Ignorance Not Immigration Caused Brexit

The chattering classes don't speak up

A historic change in the future of one of the world's most powerful countries has been made on the basis of what many now acknowledge was a series of half truths fed to the whole nation at the EU Referendum. They were swallowed hook line and sinker by the nation's least informed and voted for. Ignorance of: macro economics, the EU, our place in the world, what underpins it, and the wider implications of our votes, has put Britain out of the EU.

Chattering classes

I do not blame the ill informed. Macro economics is a total yawn to most except economics nerds. The complex linkages between growth, governance, security, immigration, is like solving a Rubik cube even for the informed. I think it is the middle classes, the relatively well-travelled, the relatively well informed who pulled the stunt of not speaking loudly enough (for fear of causing offence or intruding on others' points of view, even exposing their own privileged positions perhaps?). The only people in Britain who EXPLICITLY talk to their children about racism and immigration are the fascists, extremists and racists. "Decent" people talk parenthetically and think they've covered it off! Like talk of drugs, sex education and pornography, if you dont discuss these things clearly and offer young people steers, they will grow up to be informed by a media and public opinion we absolutely cannot trust. We will grow ignoramuses in very important areas of life even among the chattering classes.

Related Post: Brexit - A New Dawn Or A Long Night

How ignorance grows

Speak directly to children with guidance on race

Finally the biggest lie of all...Britons are too great to be ignorant , that being English willy nilly, ipso facto means you are savvy with the world. Neither are true! Being British gives you a fantastic opportunity to be savvy with the world because Britain has so many connections with the entire world. However this is so only if you avoid the know-it-all sense of entitlement, or the "let's take it all for granted" attitudes which are the greatest incubators of ignorance. Again it's the literate, chattering classes who are best placed to lead this charge, but do they? No! They sit on their hands, feel embarrassed or ashamed to call the issues and act on their RESPONSIBILITY to themselves and their society based on what they know.

Denial has a price

Brexit Leader Boris Johnson - Half truths

Sometimes I think we've had it too good for too long. We feel our privileges will remain forever without attention. Or we act to maintain the narrow privileges assured to mostly white Britons which they take for granted yet often deny. It's this casual denial and avoidance that puts us in the pickle we are in today, and enables a few strongly motivated totally self interested Britons to present themselves as social saviours when their falsehoods border on the treasonous. Treasonous because their popular but false claims have facilitated the disintegration of the nation and its status. Well now we shall see the price of denial and minimisation. And no, wringing our hands won't be good enough in response! We are going to have to engage with the mess we are in and at last call a spade a spade.

Brexit - A New Dawn Or A Long Night ?

Cameron resigns at No.10 via Daily Telegraph

The British people have just taken their country out of the EU by a narrow margin of 52% to 48% on a huge turnout of 72% of the electorate. Donald Trump has called it a great result because "people everywhere are angry!" The result flew in the face of early polls all of which predicted a narrow Remain win.

Rebellious north

It seems traditional labour voting areas like the North East and Wales handed the Leavers this referendum. They are not nuts. They, like many leavers acted on the information they were most credibly fed. Economic decline in their regions was painted as the result of an influx of foreign migrants, giving rise to a sense that we had lost control of our borders, and with that our national character and even independence. So the pitch to call this referendum a vote for independence or taking back control sounded not only appealing , but a way to kick back at the migrants, their patrons (read political elite on all sides), and the cosmopolitan rather effete and even dilettante urban well to do in places like London, who had neither listened to or responded to the pain of the poor.

Related post : Ignorance Not Immigration Caused Brexit

Election Results via BBC

Ugly campaign

The campaigns took on an increasingly ugly, border-line xenophobic, sometimes crypto-racist , tone on the one hand; and rather out of touch, pie in the sky, we know better than you ordinary folk (despite your experience of recent government policy) tone on the Remain side. No one could own up to the fact that austerity for the many presented as economic success for the few was the main cause of the anger. The scapegoating of migrants who make a NET contribution to our country was totally overlooked. To defend migrants was seen as unpatriotic. The rest of the claims about the Brussels gravy train and unaccountability of un-elected officials were easy to present and make stick.Especially in a country like the UK with centuries of Empire in its past , and used to being looked up to everywhere, our language spoken in most of the world, the call for a return to past glory , freedom and the economic privileges this country once enjoyed easily found traction. Even if not consciously, I am certain these thoughts played strongly in the subconscious of many, particularly older, Leave voters.

