They are passionate -- about something:
Remainers are also angry and determined; also patriotic [this is good now?] ; and more convinced [do they need evidence for this -- and see Davies below?] than ever that there is no available Brexit, on paper or in anyone’s wildest dreams, that delivers to their country anything but hardship, disempowerment and hassle, in varying proportions....The endless bother – civil servants running about to produce agreements exactly like the ones we already have, or manufacturers figuring out new ways to do the same thing while clearing bureaucratic hurdles... has interrupted all other business of government the most, and dissolved, perhaps permanently, the image of the Conservatives as a safe pair of hands [isn't that good too?]
There is some poorly-articulated stuff on generations/social classes, explored by Williams's marvellous insight into discourses and signifiers:
anti-EU proponents from left and right both cast themselves as defenders of the “left behind”, heroically battling the faceless institutions that have stripped agency from ordinary citizens. In this discursive context, anyone found arguing against Brexit, who does not themselves qualify as “left behind”, is explicitly allying with the elites against the masses,...It is true too that there are people at the centre of the remain camp who wish, more or less explicitly, for a return to the normality of our old post-political landscape, where nothing was ideological and all decisions were no more or less than any reasonable person would make.
Williams offers a rather tepid rebuke:
Brexit, in its rhetoric and all its iterations, is a far-right project. Explicitly and stridently anti-immigrant, it nevertheless is happy to accommodate rich migrants [so how anti-immigrant are we being?]: the word “skills” is used, transparently, as a proxy for salary, giving us a brave new world in which an early-career banker has higher skills than an academic with three degrees; and any given MP has almost twice the skills of the most qualified nurse. [the EU's famed Bologna Declaration made all universities address the skills agenda] ...It is a programme of systematically rebalancing power – towards the wealthy, the employers, the mass producers, and away from the workers, the consumers, the ordinary citizens ... [the EU will help us do this?].All progressive sinews should strain against it, and not care whether this puts them on the same side as Anna Soubry or Labour centrists.
Her position seems to be to embrace the neo-liberalism of the EC where everyone has an abstract freedom of movement instead, happily continuing the policy of encouraging a large influx of unskilled gastarbeiter. Sliding off this rather vague ground:
Rejecting the aspersions cast over its legitimacy, the real question about this protest is practical: if it could influence our course on Brexit, what would that look like? Will it be a subtle effect, in which growing numbers of MPs start to express a duty to their remain constituents with the same commitment as colleagues do in leave areas? Or will it be a more seismic shift, in which Labour changes course, rescinds its promise to deliver a better Brexit, and becomes explicitly the party that will take the decision back to the country?...The march itself doesn’t scotch the idea that Labour can negotiate its own deal (though that, on time constraints alone, is fanciful): but it does capsize the raft that’s been keeping its resigned ambiguity afloat. Remain might once have looked like an elite conspiracy against Corbyn and his agenda of radical change: now it looks like a grassroots social movement [Lots of Labour MPs in Leave-voting constituencies will know different, of course]
Then there is the usual resort to emotions:
As sociologist Will Davies points out, in his recent book Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World, no march is representative in any real sense: “If crowds matter at all, it is because of the depth of feeling that brought so many people into one place at one time.”
So let's not bother with issues of how representative the march was or how effective it might be, after all -- lots of good and emotional people turned up and enjoyed it. The banners! The crowd! The media! Truly was F Parkin right, years ago, to suggest that middle-class protest delivered the same emotional satisfactions as football fandom did for the working classes.
Actually, though, the (very long) article by Davies to which the link points seems rather more critical about how feelings are connected to politics :
As we become more attuned to “real time” media, we inevitably end up placing more trust in sensation and emotion than in evidence. Knowledge becomes more valued for its speed and impact than for its cold objectivity, and – as studies of Twitter content have confirmed – emotive falsehood often travels faster than fact....The threat lurking in this is that otherwise peaceful situations can come to feel dangerous, until eventually they really are....Rather than criticise people for a lack of self-control, how might we understand the historical transition that has turned feeling into such a potent political force?...two distinctions – between mind and body, and war and peace – now appear to have lost credibility altogether, with the result that we experience conflict intruding into everyday life with increasing regularity....The information feelings convey in the moment can conflict starkly with the facts that are subsequently established....The elevation of reason above feeling was hugely productive, indeed world-changing in its implications....[but]...Modern warfare creates miasmas of emotion, information, misinformation, deception and secrecy...The ideology of entrepreneurship is a contributory factor here... [we cannot go back but] this new era needs to be traversed with unusual judgment and care.
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