thing now is to find a way to take an advantage of whatever opportunities open up for the left on a Europe wide basis because of the crisis faced by European capitalism and also confront the far right who will attempt to promote reaction in the coming period.
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There’s a fair bit flying around on social media, a lot of it to do with blaming Corbyn and a lot more to do with pointing at the immediate fallout.
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@MC
looks similar in tone and passion to Clintonites commentary on Corbyn over the weekend.
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‘it wasn’t about immigration’
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/eu-referendum-racism_uk_576fe161e4b08d2c56396075?edition=uk&utm_hp_ref=uk
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Sonofstan- what a litany of vile events- deeply shocking. What about those who don’t use social media? I’m sure there’s more stories there.
On a brighter note as JRG will tell us- this provides opportunities for the left…
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I suppose the other question might be that a lot of this stuff goes on anyway – perhaps more than we suspect in our worst predictions. I watched the EDL march through Wycombe a few months ago and, while there wasn’t that many, ther fact that 300 people were willing to give up their saturday to shout abuse at Muslims is, well, depressing is not a strong enough word is it?
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Depressing alright- but the stories you linked to above have manys a reference to the vote and the referendum- how do people like Tariq Ali square that one?
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I have been thinking about this election and opportunities for the Left for a bit now.
The Lexit argument is 50% right and 100% wrong. There is an opportunity for change, but I think it is at a European level. Brexit demonstrates that ever closer union and the European project is not a given. It states that the EU will need to change if it is to avoid further rupture. Part of this could be doing more to advance the rights of workers and, for want of a more accurate term, the interests of the working class. After all, it is the elderly and those on lower incomes who feel the most disconnect if the Brexit vote is an indicator.
The talk of trade and borders is a bit of red herring. The UK is too big an economy for the rest of the EU to punish. Similarly, the UK is also too economically fragile to insist on wild changes to migration rights. The negotiations process will consist of tons of headline battles which will likely result in only moderate change. Expect plenty of bluster from European partners and the UK over the coming months and years.
Within Britain, though, this is a victory for the Right and for xenophobia. Farage and Boris won. The mood has changed. Cameron is gone. Labour are in disarray. The failure to trigger Art. 50 will not ‘snooker’ UKIP and the Leave camp; it will support their arguments that the country is run by a bunch of ‘liberal’ bureaucrats who do not give a fig for the wishes of the average English person. They own the anti-establishment line. And they have a concrete target for the ire of the masses: immigrants. The Left in the UK is not strong enough to defeat these powerful forces.
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Corbin could have perhaps been clearer on what is wrong with the EU (apart from it being an essentially capitalist project of course). The answer to the claim that immigration drives down wages? Raise the minimum wage, recruit hundreds of inspectors to actually enforce it, repeal anti-Union laws. If employers threaten to move elsewhere in the EU as a result then (do so anyway) MORE EU wide employee protection, end to anti-Union laws across the EU (see France). Of course then it is all about struggle! When many seem to want a simple fix (stop immigration) as they see it. A hard message to get across in truth. Meantime campaign for the EU contributions from the UK to be spent on the NHS as Brexiters promised (already backtracking from).
The quietude of the Brexit politicians, especially BoJo, is amazing. He didn’t expect or want it and doesn’t know what to do. Despite the media obsession with Corbyn surely the crisis is in the Tory party. I bet there is a lot of personal animosity there.
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+1
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And +1 to your post RiD which sums up very succinctly many of my own feelings on this.
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More stories here, including an attack on the Polish cultural centre in London.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales
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Report just now on R4 – 11 year old Mikel ‘polish born, but you would think so from his clear, unaccented english’ ….
How dare they attack a boy with such perfect English!
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I love liberals when they try to think constructively.
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PBP’s Gerry Carroll took a seat in West Belfast a few weeks ago and secured over 20% of the vote (SF took 4 out of the six on 55%).An exuberant media hailed this as a “post troubles generation of enthusiastic young people” giving the hated Shinners their comeuppance.However your “Northern on the ground correspondent” Roddy can now report that many of these young people are far from “enthusiastic” at Brexit and Gerry ‘s support for it.
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Stathis Kouvelakis on Brexit:
“Increasingly left-wing forces understand that the EU cannot be reformed in a progressive direction, with a more democratic mode of functioning, because its very architecture is designed not to be reformable.”
