The Political Thread

[Frank]

I'm a rational person, and so find it mind-boggling and depressing that the country as a whole made a decision based on irrationality ... It's mad.

Let's not pretend that 48% of the electorate were studying IMF reports and weighing evidence. Just like any general election, a significant number of those voting for both sides arrived at their decision through instinct and tribal affiliation.

I've been watching the excellent Made In America documentary on the racial background to the OJ Simpson trial, and what impressed me most was the way it identified the power of appealing to the way people feel, as opposed to facts or argument.

It's probably always been that way, but it's certainly vital to understanding what's happening right now. Whatever you think of Trump and Farage, they've correctly understood the primacy of deeply held emotions over statistics and studies.

That's not how I want public life to operate, but that's my hard luck. The opposition won't start winning again until they identify how that raw, emotional appeal to something voters feel to be true can work for them.

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't think farming in the UK can be "done for" - not as long as people need to eat, anyway.

They don't have to eat food farmed here. Increasingly, they won't be able to. British farming is heavily subsidised and currently relies on EU funding the Tories have said will only be guaranteed through 2020. By then, we'll know for sure what path Brexit is taking, but if it's "let's cosy up to the USA", that requires a major shift in agriculture. Mostly, we'll end up importing an awful lot from the USA (with a corresponding reducing in food standards – we already see American producers lobbying for the dreadful meat products from that country, such as chlorinated chicken and beef with hormones), and British farmers won't be able to compete. That won't mean the end of EVERY British farm, obviously, but an industry already on its knees will become a relative niche.

The European CAP was introduced to combat food shortages after WWII but these shortages are no longer an issue. Subsidies remain in order to keep prices high enough for farmers to earn a decent income - taxing the majority to benefit a minority. A farm is a business, just like any other, and if it cannot be run at a profit then it must fail. Gradual reduction and eventual removal of subsidies will drive efficiencies in the industry, those farms doing it right will survive and those doing it wrong will not. Instead of shaking down taxpayers to keep fields fallow, plough crops under, dispose of livestock or otherwise limit production, new innovations will be discovered and implemented. With the gloves off, farmers with too much land will no longer be artificially restricted in production, which may even lead to an increase in exports.

Not having to contribute to European butter mountains and wine lakes and being unable to fraudulently claim public money to heat empty barns or care for phantom cattle because of subsidies and restrictions will pave the way for a proper free-market in farming. With monopolistic government interference relaxed, entrepreneurs will step up - as they have done throughout history when allowed to do so - and the farming industry will thrive.

Importation is not necessarily a bad thing, there are foodstuffs we don't grow so well in this country, but the gradual reduction of restrictive policies like farming subsidies and the European CAP will drive some farmers to experiment with growing crops like bananas under glass, which will lessen the need for imports somewhat.

Furthermore, not being signatories to those Draconian "Free Trade (ha ha) Agreements" will allow us to turn away those chlorinated chickens and hormone-drenched beef as a point of national sovereignty if we so desire.

The above is, of course, an absolute best-case scenario but I feel sure there will be benefits as well as problems, as there always are when societies change.

[TordelBack]

Going to fire some anecdote-derived opinion here, amongst all the sensible facts, just to prove both sides are capable of it.  Obviously I'm a bystander, collateral damage at best, in this debate, but from where I'm watching it the "irrationality" IP describes appears to simply be small-c conservatism. 

My own much-cited mother, as a former-royalist current-Mail-reader often an unwitting barometer for my assessments of such matters, was recently heard to say that she 'didn't mind' the probable consequence of a hard border returning to the island of Ireland.

Even as used as I am to her favourable opinions on Brexit, I was a bit shocked: she and my father are very frequent travellers to the Six Counties, as cricket fans and birdwatchers; one of her sons has a great job that only exists because of cross-border funding of an all-island organisation; my Dad works as a tour guide whose work regularly includes Belfast and the Antrim coast; Dad twice had an IRA gun put to his head when he worked in a bank; she once sheltered me and my baby brother on the floor of the car as the British ambassador was blown up by a landmine on the road behind her aunt's house while we were playing in the garden.

"WHY the hell would you not mind?" I asked.  Her reason for wanting to risk all that:  "It'd be nice if things went back to the way they were: when countries were properly different and not all the same". 

I sometimes like to remind my mother that in the past to which she lovingly refers, her own mother was abandoned to be raised in a ghastly children's workhouse home and never recovered emotionally or physically; her uncle who ran away from that home was blinded when his merchant ship was sunk during the second war; one great uncle died of dysentery at Salonika during the first war, another in the Somme; she herself was crippled by TB as a child; she was forced to give up her Bank job when she got married; she was forced to give up her subsequent (and very much beloved) job with RTE when she had me; she lived much of her adult life in a country with no contraception, no divorce and no prohibition on a man raping his own wife; despite the fact that one of her sons emigrated she can talk to him and her grandkids almost every day on Skype and either visit or be visited by them every year, something her own parents' generation could never have dreamed of...

...and yet still she aspires to return to "the way it was, when things were nice".  From this small sample and supporting observation, I believe that's what drives Brexit, that bloody nonsense: misplaced nostalgia for a past that was far shittier than the human mind seems capable of remembering. 

[Professor Bear]

I must say I do like the "the economy will be great" line of defense for any criticism of the glorious victory and unquestionable success that is Brexit, as the Tories' track record and all available evidence seems to paint a pretty clear picture of what the economy will be like with the Tories under the best of circumstances, never mind when the rest of the world is mad at us and wants to make us live in Mad Max times.

[The Legendary Shark]

Interesting perspective, Tordels.

