Cont: Brexit: Now What? Part 5

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Ian Osborne said:
According to Theresa May, it's partly the SNP's fault.
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I can't even work out the point she is trying to make?

Is she saying that the SNP have ignored Scotland's desires for a long time fomenting unhappiness with politicians - which would be odd as the SNP is incredibly popular as far a political parties go.

Is she saying that the SNP have fomented anger at politicians in general by highlighting that Westminster ignores the people of Scotland and that somehow this led to Brexit (even though 2/3 Scots voted to stay)

Or is she (as I suspect) merely sticking her pants on her head, pencils up her nose and shouting 'SNP BAD BAD BAD' without actually having any kind of coherent point.
 
Klimax said:
Actually in this case, "racist" is incorrect term. (We are not separate "race".) And in any case, no. But getting underlying problem/concerns wrong prevents fixing core problem and thus escalation. And thus you get Brexit and Trump or Okamura...
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Anti-Slavism, also known as Slavophobia, a form of racism, refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples, the most common manifestation being claims of inferiority of Slavic nations with respect to other ethnic groups. Its opposite is Slavophilia. Anti-Slavism reached its highest peak during World War II, when Nazi Germany declared Slavs, especially neighboring Poles to be subhuman and planned to exterminate the majority of Slavic people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment

'Race' is a largely arbitrary categorization. Not everyone uses the USAmerican teaching.
 
To be fair, I don't think all anti-immigration sentiment should be dismissed as xenophobia (ie purely-emotion based).

We usually don't consider protectionism to be racism, particularly if it can be seen that the person who argues for protection stands to benefit economically. Granted, one may prepare the ground for the other.
Many anti-immigration arguments are protectionistic. People who say that foreigners push wages down are making an argument for protectionism. Freedom of movement in the EU is to a large extent an attempt to create a single market for labor.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
I can't even work out the point she is trying to make?

Is she saying that the SNP have ignored Scotland's desires for a long time fomenting unhappiness with politicians - which would be odd as the SNP is incredibly popular as far a political parties go.

Is she saying that the SNP have fomented anger at politicians in general by highlighting that Westminster ignores the people of Scotland and that somehow this led to Brexit (even though 2/3 Scots voted to stay)

Or is she (as I suspect) merely sticking her pants on her head, pencils up her nose and shouting 'SNP BAD BAD BAD' without actually having any kind of coherent point.
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No she makes a very good point. She is saying that the majority of people voting for brexit were not voting to leave the EU they were protesting against their national parliament.
 
Lothian said:
No she makes a very good point. She is saying that the majority of people voting for brexit were not voting to leave the EU they were protesting against their national parliament.
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And that is exactly the problem with referenda. In protesting the govenrment they now have a real chance of thrashing their economy for the foreseeable time. People often don't vote for informed reasons, but often for emotional or petty reasons.

No protest vote in a important referendum because a local county member has removed some seats in the park amd he just happens to be of the same party that called the national referendum (seriously! That was the reason my brother in law gave, back in 2005, when we had our referendum concerning the Treaty of Maastricht).
 
Lothian said:
No she makes a very good point. She is saying that the majority of people voting for brexit were not voting to leave the EU they were protesting against their national parliament.
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While she might be entirely correct about that assumption, it doesn't make sense to assign blame to the SNP for the Brexit result since Scotland by quite a large majority voted to Remain. Provided that her assumption is true, it would mean that most Scots are happy enough with the SNP.
 
Amazer said:
While she might be entirely correct about that assumption, it doesn't make sense to assign blame to the SNP for the Brexit result since Scotland by quite a large majority voted to Remain. Provided that her assumption is true, it would mean that most Scots are happy enough with the SNP.
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But if the SNP had been as pants as the Conservative party then more people in Scotland would have voted to leave and May would have a position stronger than her current 52%.

It's entirely the fault of the SNP for treating the Scottish electorate like actual human beings. If they'd been more like the Tories then everything would be peachy. Or something.
 
Mrs May has recently said that she wants to reduce corporation tax to next to nothing after Brexit so that local authorities can be bankrupted, and rough sleepers have nowhere to go, and the number of ships in the British navy are reduced.
 
Amazer said:
While she might be entirely correct about that assumption, it doesn't make sense to assign blame to the SNP for the Brexit result since Scotland by quite a large majority voted to Remain. Provided that her assumption is true, it would mean that most Scots are happy enough with the SNP.
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This. Exactly this. That's why May's comments were so warped.
 