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2726-the-eu-can-t-be-reformed
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As usual with ruptureists damn all believable plan about what comes after the glorious day of salvation. Just stuff like:
Playing the referendum game while
has worked stunningly well so far.
I’m bored with this kind of rhetoric, come back to me when you have a half-ways credible plan to present.
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What always fascinates me about such language is the lack of appreciation that workers, people value stability almost above all else, where is my wage, UB, rent, work or whatever coming from. Ruptures are great in theory but when you’ve kids to feed, rents to pay etc…
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+1 – crisis does not magically produce organisation. Or as http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article38304 puts it, this confuses class in itself with class for itself.
Brexit amounts to neoliberalism in one country.
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That’s a depressing but all too plausible line about neo liberalism in one country .
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I fear Rupe Dirty Digger Murdoch has a better feel for the way things are likely to go.
He’s drooling at the prospect of the increase in his power.
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Fintan, Why Not Lay Off Ireland, Spain ,Portugal as well as Greece?
The Fiscal Treaty has established a new colonialism in Europe
Ireland should refuse to abide by it
Ireland has to seek EU permission to invest in the housing of its people !!!!
“Second, lay off Greece. Many of us have tried to warn that in treating a sovereign member state to exemplary punishment, creating a purgatory in which sinful improvidence must be expunged by suffering, the EU is not just harming the Greeks. It is turning itself from a community of equal nations into a fiscal penal colony with creditor guards and debtor prisoners”.-Fintan O’Toole ,Irish Times 28/06/2016
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And they’ve got on to the Irish:
http://www.legalcheek.com/2016/06/university-of-liverpool-eu-law-lecturers-incredible-out-of-office-email-response-to-bremain-haters/
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And apparently, the PLP has voted no confidence in Corbyn, 172-40.
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I’m not sure simply ignoring this is going to work. I think Corbyn needs to agree a successor and get her/him on the leadership ballot and then make the same arguments as he – Corbyn – did before to the party membership. Then assuming she/he wins the leadership election make sure none of the rebels get near shadow-cabinet positions.
Meanwhile the war-criminal-fan-club have successfully distracted from the disarray in the government & Tory party.
Predictable – but nice one lads and lasses.
And seem all quite comfortable with the fact that the extreme right has won on immigration and that they are going to fall into line.
Whoever wins the Tory power struggle it’s unlikely that they’ll call an election any time soon – BJ has already indicated that.
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The problem would be getting the necessary 50 signatures. Apparently MEPs can sign?
Perhaps staying put and going to court is the only option.
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I think the unions will be very important here. Len McCluskey wrote a good strong piece on Sunday warning that if there was any attempt to force a new leadership election and then exclude Corbyn from the ballot, UNITE wouldn’t stand for it and would reopen the question of mandatory reselection. The Corbyn camp certainly can’t ignore this but they’ll have to be willing to ignore all the political journalists telling them they simply must bend the knee and slink off quietly because that’s the way things are. Two very important points they need to be making:
1) The entire coup is based on a lie; it’s not even debatable. The proportion of Labour supporters who voted Leave was exactly the same as the proportion of SNP supporters (37% to 36%). Nobody is claiming that Nicola Sturgeon was half-hearted about the referendum campaign or urging her to resign.
2) The direction the coup leaders want to take Labour is precisely the opposite of where it needs to go. At a time when there’s a very broad anti-establishment, anti-politics mood, they want Labour to cleave ever more tightly to the establishment.
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It seems deeply unfair the whole thing. Particularly him being forced to take the rap for supposed failings in relation to the referendum.
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It’s pathetic. The Guardian columnists, Labour MPs and assorted creeps pushing this coup are very much of the ‘big lie told often and stridently enough’ school of thought. They rail against UKIP or the Tory Brexiters for playing fast and loose with the facts but they’re every bit as keen on post-factual politics when it suits them. They’re desperate to get this pushed through as quickly as possible while people are disorientated by the referendum result and not thinking straight. And they’re very keen to get it pushed through before the Chilcot report comes out and reminds people what the era they present as a golden age was actually all about.
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+1 tbh I can’t see how the leadership can be overthrown even if the MPs pull out all the stops.