New dawn or long night for the UK?

Reaping what we sow

This referendum was won on a lie. But life is lived on the bases of truth and reality. We are about to discover which of our attitudes were political and media manufactured fantasies and which were really true of life. There will be consequences which have started already. The PM has gone, Corbyn and the Labour leadership can expect to pay a price for the rebellion of their voters. The Kingdom has moved steps closer to losing one of its parts (Scotland), and the international economy will act on facts not emotion. Sterling has dived, and Banks like Barclays have lost 30% of their share value within minutes of the results. The anti migrant rhetoric has been legitimated by the result and it will become more "ok" to be fearful or nervous of people who look and sound un-British.

I think Britain just became a smaller country and it hurts. Yet no one can buck the law of cause and effect. You reap what you sow. We shall see in short order what crop we shall harvest

Iain Duncan Smith: When A Quiet Man Goes With A Bang, Forget The Sizzle, Check The Steak

IDS resigns

Iain Duncan Smith (IDS), self-proclaimed “quiet man of politics”, former leader of the Tory party, Work and Pensions Secretary and Cabinet member resigned in an incendiaryletter to the Prime Minister yesterday. He left because the cuts to benefits announced in the budget just 3 days ago are going to be shelved and re-worked. He had long opposed these cuts, but been forced to defend them publicly. In essence IDS like many in his party had started the reform of the Welfare system with the assumption that people were work-shy, that disability benefits had been the sinecure of scroungers and that all that had to be done was to “encourage” and “motivate” people who had become economic malingerers, through failures in Welfare Policy, to become economically active, taxable individuals who could contribute to Britain’s recovery. The  "BedroomTax" , the re-badging of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to the Personal Independence (PIP) and a raft of changes had the net result of hitting the disabled and the most vulnerable the hardest. When then it became apparent that Chancellor Osborne’s budget rewarded his political targets - young people, entrepreneurs and the very wealthy -  with benefits in the context of swingeing cuts against the poor, IDS resigned. He said of these benefits: “they are not defensible in the way they are placed within a budget that benefits higher earning tax payers”. He goes on to wonder if: “enough has been done to ensure we are all in this together”, calling into question the core Government claim that we really are all in this together.

Related Topic: Plausible Deniability, The Meme That Drives Exclusion

Timing 

PM and IDS hold opposing views on Europe

Meanwhile the timing of this resignation at a time when the Tory party has given a hall pass to its members at all levels to campaign for or against membership of the EU according to their conscience, makes his resignation politically deadly. He has thrown The Chancellor’s budget into complete disrepute and with it the judgement of a key stay in Europe campaigner and potential leader of the Tory party in George Osborne. This is a double blow to the PM, the Party and the Stay in Europe campaigners. If the budget of the government is unsound, what else, one might legitimately ask, is unsound about the political vision of PM Cameron, his Chancellor and the Stay in Europe cohort?

The answer to these questions do not lie in the alphabet soup of re-branded benefits or the arithmetical juggling of the Chancellor benefiting some, hitting others and clearly demonstrating we are NOT all in this together. 

Forget the sizzle, check the steak

Assumption: Benefits claimants are scroungers

The answer does not even lie in our understanding of government accounts and fiscal policy. To understand what is happening, all one needs to evaluate is the basic assumptions those who campaign for our votes hold about their fellow citizens. What view of men and women do they subscribe to? Do they respect the equal dignity of all, or do they think some are more deserving than others, no matter how well they spin their message with slogans and brand their policies?

People are the same everywhere. They can be driven by greed, haughtiness, a contempt for ordinary people, compassion, a sense of respect for their fellows and a sense of morality that renders some decisions unconscionable. The question is, which values our political aspirants have at front of mind. I’d argue that only a delusional person could not see what is happening in the UK politically now. Whether that person cares is of course another matter. And what is worse, the media is simply reporting the cosmetic facts and only joining the dots at the most superficial level. Will voters be smarter? They need to look beyond the sizzle of the steak and seek the beef to see how fresh it really is, in spite of the sweet seasoning we all smell and find so appetising.