Conversion or opportunism?

A link to an extraordinary piece in the Guardian 2015 that I must have missed first time around. O Jones, of recent citation, was opposing the EC's disruption of Greece and citing other lefties against Europe -- lots of them, including Graun favourites G Monbiot, N Cohen and S Moore:

“Everything good about the EU is in retreat; everything bad is on the rampage,” writes George Monbiot...Nick Cohen believes the EU is being portrayed “with some truth, as a cruel, fanatical and stupid institution”. “How can the left support what is being done?” asks Suzanne Moore...

The episode with Greece seems to have really upset them:

The left’s pessimism about the possibility of implementing social reform at home without the help of the EU fused with a progressive vision of internationalism and unity, one that had emerged from the rubble of fascism and genocidal war. It is perhaps this feelgood halo that has been extinguished by a country the EU has driven into an economic collapse unseen since America’s great depression. It was German and French banks who recklessly lent to Greece that have benefited from bailouts, not the Greek economy. The destruction of Greece’s national sovereignty was achieved by economic strangulation, and treatment dealt out to Alexis Tsipras likened to “extensive mental waterboarding”...But look at how the EU has operated. It has driven elected governments – however unsavoury, like Silvio Berlusconi’s – from office. Ireland and Portugal were also blackmailed. The 2011 treaty effectively banned Keynesian economics in the eurozone...

There's more:

But even outside the eurozone, our democracy is threatened. The Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP), typically negotiated by the EU in secret with corporate interests, threatens a race to the-bottom in environmental and other standards. Even more ominously, it would give large corporations the ability to sue elected governments to try to stop them introducing policies that supposedly hit their profit margins, whatever their democratic mandate. It would clear the way to not only expand the privatisation of our NHS, but make it irreversible too. Royal Mail may have been privatised by the Tories, but it was the EU that began the process by enforcing the liberalisation of the natural monopoly of postal services. Want to nationalise the railways? That means you have to not only overcome European commission rail directive 91/440/EEC, but potentially the proposed Fourth Railway Package too....Other treaties and directives enforce free market policies based on privatisation and marketisation of our public services and utilities. 

And to end:

Lexit may be seen as a betrayal of solidarity with the left in the EU: Syriza and Podemos in Spain are trying to change the institution, after all, not leave it. Syriza’s experience illustrates just how forlorn that cause is. But in any case, the threat of Brexit would help them. Germany has little incentive to change tack: it benefits enormously from the current arrangements. If its behaviour is seen to be causing the break-up of the EU, it will strengthen the hand of those opposing the status quo. The case for Lexit grows ever stronger, and – at the very least – more of us need to start dipping our toes in the water.

How much it has all changed! Jones was then calling for a proper left-wing case against Europe, but not now -- we simply have to stay in. How come? Has class distinction triumphed after all? Have the millenial Momentumites persuaded Jones and the others? Is it political opportunism?

Guardina 'ambivalent about politics of age' shock

Grudina faces two ways as ever today. First, there is rage against Corbyn's views on the EU as in the blog below. As predicted, millenial Momentumites are threatening rebellion over their single issue: 

Labour leader accused of betrayal on second poll and ‘in danger of losing young backers’

Richard Brooks, a Labour member, activist and co-founder of For our Future’s Sake (FFS), a pro-remain youth and student-led organisation, said Corbyn risked losing the backing of young people as well as the mass Labour membership he had promised to empower. “Jeremy Corbyn is in danger of betraying and losing the support of millions of young people and students who very nearly propelled him to Downing Street last year, and whose support he needs if he is to ever to become prime minister...“Students and young people will not forget or forgive politicians who sell them down the river by backing a Brexit that limits our life opportunities and makes us poorer,” he said.

Although there is also this:

Pat McFadden, a former Labour business minister, said: “It would be a tragedy if Jeremy Corbyn facilitated Brexit and continued his lifelong hostility to the European Union on the basis of his views of the state-aid rules. There are plenty of EU member states with state-owned industries and with different tax and spend policies from those followed by the Tory government. It would not be the EU that would stop a Labour government regenerating the United Kingdom, but the economic damage brought about by Brexit that he may yet enable.”

It is well worth discussing before anything is decided, I would have thought. From what I can see, some countries have managed to slip state aid past the EC on a temporary or historical basis. The ECJ ruling, first floated in Private Eye and covered in the Gudian , eventually forbade State price interventions in the UK electricity market -- once it got round to dealing with the case:

The UK’s scheme for ensuring power supplies during the winter months has been suspended after a ruling by the European court of justice that it constitutes illegal state aid...the ECJ ruled that the European commission had failed to launch a proper investigation into the UK’s capacity market when it cleared the scheme for state aid approval in 2014...“The consequences are absolutely huge. Immediate cessation of payments is going to have immediate consequences for electricity generators that were relying on them,” said Ed Reed, head of research at analysts Cornwall Insight....Alan Whitehead, shadow energy minister, said: “This judgment effectively annuls previous state aid permission to provide subsidies for existing fossil fuel power plants. I have long criticised this bizarre arrangement, which simply throws money at old dirty power stations.”