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Fair point made about the role of trade unions in supporting Corbyn and more to follow on Momentum:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/28/momentum-unions-prepare-new-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-campaign-no-confidence-vote
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This article by Andrew Flood is the best analysis Ive seen yet of the Brexit vote.
http://www.wsm.ie/c/making-sense-brexit-tide-reaction-racist-vote
I voted to remain because, in a nutshell, the frying pan of staying in an undemocratic neo-liberal EU looked a wee bit less catastrophic from the point of view of workers struggle than the fire of bouncing out into a reactionary Little Britain.
Silver lining? A real boost for prospects of independence for Scotland but that has to be balanced with the sewers of racism that have opened out with real consequence for many working class people from minority communities. To those who are calling this a working class revolt, does that mean the workers of Scotland, London, Liverpool, West Belfast, Manchester etc. are not part of the working class? What about Muslim and BME workers who voted overwhelmingly to remain?
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I think it’s a great article too. Very much agree.
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+1
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Andrew Flood says: “My own perspective is that if I’d had a vote I’d have abstained or spoilt it because although the problem with the referendum was that it mobilised and energised racists the legalistic reality of it is that it offered only a choice between a rock and a hard place. The choice between being ruled from London or being ruled from London with some EU supervision isn’t much of a choice at all.”
Well said, I think. I would have actively abstained myself, that is, spoiling the vote. And actively campaiging against the misguided and reactionary aspects of either side.
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CPGB/Weekly Worker have some thoughts on similar lines. I’ll post up a link in the morning.
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The fight around the referendum has now become a fight to defend Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. The Party is obviously split and will become organisationally split no matter who wins.
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A friend of mine described it ad being like the Comintern in the thirties: fascism on the streets so let’s attack the social democrats.
Sign of hope: 300 people turned out at short notice in solidarity with migrants in Bath.
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Just saw Coppinger on Prime Time,persisting with the “working class revolt” horseshit.
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Just on that working class vote Flood of the wsm in the piece linked to above makes a very important point here:
The third subtraction is far more politically important: migrants who were not from the former colonies (the Commonwealth and Ireland) and who therefore did not get a vote. In terms of migrants from other areas of the EU that’s over 2 million people excluded from the vote – a shocking figure when you consider the vote was essentially on their future. And migrants not from the Commonwealth or Ireland also number in the hundreds of thousands. Remember less than 1.3 million votes separated Leave from Remain, if the 2.5 million plus migrants had been allowed to vote on their own future Brexit probably would not have happened. It’s an important aside, and the point to make here is that these migrants are overwhelmingly working class and therefore their exclusion from the vote reduces further the proportion of the C2DE working class that actually voted leave.
And this is not unimportant:
From the calculations above we see that even if we restrict the working class to C2DEs, only 23% of the C2DE working class actually mobilised to tick Leave. If we exclude those too young to vote that rises to about 32%. So, for a variety of reasons, including being denied a vote, 68% of the C2DE working class of voting age did not vote Leave. We’d speculate that amongst that number are a substantial amount who were horrified by the racist nonsense of their neighbors and relatives but who were not going to save the establishment by voting Remain. Perhaps a major motivation for the 18% who did vote Remain was opposing those racist neighbours, in particular as that 18% was probably drawn from the sizeable number of C2DEs that are not white.
But perhaps the key thing is that just because working class people are involved in something it doesn’t meant that it per definition has progressive characteristics. Once that was obvious and well known, Reagan Democrats, Thatcher supporters in the UK, Fianna Fáil here after its first flush of youthful radicalism in the early 30s. Somehow, bizarrely, it appears to have been forgotten.
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Neil Faulkner makes a good point here http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article38304:
“I have seen revolutionaries whose opinions I used to respect claiming that the EU Referendum result represents ‘a class vote’ and that, because working-class communities voted heavily against the Remain camp, we are witness to a popular revolt against austerity and inequality.
This is breathtaking stupidity. It is to make a nonsense of any distinction between ‘class in itself’ and ‘class for itself’: a vital distinction for Marx, who knew the great difference there was between the mere fact of class position – a matter of sociological description – and conscious mass struggle by working people acting for themselves to change the world. Indeed, in some sense, the whole of socialist activity is accounted for by this distinction.”
I think this is putting it a bit harshly but there is something to the substance. The “working-class revolt” stuff is a daft kind of identity politics (in which w-c typically also means “white”) where whatever w-c people do is per se good. If that was true there would be no need for agitating, organising or educating – all “the left” would have to do would be to cheer from the sidelines.