I think it's important to remember that, not too long ago, the world was a very much smaller place. The majority of people were born, lived and died in the same geographical area and knowledge of and communication with the rest of the world was severely limited. Our modern abilities to communicate almost instantaneously, to see what's going on in other countries in real time and travel anywhere in a few hours are relatively very new phenomena. The world has gone from being a fairly simple thing to a whole confusing bag of complex in a handful of decades and that's very confusing to us as a species, I think.

The young, of course, take all this in their stride - they have grown up knowing nothing else - but to people like your mum, and even people like me to a slightly lesser degree, it's still a fairly novel situation and we can't see all the ramifications of it yet. Tensions between the old ways of doing things and the new are, it seems, approaching a breaking point - it's as if humanity is straining to break free of the old restrictions of the past but doesn't yet know which direction to take.

It's a confusing, dangerous and exciting time.

[IndigoPrime]

Let's not pretend that 48% of the electorate were studying IMF reports and weighing evidence.

To clarify, a lot of my bafflement surrounds ongoing irrationality. Prices are going up. People who were squeezed before are even more so now. Yet people still double down on the decision they made, even while whining that their funding is being cut.

I agree about the nature of how Farage and Trump tapped into emotions, and I find that terrifying. This is precisely why we're also seeing Labour slowly rebrand itself as a working class party for Leave voters. (Although Labour itself might want to check on the data – even in Labour leave seats, there's no guarantee the leave voters were mostly Labour, and plenty of evidence to in fact suggest in most cases the reverse was true.)

That's not how I want public life to operate, but that's my hard luck. The opposition won't start winning again until they identify how that raw, emotional appeal to something voters feel to be true can work for them.

Which means we're in the era of the despot. It doesn't matter what people say, because you can promise the earth and people will vote for it. (This is like an election we had in junior school when I was 11. My party won because we were the biggest bullshitters. Quite the lesson.) Well, unless you're Nick Clegg, apparently.

A farm is a business, just like any other, and if it cannot be run at a profit then it must fail.

Quite. And that's the point I'm making: British farming WILL fail, en masse, because it will not be able to compete with US produce. Who will that benefit? American farmers. Certainly not British people. (In reality, what we really need in the UK is for food prices – which are on an international level pretty low – to go up in key areas, rather than supermarkets being able to screw farmers into the ground. But then that would need more of that government intervention you don't like.)

the gradual reduction of restrictive policies like farming subsidies and the European CAP will drive some farmers to experiment with growing crops like bananas under glass, which will lessen the need for imports somewhat.

I see it more the other way: even farmers farming product that works perfectly well in the UK simply won't be able to compete.

Furthermore, not being signatories to those Draconian "Free Trade (ha ha) Agreements" will allow us to turn away those chlorinated chickens and hormone-drenched beef as a point of national sovereignty if we so desire.

If we so desire, but the Tories will desire. An FTA with the USA is a priority. Agriculture and health will be thrown under the bus.

From this small sample and supporting observation, I believe that's what drives Brexit, that bloody nonsense: misplaced nostalgia for a past that was far shittier than the human mind seems capable of remembering.

That's it entirely. Farage and co. did this, too – going on about a Britain that NEVER WAS. It's insane. Even into the Con/LD coalition, we were seen as a tolerant, modern society – a country punching above its weight. Now we're seen as a bunch of xenophobes punching ourself in the face. And short of a miracle, even the country as it stands is unlikely to still exist within my lifetime.

[The Legendary Shark]

Agriculture and health will be thrown under the bus.

By that government you have so much faith in?

[IndigoPrime]

I never said I had faith in this government. My argument here has always been that government in general is useful and necessary in various circumstances and that your utopian alternative is not viable.

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't have a Utopian alternative - there's no such thing as Utopia, which I have said innumerable times yet still find this lie levelled against me.

It is not the organisational aspects of "government" I am against, it is it's presumption of rights and powers to which it has no right. How many times must I say this?

Strip government of these superhuman rights and powers and it doesn't matter if the 'wrong one' gets voted in or not - the damage it could do would be extensively limited.

[JayzusB.Christ]

.

From this small sample and supporting observation, I believe that's what drives Brexit, that bloody nonsense: misplaced nostalgia for a past that was far shittier than the human mind seems capable of remembering.

That's it entirely. Farage and co. did this, too – going on about a Britain that NEVER WAS. It's insane. Even into the Con/LD coalition, we were seen as a tolerant, modern society – a country punching above its weight. Now we're seen as a bunch of xenophobes punching ourself in the face. And short of a miracle, even the country as it stands is unlikely to still exist within my lifetime.

Well, precisely. The glory days of the British Empire were glorious for a rich few in England, and shit for the unwashed masses. And particularly shit for the "inferior' colonised countries such as my own. Furthermore, you haven't actually got those countries to exploit any more, which was why EU cooperation came in handy.

And it's not hard to see how this attitude has led to the election of a certain loofah-faced fascist shitgibbon across the Atlantic. Whether Trump would have happened without Brexit we'll never know but his rise is certainly a product of the same mindset.

Make America great again: which great time was that exactly? When black people were segregated by law? When they were slaves? When innocent people of Japanese extraction were incarcerated for no reason but their race? When the country teetered on the tightrope of nuclear destruction with no visible way out? When the depression left normal people in third-world conditions? When GIs were soundly beaten by rag-tag Vietnamese geurrillas?

[The Legendary Shark]

Make America great again: which great time was that exactly?

Any time before 1492.

[Modern Panther]

...bloody beaker people.  Whats wrong with just cupping water in your hand and lapping it like a cat, like in the old days?

[TordelBack]

Screw that, things were better before the cats got here, taking jobs from ordinary rat catchers. Whole thing went wrong when that ice age came along, unrestricted hordes of non-native species pouring across the sea floor... Could have used some glbal warming to settle their hash!

[Professor Bear]

[Old Tankie]

Very tasteful.