Elsewhere, a rather different take is apparent as the Gruniad feels a bit exposed about ignoring a particular minority:

Attempts to pit younger voters against older people are hateful and prejudiced – we need a New Generational Compact

The piece discusses a campaign in the USA:

Funded by Democrats, the ad features a set of older, out-of-it, conservatives telling young people, “Don’t vote.” One ditzy dame “can’t keep track of which lives matter”. Another smirks as she describes climate change as a “you problem. I’ll be dead soon.” It’s slick; Adweek chose the video as an Ad of the Day. And it’s satire. But it’s hateful....It’s time to add ageism to the list of prejudices we no longer tolerate, and to deny it a foothold in our political discourse.

There are references to the UK too:

 Younger Britons suggested that their elders be banned from the polls, and cheered their imminent deaths. “It is a sure sign that politics is running on empty when generational revenge becomes central to an election campaign,” observed sociologist Frank Furedi about efforts to mobilize youngers in the 2017 UK general election.

Overall: 

Olders are not “them”, they are us: our parents, our neighbors, our friends, and it is grotesque to suggest that our interests are inherently opposed... It is critically important to see the headlines that blame climate change or our kleptocratic Congress on “old people” for what they are: a distraction from the underlying social and economic issues that affect the entire 99%. Income inequality does not discriminate by age.

But I insist that the Remain campaigners need to oppose things. That is the nature of the petit-bourgeois aesthetic. Any opposition will do. Guardina-type liberals forbid opposition to ethnic or sexual minorities, and the issue of class is active but rather implicit, often buried in accusations of racism or terms like 'the left behind'  That really only leaves the old as a much-identified element of the Leave demographic. Who now will be left as focuses of contempt and superiority -- Northerners? Provincials?

Light dawns for Labour too

A piece on Corbyn in the Guardian today contains this:

And he struck a distinctly Eurosceptic note by again highlighting Labour’s concerns about the state aid rules that form part of the architecture of the single market...“I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country,” he said.

This edition also contains a candidate for the weakest connection between Brexit and another news story:

This week’s airport chaos seemed to sum up the surreal state of Britain as it contemplates an uncertain future

And a millenial founder of a PV campaign, the rather revealingly entitled Our Future Our Choice, shows the dangers of relying on supporters of single-issue politics for mainstream political parties:

Parliament seems hellbent on frittering away my generation’s future – while destroying young people’s faith in politics

Our elders are supposed to know better, to be wiser, yet I see no leadership and no plan: nothing for my generation but prolonged posturing.[the link leads to an item about a decline in seasonal consumer spending]... the ever-shrinking, ever-aging Conservative base...They can wave goodbye to the support of my generation..it was my generation that propelled Corbyn to the brink of Downing Street last year. And my generation will turn its back on him if he betrays us now. One poll last week shows Labour’s support among young people would plummet from 60% to 33% if it helps enable Brexit...we are scared about how Brexit will affect our futures; many of us did not have a say in the initial vote; and if we were given a chance to make our voices heard we would vote to stay in Europe.

Light starts to dawn

Brexiteers are always accused of not thinking out the implications of their actions, so it was interesting to see the GUardian item on how the Irish Republic suddenly seems to have realized some implications of its own posturing and strutting. The Irish Foreign Minister was still insisting last night on C4 News that it would not help gain any concessions from the EC that the deal was the deal and all that EC stuff. Reality seems to have struck today:

Irish government says security, travel and trade will suffer if UK crashes out of EU

Security in Ireland would be “seriously impacted” by a no-deal Brexit because of sudden changes to arrangements with the UK over crime, the Irish government has warned....It also said Ireland would “suffer considerably” from the “adverse economic and social impact” a no-deal Brexit would have on the UK...Ireland would also be affected by “exceptional swings” in the value of sterling, which would have difficult consequences for trade, the finance minister said....The Contingency Action Plan warns of disruption to aviation and road haulage, as well as delays on ferries and problems for exporters to Britain.''The government is also concerned about EU citizens moving between Ireland, Northern Ireland and mainland Britain...“There would also be significant issues for citizens’ rights, free movement of people, labour and skills shortages, and provision of cross-border public services that would have to be tackled by all the relevant parties,” it said...Ireland is also worried about the UK dropping out of the European arrest warrant (EAW) system, which would mean criminals could enter the Republic, commit a crime and escape to Northern Ireland...There would be particular pressure on sectors such as agri-food, fisheries, aviation and road transport, pharmaceuticals, electrical machinery, retail and wholesale businesses,

There is also a neglected tale buried in this section:

In the event of no deal, all animals coming into Ireland from the UK will have to undergo checks. Livestock leaving Ireland and going through the UK and on to the EU will also be subject to checks in Calais and other ports.  

This is a problem because the UK Government has apparently found that 80% of Republic trade for the EU comes through the UK first.