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It certainly seems oddly uncritical or reflective of the realities of the situation. There’s also the thought that on occasion in the absence of self generated structures or formations problematic dynamics can and do manifest themselves. Again few would feel overjoyed say at the reality that FF for example has a considerable tranche of (often) working class reps in the unions. The FF aspect is the issue despite the working class aspect.
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I see the Shinners going nuts on social media again – this time because Ruth Coppinger argued against holding a border poll. Ruth is accused of siding with the DUP and the Tories – the irony of the fact that SF sit on an Executive in Stormont with the DUP imposing Tory austerity is completely lost on them.
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Who really gives a toss what happens on social media like that? I can’t believe many on here give it any thought at all, all this partisan sniping between supporters and members of different parties and I’ll bet that there are no innocents – that everyone will have their online partisans out in action. I genuinely don’t know why you keep bringing it up on this site as if it is in the slightest bit noteworthy – indeed I’d go further, this site is in part all about getting away from that pointless and rancid stuff. Leave it at the door is my attitude.
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WbS – you do realise that there is a direct link between SF imposing austerity in the North, SF supporting the Remain campaign (despite opposing EEC membership in 1973 and opposing EU Treaties since) ans SF now calling for what inevitable would be a border poll based on a sectarian headcount.
http://socialistparty.ie/2016/06/ireland-brexit-and-why-the-eu-must-be-opposed/
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Seriously JRG, if you’re going to bring news it had better be a bit more substantial than rival supporters of parties are having spats on social media, something that happens so often as to be totally unremarkable. And you need to do a fair bit better than trying to pretend we’re chumps who have no knowledge of Irish political activity across the decades, or that everyone here thinks your analysis is beyond question…
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And just to be clear that’s not meant to be just in relation to you JRG, this holds for all of us. Social media noise is almost invariably just noise. Unless there’s actual substance to the issue let’s leave people to it from whatever quarter. Actually, there’s a deeper question is it actually profoundly destructive to the left in terms of getting peoples backs up unnecessarily and pushing people into self-defined groups or feeling they have to defend ‘their own’.
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You regard Paul Donnelly going off on one against Ruth Coppinger on his Facebook page because she dared to suggest that a border poll would be a mistake and Stoke the flames of sectarianism – social media noise. I call it a political attack because someone dared to question SF’s political ‘strategy’ of trying to whip up Irish nationalism in response to the little Englander nationalism whipped up by Johnson and Farge.
As for the link to the article – I wouldn’t for one moment suggest that the ‘lefts too stubborn to quit’ who participate here would be convinced by an article by the SP. The article, in part, outlines the wrong but unsurprising approach of SF in the back of Brexit and the dangers of their strategy. Simply dismissing these dangers is not something that should be done likely.
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I think it is irrelevant, indeed as I’ve said many times before there’s gar too much concentration on petty stuff on social media full stop. A while ago Joan Collins and Clare Daly were getting it in the neck on FB etc for supposed divergences from orthodoxy – got pretty heated too and some might think unfairly too to them, but had zero effect on their votes or status outside in the real world. There’s a lesson there. And before I hear accusations of hypocrisy re this site being social media so it is and it has no impact except for linking some like minds. As to the SP article, people are free to agree or disagree but it should never ever be assumed that a single interpretation is so persuasive as to beyond question.
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SF’s John O’Dowd just interviewed on BBC rightly called the so called “revolution” – “a falling out between Eton toffs”!
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Demonstrates how superficial the SF’s analysis is – simply reducing it to a spat between individuals.
O’Dowd and the rest of the Shinners in Stormont can now get back to cutting jobs and services and continue their ongoing promotion of the privatisation of education, health, transport, water etc.
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Just read in my local paper today that the chairman of Mid Ulster trades council “warns of Brexit impact”.He warns of “far right groups developing” and “an end to European business investment”.He’s called Harry Hutchinson,the public face of the SP in the North for the best part of 3 decades!
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Calling Harry Hutchinson ‘the public face of the SP in the North for the best part of 3 decades’ could, in the most polite of terms, be described as a bit of a stretch. And Harry, a man I get on with personally and I do respect, left the SP more than 15 years ago and while trying to remain active in a genuine sense, has moved significantly to the right since then.
