How do we avoid the next Brexit?

[andrewducker]

There's an interesting article here about the reasons why Brexit happened - and more importantly, why it's important that whatever we do we work on fixing the background issues. Because it's one thing to try and avoid Brexit (or minimise it as far as possible), and another to avoid a repeat of the situation in a few years because we haven't fixed the causes.

I was banging on about this a good fifteen years ago - about inequality being a problem, and that while the rising tide of a decent economy was a good thing, it was also covering up structural problems. I hadn't realised how badly it was going to come back to haunt us, but I'm not at all surprised by it.

There's a great reaction over on Twitter here saying On ITV's Tonight programme earlier Peston went to NorthEast, interviewed lots of people about why they voted for Brexit so heavily. The ones shown basically boiled down to "we voted for 'change', because things cant get any worse" Boy oh Boy - are THEY in for a nasty surprise.". And the thing is that one the one hand they're right, things _are_ going to get worse. But on the other hand, if you've already got nothing, then I suspect that you're not expecting there to be a state of "less than nothing" which things can regress to.

I had similar discussions during the election of Syriza in Greece, where some people couldn't understand why people would vote for a situation which would make things worse, and it was clear that to the people suffering through massive unemployment and poverty that it didn't feel like there _was_ anything worse.

The thing being that if we let society get into a state where people are saying "Things can't get any worse" then it doesn't matter if they're right or not - the whole country is about to be badly fucked up by people who are desperate for _anything_ to make it better. If we don't bring everyone along on the journey to a better world then the people who are left crushed by the system are going to sabotage it. And who, frankly, can blame them.

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

I think things can get worse for people who were voting for Brexit because "things can't get any worse".

I think for many of them their economic conditions can get measurably worse. No pay increases for a decade, lower spending on redistributive public services like health and education, more precarious employment.

Many older Brexit voters were responding not to their own economic position but to the economic position of their younger relatives. They though they themselves were okay but that their kids were going to be worse off then they were. So, for them, the economic position of their younger relatives can get worse and secondly their own economic position can get worse.

Thirdly, there is a social effect - an atomisation of society. As the economic impacts from Brexit occur many people will be forced to move away from their family and friends to seek work.

[andrewducker]

My point is that it *doesn't matter* if things can actually get worse.

It matters if you've let inequality mount and people feel that things can't get any worse. If you've let people feel left behind and that we're not in it together then they will smash the system, whether or not that will actually make them worse off.

[cmcmck]

And they won't much care if they smash it using the far right or the far left.

[andrewducker]

Exactly. They want *change* and the overthrow of the system. What you replace it with is... Less important to them.

[cmcmck]

And we all know where that can lead.......

[andrewducker]

Nowhere good.

[cmcmck]

Just so. :o(

[dewline]

A future where cruelty is explicitly praised as a sacred thing.

[calimac]

What is "the next Brexit"? Some other equally catastrophic thing that the UK could do, of whose nature I cannot imagine?

Or another country leaving the EU?

Or what?

[andrewducker]

Whatever next awful thing happens to happen next.

I'm not even going to try and guess what. I don't need to feel that awful about the world.

[heron61]

Also, like the US, one of the problems you have is bigots, and especially bigots and bigot-symathetic people inflamed by Russian trolls. A good first step would be to kick the Russian trolls off social media, or at minimum, have some system for determine what nation posts are coming from (or if this cannot be determined) and having some little flag icon (or a warning/troll icon) for people whose location can't be determined.

Other than that, finding a way to drive the bigots back under their rocks would help, much of which involves putting lots of pressure on advertisers for bigot-targeted publications like the Daily Mail. Also, the press openly calling UKIP members bigots would likely help. We could certainly use for of this sort of thing in the US.

I haven't drilled down into the voting for Brexit, but in the US, voting for 45 was driven far more by racists and anti-immigrant xenophobes than by any economic factors, despite both the bigots and too much of the popular press (including numerous center-left newspapers like the New York Times) claiming that these votes were based on economics and not on the voters being deeply horrid individuals. I would not be at all surprised if that's also true for Brexit.

[agoodwinsmith]

I think one thing us liberals need to come to terms with is that our opponents are much more willing than we currently are to use any and all means of achieving their goals, including lying to the ill-informed and enflaming their fears through falsehood.

For a group who loudly proclaim their trust in God, conservatives of all nomenclature seem to really only believe that God helps those who help themselves and devil take the hindmost.

These current debacles are *not* because some poor unemployed fool(s) had any thought that "things can't get worse", but believed the carefully crafted lies that things will get worse if we don't retreat into self-protecting garrisons, shooting all comers, shivering mournfully behind the battlements and glorifying the liars as the only clear-eyed visionaries - as they self-style themselves.

If we continue to believe that our opponents have been fighting fairly, we will continue to lose.

Trudeau may be a buffoon sometimes, and misinformed, and heart-stoppingly privileged - but he is never malicious.

[dewline]

What Trudeau keeps Chrystia Freeland - among several others in the Canadian cabinet - around for is to watch for those who are malicious by intent. Autocrats probably worry more about what she's capable of than of Trudeau himself.

[agoodwinsmith]

Thank you. I did some reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystia_Freeland
We are fortunate to have her.

[birguslatro]

Replacing FPTP with PR would probably fix it. Under PR you can't ignore near to half the population until it blows up in your face because small parties are needed now and then to form governments. So issues are dealt with when they're smallish, instead of getting left to fester.

[andrewducker]

I reckon it would make a big difference, certainly.