Brexit

Interesting development.

Request for an emergency debate tomorrow to force the publication of the Yellowhammer report on the risks of a No-Deal exit.

If true, hope it is the unwatered down version, if publication of the watered down version was pulled as being too scary the original must be a doozy.

Well, it is something which is also the subject of academic study, despite your airy claims. 

Look at Jan Werner Muller, for example, (professor at Princeton, so ‘academic’) who says that the answer to Trump is to address the economic inequality at the heart of his supporter’s rage. Left populism may be just as undeliverable as right populism but at least they don’t try to deny that it thrives on the economically left behind (just look at who votes for them).

Article by Stephane Wolton, an assistant professor at LSE, who I haven’t previously heard of but, you know, academic study....

“Academic papers have found that populist parties attract recent economic losers, who have lost out from globalisation, the Great Recession, automation, or greater economic insecurity. ” etc.

www.democraticaudit.com/2019/06/25/the-populists-trap-mainstream-responses-to-populist-new-parties-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

As for right populists, they push one thing, which explains the way they can ignore the economic issues.

The Big Lie.

This consists of the use of culture as a veneer to place over legitimate worries about the class divisions that lead to economic inequality. Hey Presto! At a stroke, all those difficult economic issues suddenly become unimportant and, instead, the cheap fare of culture is blared out as ‘the problem’. 

Scratch a populist inclined voter and you will, however, generally find the economic anxiety, the concerns about crime and such which arise from it. A noisy media (owned by those who really don’t want their economic hegemony challenged) will blare out about guns, abortion, immigrants, homosexuals, Europe!, etc. etc. and they con people into believing that these are their problems instead. They are not, they really aren’t.

They will probably also offer economic incentives (just because, actually we happen to have the money now, not because it was the problem in the first place. No, not at all, honest). Oh. look! Mr Johnson and his amazing socialist level of spending! Colour me shocked....

Which aside from the fact that austerity makes what is actually a crap increase look good, what they propose may not even be legal - but clearly our current government isn't particularly bothered about obeying the laws it dislikes...

There was an interesting study discussed on Freakonomics a while back, talking about climate change, but I think it applies here too. Basically, they found that, rather than changing ones views in the face of new evidence, people tend to double down or reframe the narrative of their existing opinions. This, I think, explains why after the leave campaigners finally admitted that the £350 million for the NHS might be misleading (for some reason Nigel Farrage and Iain Duncan Smith didn't think to clarify this until after the referendum), rather than using this to reassess the benefits of leaving, the discussion is reframed as never really being about the money anyway.

(of course, I'm not suggesting that I'm not liable to have the same sort of psychological response), but it's this sort of double think/cognitive dissonance that really gets me, I mean:

- The EU is reliant on us buying German cars (etc.); but we haven’t managed to get a favourable deal in the years of negotiations,
- The Irish border isn’t a problem; but mere weeks before the deadline there are no concrete plans in place,
- We’re going to (or at least threaten to) renege on what we owe to the EU; but countries will still bend over backwards for a trade deal with us.
- Trump has explicitly & implicitly said that he will put American interests first; and yet we’re hanging everything off being able to quickly get a trade deal that suits us,
- We need to get out from under the control of the EU to put the power back into Westminster; and yet several of the regions that voted out are precisely the ones that rely on funding from the EU.

And it's the same with the way that the Tories have tried to frame the rejected early election. The Tories have been running this race -one that they set in motion- for the last few years. Boris’ argument why he wasn’t ‘contemptible’ (his words) for coming to power without an election was because this is a time of national crisis. And now, after doing everything imaginable to avoid this and literal days before the deadline, he suddenly wants to pass the baton for no other reason than to save face. The idea that this can then be framed as Corbyn being ‘chicken’ is just drinking the Kool Aid to the largest degree.

And best of all: we need to get out from under the control of the EU to put the power back into Westminster, AND it's perfectly appropriate for a dictatorial Prime Minister who lacks a majority to shut down Parliament in order to sideline MPs during the decision-making process.

I've heard that one more than once, and the logical contortions are breathtaking.

So with The John Bercow resigning. I wonder who of the former Tory MPs and Change MPs will switch to the Liberal Democrats?

I could see Heidi Allen, Amber Rudd, Ken Clarke and possible Ruth Davidson (that would be a major scalp.)

The only place Amber Rudd is positioning for is the Tory leadership. Definition of 'the long game'.

Pat's right

Well, the Tories are two parties on Brexit. A lot of commonality beyond that issue.

Not really the case with Labour's two factions, the split is far more ideological, it's bitter and angry.


However, they all need the party brand name in order to prosper ...

‘Tory but Nice’ ?