I could dig up all the nonsense spouted by former Shinners who were the ‘public face’ of SF for decades as well – but CLR would crash with the volume of the stuff available.
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He’s clearly broken with the SP since 2005, though still of the left.
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It’s is interesting to see the way a large number of the Remain lefts have reacted to Brexit – primarily attacking Lexit and Lexit supporters rather than confronting the right-wing Brexit agenda – and now coming out with nonsense like ‘we will be reunited with Europe’ and carrying around EU flags.
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Oh dear. Where to start?
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Perhaps JRG would like to tell us how the SP’s call for a general strike and an immediate election leading to a Corbyn-led Labour government is getting along. Not so well from where I’m standing.
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I can’t speak for anyone else on the left, but here’s what’s happening.
The half-Russian ten year old son of a colleague was asked in the school playground when he was leaving.
An Irish academic has been told to “fuck off back to paddyland you fucking IRA c***”.
An Indian restaurant has been petrol bombed.
The Polish cultural centre in London has been attacked.
All of this, bar the details, was a predictable outcome of a Leave vote. Right now, my priority as a trade unionist is to see what support foreign staff and students will need and see what we can offer.
Meanwhile, people who helped get us into this shambles are talking about a general strike and wondering why they’re criticized.
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Somebody has put it quite well here:
http://blocuk.com/brexit-racism/4592618586
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See the comment from me below – your quote actually demonstrates the point I made a few seconds before you posted it.
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And the remain Labour Party kept Yarls Wood full to the brim and allowed G4S to strangle deportees like Jimmy Mubenga and man handle and kill many others.
Jesus, you’d never think that the main ‘Left’ force on the Remain side, the goddamn Labour Party, had as an electoral prop last year a mug pledging to curb immigration and has been a party dog-whistling on immigration since 1997 with many senior figures straining at the leash to have a go at migrants and free movement.
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The principal political figures in England have pandered to racism for decades, including Labour. I said as much to a couple of hundred people last night.
This vote has made things even worse. Why do you think we should be grateful?
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The racism, the Brexit vote and the consequences of the vote for minorities are a direct result of the policies of the EU elites – voting Remain would not have changed these policies – in fact it would likely have strengthened the hand of the xenophobes within the EU bureaucracy and the national political elites.
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For Gods sake JRG think about what you are writing, of course people can be antagonistic to the ‘other ‘ and racist too and one can close borders around supranational structures which isn’t necessarily the same thing but it is a hell of a feat to be an actual xenophobe in any real sense of the term in a structure that incorporates 27 different states. There’s no problem being anti EU but it has to be grounded in some reality and logic.
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Michael, grateful for what? Where have I suggested that you should be grateful for anything. It’s a grim situation. But the Brexit vote is the logical culmination of decades of propaganda from all across the political spectrum (bar the far Left) in the UK. My point, which I don’t expect you get or respect, is that the binary ‘Remain Vote=’Progessive’ non racist; Brexit Vote=Racist’ is facile and deeply counter productive. That latter binary permeates a huge amount of Left analysis of the vote. Yes, there has been an upsurge in racist incidents arising from the Brexit vote. But you can be sure the soft Left Remain people ‘let’s work within the EU to make it better’ will not be organising or mobilising to defeat the far Right forces in the UK. Case in point, Owen Jones who has bottled it in the Corbyn crisis for the Labour Party and who has shown himself to be as much use as a chocolate tea pot. His, in retrospect, idiotic claims to be prepared to fight to better the EU from inside are clear to see when he can’t even summon the guts in a real crisis to fight for Corbyn when for him all ‘fighting’ would entail is writing a few pieces in support of Corbyn.
There are plenty of racist forms nestled within the ‘Remain’ vote. Racist not in the ‘fuck off foreigners’, skinheads and swastika tattoos sense, but in the sense of having no problem with institutional structures which relegates non-Europeans or non-EU citizens into second rate status or excludes them from public services or who are quite happy with employment laws not applying to such workers. Or who are fully behind the EU’s racist attempts to push Syrian refugees back to Turkey. Many surely voted to keep the UK part of the EU on the basis that the latter was the best mechanism to defend Europe from non-European migration and the consequences of wars fought across the middle-East by EU members states.