GnaGnaMan said:
To be fair, I don't think all anti-immigration sentiment should be dismissed as xenophobia (ie purely-emotion based).

We usually don't consider protectionism to be racism, particularly if it can be seen that the person who argues for protection stands to benefit economically. Granted, one may prepare the ground for the other.
Many anti-immigration arguments are protectionistic. People who say that foreigners push wages down are making an argument for protectionism. Freedom of movement in the EU is to a large extent an attempt to create a single market for labor.
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No I don't really think this nails it because you don't see the same level of antagonism towards say someone from Essex moving to Wiltshire to find work (and that is exactly the same thing in terms of pushing local wages down)

At its root its just tribalism. These people from other countries don't deserve to be allowed to come here and take OUR jobs from OUR people and benefit from OUR services and enjoy OUR country.

When it comes to the sorts who push these messages its also tainted with a nice hint of hypocrisy as well as often they have either moved to London (stretching services there) or have rural properties (stretching services there) but these things don't count to them because they are generally white, wealthy and privileged enough to think that wherever they move to should consider themselves lucky to have them.

Lothian said:
No she makes a very good point. She is saying that the majority of people voting for brexit were not voting to leave the EU they were protesting against their national parliament.
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Well that makes even less sense because its Theresa who says that leaving the EU is the WILL OF THE PEOPLE(TM). Now she's arguing that people don't actually want to leave the EU they are just unhappy with her and her government and she's blaming the SNP for it?
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Well that makes even less sense because its Theresa who says that leaving the EU is the WILL OF THE PEOPLE(TM). Now she's arguing that people don't actually want to leave the EU they are just unhappy with her and her government and she's blaming the SNP for it?
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Oh boy, you are looking for sense from someone looking to leave the EU. How quaint.
 
Lothian said:
Oh boy, you are looking for sense from someone looking to leave the EU. How quaint.
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But TM is supposed to be NOT a leaver. She's only supposed to be doing this because the people voted to leave and she keeps repeating that mantra as the reason why she has to trash the country. It makes no sense at all. And as far as I know TM isn't even going to make much money out of doing it.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
But TM is supposed to be NOT a leaver. She's only supposed to be doing this because the people voted to leave and she keeps repeating that mantra as the reason why she has to trash the country. It makes no sense at all. And as far as I know TM isn't even going to make much money out of doing it.
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She gets to be PM. That's it and that's enough for her. She's more than happy with being PM of a country that's in financial ruin and can't afford to buy any essential public services cos it's too afraid to tax anyone in case they leave because, well, she gets to be PM.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
But TM is supposed to be NOT a leaver. She's only supposed to be doing this because the people voted to leave and she keeps repeating that mantra as the reason why she has to trash the country. It makes no sense at all. And as far as I know TM isn't even going to make much money out of doing it.
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Well that's the thing. No matter the mechanics behind it, not matter how unexpected the results were, you can't make it not true that at the end of the day what happened was the people of the UK were asked in an official way whether or not they wanted to stay in the EU and... they said no. Sure tiny slim majority is tiny and slim, uneven first fast the post voting is what it is, sure caveat caveat and so forth.

But it still happened. That's not a genie you can put back in the bottle.

That's why I agree with history professor CGP Grey when he say right now one of our choices leads to at best economic ruin and quite possibly the end of the UK and the other goes against like the idea of democracy.
 
JoeMorgue said:
That's why I agree with history professor CGP Grey when he say right now one of our choices leads to at best economic ruin and quite possibly the end of the UK and the other goes against like the idea of democracy.
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What a stupid thing to say. Of course it doesn't go against the idea of democracy. There is nothing in any of the definitions of democracy that states that the result of any plebiscite, no matter how small the majority may be, is, final, irrevocable and unchangeable no matter what new information comes to light.
 
JoeMorgue said:
the other goes against like the idea of democracy.
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No it really doesn't.

Had the referendum been binding, I would agree with you, but it wasn't.

There's no democratic obligation to follow the results of a non-binding referendum.
 
Guybrush Threepwood said:
What a stupid thing to say. Of course it doesn't go against the idea of democracy. There is nothing in any of the definitions of democracy that states that the result of any plebiscite, no matter how small the majority may be, is, final, irrevocable and unchangeable no matter what new information comes to light.
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And if the vote had come back 53% to 47% (I believe that was the ratio, or something close to that effect) to stay in the EU but the government decided to begin procedures to leave the EU anyway because the majority was too small and they figured they knew better, you'd be saying the same thing right?

"Tyranny of the Majority" is a thing but it isn't "The majority made a decision I didn't like."
 
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