The Political Thread

[Muon]

About the source of all this anger and disillusionment we've seen... I would trace it back to the 1980s.

The seductive but empty idea of "aspiration" started to be shoved in people's faces just as the industries that had given many working people purpose and dignity started to be broken up. Suddenly they were all meant to "get on their bikes" and work hard to thrive in the new economy. That's all they had to do, the narrative said, and if they didn't they were failures. People who had produced cars or worked down mines all their lives were suddenly somehow supposed to become entrepreneurs.

At the same time they were taunted by the idea of "aspiration". TV and movies fed them images of wealth while politicians blessed with wealthy families and expensive educations goaded them into thinking that, if they worked hard enough, somehow they would automatically deserve all the riches they saw around them. The rare examples of successes from relatively humble backgrounds (Thatcher the grocer's daughter, Norman Tebbit's father who got on his bike, a smattering of wealthy businessmen with the wrong accents) just made things worse because of the false hopes they raised. In reality the rigid class system stayed intact and the elites continued to look after their own.

This narrative continued through the 1990s and into the 21st century. Millions of people unlucky enough to be born into the right area or the right family being fooled into thinking all they have to do is work hard and everything will be okay. But all that happens is they work themselves into the ground. The people calling the shots, the people with the right accents and the expensive educations - they're the only ones who get rich from all that hard work. The expansion of higher education is part of that scam for me. The idea that all you have to do is get a degree in Media Studies and before long you'll be director-general of the BBC. Just give us all that money you don't have and we'll educate you up. Soon you'll have a column in The Spectator just like Boris.

Then came the post-Lehman Shock recession. It was caused by greed and idiocy in the financial sector and showed there was something incredibly rotten at the heart of this narrative we'd been fed for so long. And of course the people who suffered were the people who'd been fed the lie for so long. Their jobs gone as the business owners looked elsewhere to make their money. The services they relied on decimated by cuts. An underfunded health service barely catering to their needs. We're all in it together my arse.

There's an undercurrent of anger that's been there for years, and it's got worse since 2008. Xenophobes like Farage and opportunists like Gove and Johnson have done very well in channelling that anger towards easy targets. Those faceless bureaucrats in Brussels (FOREIGNERS!) who want to straighten our good, honest British bananas and take all our money. And somehow the narrative has been distorted to suggest they were the ones who caused the financial crisis rather than, um, the financial industry. And the media, owned by rich old white guys with offshore bank accounts, gleefully join in with the disinformation.

Then there's the immigration. It's always easy to get people whipped up into a frenzy about outsiders who don't look like them. It's the foreigners stealing all our jobs, because of course we all want to be breaking our backs on building sites and out in the fields. If those pesky foreigners weren't here we'd be out there ourselves, picking fruit! And of course the foreigners are to blame for our creaky public services. It's not because they're either chronically underfunded or broken apart and run by shitty private companies out to make a fast buck. It's the foreigners.

Anger borne of years of frustrated aspirations has been used by unscrupulous people wanting to legitimize their own prejudices or gain more power. But even they look pretty dismayed at what they're unleashed. The whole thing is very, very ugly. England wasn't much of a looker before Thursday. Now she looks like Wayne Rooney crossed with the Elephant Man.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Great post. Just skimmed it but I'll read it in detail later.
Does anyone remember an ex-Tharg, can't remember which one, saying something like 'Grud save us from the Eurozone'? Salvation is here, ex-Tharg. Enjoy.

[Hawkmumbler]

I'm so uncertain what the future holds for me. I have no job, no home, my savings as meager as they where are now worth even less. I'm just so uncertain.

C'est la vie, mon brave. Everything else is death and taxes.

I'm sure i'll be able to make the best of it. I have considered doubling back on my stance of not living in the channel islands indefinitely, but i'd like to stay in the North West if possible. It all depends on rent prices, cost of living and other essentials, weather independence is a viable option. God I hope so.

[Tjm86]

Bog brush, I would say you've pretty much nailed it.  Particularly on the education expansion.  I think that there has long been a fundamental misunderstanding of why graduate qualifications led to higher value employment, to wit access was limited to those with the financial wherewithal.  Removing that restriction removed the currency that a degree carried.  Expanding education has more to do now with deferring entry into the diminishing labour market than it does with improving opportunities. 

As you say, the idea that a media studies degree will get you a directorship in a media company is at best delusional.  Personally I find the idea that we are meant to peddle educational achievement as the only option offensive.  Particularly when you now have call centres full of Masters graduates.

[Dash Decent]

Does Canada have a desperate shortage of librarains? I can find them two very good ones who need a change!

Can they spell 'librarian'? 

[Hawkmumbler]

No but then neither can Canadians, so he should be OK...

[Misanthrope]

Never put the future of your country in the hands of people who think Ant and Dec are talented and that Made in Chelsea is worthwhile television.

[Steve Green]

The UK will not vote to leave the EU.

*cough*

[TordelBack]

Never put the future of your country in the hands of people who think Ant and Dec are talented and that Made in Chelsea is worthwhile television.

Have to disagree with you there, ordinary people aren't the problem. Those who lie to them without conscience or sanction in newspapers, interviews and billboards, stoking their everyday worries into ignorant fear, all for nothing more than their own personal wealth, power and fame. Those people are the problem.

[Professor Bear]

The ignorant working classes who don't know what's good for them are to blame, and the media won't waste time letting us know it.

[Banners]

The UK will not vote to leave the EU.

*cough*

Based on the few Leave voters I've spoken to this weekend - all friends and family - it seems their vote was not so much to do with the EU, but more that the referendum was the only available means with which they would be heard by the ruling classes.

It was a vote against inequality and unfairness, against the lack of cultural and financial capital outside London, it was a vote that said something has to change.

In effect, it was a vote about how shit politics (or rather party politics) has become.

[M.I.K.]

The ignorant working classes who don't know what's good for them are to blame, and the media won't waste time letting us know it.

...and apparently there's no such thing as working class folk in Scotland.

[Professor Bear]

Or Northern Ireland.  The educated London elites all voted to Remain, though, and we're certainly being reminded of that.

It was a vote against inequality and unfairness, against the lack of cultural and financial capital outside London, it was a vote that said something has to change.

In effect, it was a vote about how shit politics (or rather party politics) has become.

Nah, everyone voted that way because Jeremy Corbyn didn't tell them not to.  I know my track record automatically makes you think "he's using a sarcastic turn of phrase there as usual" but this is the actual reasoning being used by a lot of otherwise very sensible people.

[Banners]

Will Boris have the balls to invoke Article 50?

[sheridan]

Or Northern Ireland.  The educated London elites all voted to Remain, though, and we're certainly being reminded of that.

Yes, London - all educated elites.  No working class people at all.