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Spot on CMK – in fact the entire basis of Cameron’s Remain campaign was that he would be in a position to negotiate stricter immigrant controls for Britain and within the wider EU (something happily supported by the Blairites)
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CMK, I think there’s a problem trying to make out that Remain, which sought open borders within Europe is the equivalent of Brexit which sought explicitly in its two largest components (overwhelmingly largest at that) to curb or control or actually do away with immigration from inside the EU (and outside too). The two, whatever about the failings, which I doubt anyone here would disagree wth in regard to Remain, are simply aren’t the same. Moreover the upsurge in racist incidents clearly couldn’t have anything like the same dynamic in the context of a Remain victory where it wouldn’t seem as it does with a Brexit victory if only impliclity those who ‘won’ the referendum actually on some level agreed with either anti-immigrant rhetoric or worse. The impetus given has been given because of the reactionary nature of the Brexit demands and the forces involved. None of this is odd, none of this is curious. It’s all perfectly predictable.
As to whether Jones can be used to dismiss Remain across the board in the context of the EU, frankly I don’t think his failings are sufficient to do that. The two issues simply aren’t closely related enough – as well suggest that his failings have undermined the entirety of the British left. That just doesn’t scan.
And again, while no one would dispute there are massive problematic aspects to the EU, to seem to suggest again that the list of issues you point to are the equivalent of outright anti-immigrant feeling and polices as pushed by those largest components of Brexit seems to be stretching (as well as which those who supported Brexit are from all the evidence we have significantly more likely to hold anti-immigrant and reactionary views – not all but sufficient that the distinction is enough to be deeply problematic). And frankly I don’t think there’s any serious evidence as to your last contention.
I almost have to admire the prodigious efforts to paint the Remain line in as bad a light as possible in order to diminish the negative aspects of the Brexit side. Almost admire, but in a context where the Brexit result has clearly unleashed outright racist and xenophobic attacks I can’t help but feel the efforts expended are rather shabby for all involved.
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That’s simply incorrect JRG. Cameron attempted precisely to do that and was rebuffed by the EU earlier this year. For them limiting immigration from inside the EU was a non-starter due to freedom of movement. Hence the UK anti-EU press went wild at his ‘humiliation’ and ‘betrayal’ which further weakened his position.
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I am astonished that people who are accustomed to taking part in leftwing polemics have continued to take part in leftwing polemics.
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Miguel Urban, Podemos MEP, made a number of very important and pointed comments when he addressed the Left-Bloc Congress in Portugal over the weekend (who importantly have shifted significantly to an anti-euro/anti-EU position as a result of the congress).
Urban argued – correctly – that the rise of racism and the far-right in Europe is a direct consequence of the racist/ xenophobic/ Fortress Europe policies of the EU. The latest demonstration of this is the fact that the EU are paying Turkey €6billion to allow the repatriation of refugees from the EU to Turkey.
To blame the Brexit vote for the increased racist incidents is entirely missing the reality that the cause of these is not the Brexit vote – but the EU. The Brexit vote is just one more manifestation of the growing resentment and opposition to the diktats of the EU elites and the imposition of austerity on a European wide basis.
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That’s an amazing analysis, it really is, which is so simplistic as to be breathtaking. Racist incidents are due to the EU? That ignores completely the fact that such incidents are directed not just against those from outside the EU but also inside it and that Brexit pushed hard and continues to do so to cut all inflows to Britain from EU sources – its sort of the basic definition of the Leave camp . One can be deeply eurocritical – one can find the fortress EU lamentable. without resorting to … I don’t know how to describe what I’m reading.
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To blame the Brexit vote for the increased racist incidents is entirely missing the reality
There’s a missing “not” in this passage.
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“The cause of the increase of the racist incidents after Brexit is the EU.”
Hm… Is this a testable assertion? I think not. Should we bother to try to test it? I think not.
That the racist right like Fortress Europe – indeed it was instituted as a result of caving in to the far right – and want more of it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Lexiters. Nor the fact that a post-Brexit Britain will build their own version in spades. Forget about asylum seekers rights when all EU legislation, as it must, is replaced by UK legislation.
This body of law is so big that the British Parliament will never get time to discuss it. It will be drafted by civil servants and nodded through parliament.
It’s a good line though – and I’m sure it will comforting to the victims of racism when their attacker let them know that “it was the EU wot made me a racist”.
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JRG will no doubt be happy to explain to the overwhelming majorities of black, Asian and Muslim people in Britain who voted Remain (or perhaps more accurately, voted against Brexit) that their understanding of things is ‘entirely missing the reality’. I doubt many of those people are moved by a deep passion for the EU or see it as any kind of serious bulwark against racism. But they could also see who the overwhelmingly dominant political forces in the Leave camp were and what their priorities would be in the event of a victory. I’m sure they’ll be reassured by JRG explaining to them from another country that intensified racism is just superficial froth on a ‘working-class revolt’ and that everything will be alright once the general strike comes along. And after delivering all these ex cathedra lectures, telling us that up is down and left is right, he still has the nerve to moan about facing a bit of criticism.
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In Britain the most important political fallout from Brexit at this moment is that it has brought the Corbyn/Blairite fight to a head.
Corbyn has to be defended – and the Blairites have to be defeated. It is still an open question as to whether Corbyn can get on the ballot for the leadership election – he needs 35 MPs to nominate him and only has 20. The LP NEC will likely make the decision as to whether Corbyn can be added to the ballot paper as outgoing leader without these nominations – and while the NEC has shifted a little to the left, it is still dominated by Blairites.
The leadership contest will probably come down to two scenarios –
1. Corbyn will be allowed to stand and will defeat the Blairite – not guaranteed (as many who joined the LP to vote for Corbyn have since drifted away from the LP and could be prevented by the LP bureaucracy from re-joining and they are likely to prevent any new members joining) – in this scenario the Blairites will split from the LP, with the prospect of them joining up with a pro-EU split from the Tories and the LibDems.
2. Corbyn is not allowed to stand – in which case the onus would be on Corbyn and his supporters to launch a new anti-austerity party and bring together all the anti-austerity forces in Britain linked with a campaign to force a general election.. This would have been easier if Corbyn had adopted a Lexit approach to the referendum, but that is water under the bridge now.
By far and away the best outcome would be a Corbyn win and a Blairite split which would immediately open up the LP to being a mass anti-austerity party and put the prospect of a general election and left LP programme being presented to the working class – coupled with an intensified campaign of opposition to council cuts and the removal of pro-cuts councillors from the LP.
Scenario 2 is a much more difficult prospect – but the opportunity would exist for a new Corbyn led anti-austerity movement to demonstrate the pro-austerity approach of everyone from the Blairites to the Brexit Tories and UKIP (and the pro-austerity policies of the SNP in Scotland and SF/DUP in the North) without Corbyn being held hostage by the Blairites. Such a development would likely have 10-15 MPs and maybe up to 100 councillors, would see the affiliation of trade unions like RMT and PCS (and possibly others) and massive political battles within the rest of the trade union movement about affiliation – and would be a good starting point for the launching of a countrywide anti-austerity campaign.
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Last point on this as I have work to do.
All of this is being played out against a background of a massive struggle by the working class in France – including huge protests again on Thursday and with air traffic controllers and other transport workers on strike yesterday.
Millions of workers have taken to the streets against the El Khormi law. Over the past three months more than 1,500 separate demonstrations have taken place. There are currently strikes in more than 800 workplaces against these attacks. The fact that Hollande’s government by-passed parliament and implemented the law by decree has brought the issue of the ‘democratic process’ in France and within the EU to the fore. The French government is in severe crisis. Last week the main police union called on the demonstrations and strikes to be postponed because the police were ‘too exhausted’ to cope with the protests. The deputy GS of the police union stated “We’re asking for this demonstration to be postponed, along with any other static protests as our colleagues are on all fronts and are exhausted, worn out, and tired…They (the police) find these demonstrations all the harder to bear as they are repetitive and very violent,” Hollande had attempted to ban the huge protests held last Thursday but was forced into a humiliating climbdown when it became apparent that demonstrators were going to take to the streets anyway and the police wouldn’t be able to stop them.
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JRG ,I don’t know why you are latching onto Corbyn.He wants fuck all to do with you and your neo unionist SP and has taken the SF line on Ireland for decades.
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I am sure his his taking ‘ the SF line on Ireland for decades’ will ensure that he wipes the floor with the Blairites over the next few weeks as he argues his case in front of the LP membership.
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The next time Gerry Adams meets with Corbyn (which he does quite often) ,I will get him to relay JRG’S offer of “help”.I will provide Gerry with an SP statement describing their result in their last outing in Mid Ulster as “very credible”. This ” very credible result” in a council ward was 84 votes! and so buoyed were they that they have’nt stood since.That was Harry’s last outing and no wonder even he jumped ship!
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roddy – you are a down the line republican who sees everything in terms of the republican outlook on the North and where people fit into the scheme of that.
It is the reason why Adams not only meets Corbyn, but also meets and has met Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Cameron, Blair and a host of other war mongers.
And Harry’s result in 1992 was not 84 votes in was 89 (for the sake of accuracy). And it was not Harry’s last outing – he stood as an independent in 2007 and a PBP candidate in 2011.
Not surprisingly – and not for the first time – you are incapable of seeing beyond the green-tinted glasses that are constantly over your face.
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The difference is that Corbyn is an ally of Adams ,the rest are not.Corbyn has supported SF since the early 80’s.It was certainly the SP’S last outing and it gives an idea as to how ridiculous it would be for Corbyn to take any advice from you!”
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Adams and SF may consider Corbyn an ally – but having Adams and SF as an ally will have zero impact on whether Corbyn survives the coup attempt or has the bottle to launch a new anti-austerity party if he gets shafted.
As for the ‘influence’ the Socialist Party / CWI has in relation to Corbyn and his leadership – well CWI members are in prominent positions in many trade union in Britain that Corbyn is relying on to support his effort to retain the leadership. Of course a Shinner like yourself would have little understanding of the importance of trade unions in such a struggle given the lack of influence SF has within the trade union movement on this island (outside of backing social partnership and privatisation).- and the zero influence it has in the British trade union movement.
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zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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You appear tired roddy – go have your beauty sleep.
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If you do some digging on the ‘net it appears that some people are still upset over a piece about the Brighton bombing that Labour Left Briefing published in the ’80s, when one J. Corbyn was involved with that publication.
See, e.g., here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11924431/Revealed-Jeremy-Corbyn-and-John-McDonnells-close-IRA-links.html
Does anyone know, though, if the original piece is available online anywhere?
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The Trinity library catalogue lists Labour Briefing and/or London Labour Briefing from 1986 onwards, but I can’t see anything for the couple of years before that.
Anyone in Dublin who could have a look?
Only one issue (1996) shows up on the Linenhall Library.
It’s probably in the British Library, and possibly some other university libraries in the UK if someone fancies a wander through the stacks.
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Thanks. Inspired by that Telegraph link, I looked up Nigel Dodds, and – oh dear – he has quite a few blots on his own copybook, such as attending the funeral of a UVF leader.
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No it could’nt be possibly true because JRG says Corbyn and McDonnell don’t really support SF. Adams only meets them in the same way that he meets Blair or Cameron !
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With all due respect roddy – I never once suggested that Corbyn didn’t have a left republican attitude to the North – that is just you reading sh*t into what I said because you view everything through warped green-tinted glasses.
What I said was that Corbyn’s attitude to the North and SF’s support for Corbyn will have zero impact on whether he survives the Blairite coup or what he does after if they manage to shaft him.
In relation to Adams and SF meeting all kinds of reprehensible war mongers – will that comes back to the same reason why SF support Corbyn – that meeting these people can somehow forward the SF agenda on this island (and that includes running $500 a plate fundraising dinners with rich Irish Americans notorious for corruption and anti-worker practices and hopping into bed with the DUP and the UUP to impose Tory austerity and privatisation in the North).
For SF everything comes a distant second to the nationalist path to a ‘United’ Ireland – especially the cause of Labour. Everything is viewed through green tinted glasses and everything must conform to the green tinted narrative.
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Your line is that Adams / Corbyn support is one way.It is not.They are genuine allies .
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+1
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The Militarisation of Europe is a far greater threat than Brexit -Prof Ray Kinsella Irish Independent 11/07/2016
https://paddyhealy.wordpress.com/… Defend Irish Neutrality, Reclaim our Sovereignty
Ireland Must Resist New Pressures To Give Up Military Neutrality
Recovery of All-Ireland Sovereignty of Irish People More Vital than Ever!
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BREXIT and TTIP
FG(Brian Hayes wants TTIP(Proposed New US-EU Trade Agreement) hurried up
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/…/brexit-ttip-and-t…/
But Marxist Economist Michael Roberts says Brexit vote will put it on hold
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