Meanwhile, the Times offers a welcome if delayed insight into the politics of immigration (on the launch of the UK Government's new proposals post-Brexit):

There is a reason why immigration splits the nation (Philip Aldrick writes). It benefits well-off Britons while those on lower incomes struggle to see any gains. Studies show that high-skilled migrants, with whom the wealthy are more likely to interact, improve productivity and raise wages at the top end of the income spectrum.
It’s a different story in low-skilled industries, where migrant labour has been shown to reduce wages and take jobs, albeit on a small scale. Again, companies and the well-off benefit, through lower prices in shops and, as the economics Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton has said, cheaper home help. Immigration works for the progressive social elites, not for those on low incomes.

Public services across the UK as a whole may have benefited from the net tax contribution from migrants but were stretched in particular regions. Migration makes Britain richer, but a focus on skilled immigrants would provide clearer benefits while more funding for integration in areas where numbers have exploded would ensure those vital gains are captured.

Alas for the Guradian and juvenile lefty Owen Jones. No class analysis for him. Although dead right to insist that blaming immigrants for economic decline is wrong, he still says that

Theresa May – whose only genuine political passion seems to be migrant-bashing – has built on those ruinous foundations with an immigration white paper that would more truthfully be titled “Keep Them Out”.

He pursues the old liberal schtick:

The left’s argument for immigration should target the emotions. We should speak from experience: the midwife who brought our child into the world, the nurse who tended to our dying grandmother.

I suppose any rational engagement with white 'racists' might expose the rational core at the bottom of their worries? Owen also expresses some of the wobbles that are keeping PV advocates awake:

the remain campaign would win nothing meaningful from the EU [on immigration]. The referendum would be framed on the terms of the Tory Brexiteers, who would be able to say that remain concedes the problem without offering a compelling answer. The leave campaign would always be able to outbid them with promises to end freedom of movement.

So, on with the need to win hearts and minds -- now that is, not before, and not with argument but with tear-jerking stories. How fortunate the working classes are so dim and easily taken in!

Whatever happens, the left must renew its defence of migrants...John McDonnell, is a veteran of anti-deportation campaigns and began his leadership at a pro-refugee rally, while his key ally Diane Abbott is passionately pro-immigration...There are also some on the left who argue that there is nothing progressive about freedom of movement because it excludes non-Europeans. This is excruciatingly naive: do they really believe a vindication of the argument that there are too many European migrants strengths the case for more from beyond the continent? [The Tory argument is that  skill levels should decide --just as dodgy, of course but not entirely irrational] Opposition to immigration has led Britain to national disaster [Really? Not the 2008 Crash? Does he mean Brexit again?] Labour, and the left as a whole, must be far more resolute in its defence of migrants – and confront a Tory project that offers nothing but insecurity and bigotry.

Desperation gulch

It seems that 'Theresa May has come home from Brussels empty-handed and without hope of further negotiations over the Irish backstop, with the failure to achieve any kind of breakthrough leaving her brutally exposed', says the Guardian , to no great surprise. After secret negotiations, it looked as if there might be some compromise statements, but '[EC] leaders [when they met afterwards, without May] ripped up a prepared script on Thursday night in which they would have offered both warm words and the promise of further assurances in January.'

What remains for el Gordino? Anxiety is growing over a Second Referendum, it seems, since detailed investighations have revealed some 'mind-boggling complexities over timing, question(s) and how votes would be counted' 

However J Freedland thinks Remain could still win 'with Europe's help'. There are anxieties though:

It’s not just Brexiteers, fearful of losing the prize they won against the odds two and a half years ago, who dislike that possibility. Plenty of remainers too are nervous about a contest they fear they could lose, thereby closing the door for good on a close relationship with Europe. And others, many of them Labour MPs in pro-leave seats, tremble at the sheer hostility the prospect of a second vote arouses in the people they represent.

To overcome those, Freedland suggests:

an effort to make the referendum exercise itself both legitimate in the eyes of leavers and substantively different to the first one. On the first count, it will help if the ballot is seen as a move by May, rather than a demand successfully pressed by the People’s Vote campaign. Much as I admire the latter, leave voters are likelier to accept a plebiscite called by a Tory prime minister seeking to make Brexit happen than one effected by remainers bent on halting it.

It might work if voters are are dense as Freedland and the others like to assume, still easily fooled by naive conjuring tricks. The questions would not be loaded in any way, of course, oh dear me, no:

the two competing propositions on the ballot – and let’s make the hopeful assumption that no parliament would present a no-deal crash-out as if it were a viable option, since that would be criminally irresponsible – are both significantly different from the leave v remain choices of 2016. It’s easy to see how leave would differ this time around. In place of the abstract, wishful idea of leave – which Brexiteers cast as a pain-free cash bonanza and panacea for all Britain’s ills – would be a concrete, detailed plan for leaving: May’s plan, more or less.... [and] a “reformed remain” option, an alternative to leave that does not smack of a complacent desire to pretend Brexit never happened. For those Labour MPs in leave seats, their chief hope is that they can signal to their voters that both they and the EU itself have heard their concerns on one issue especially: immigration.

How realistic is the promise to reform?

a Britain that chose to stay in the EU would have more say on migration? No one is expecting an opt-out on free movement: the EU would never grant such a thing.[But there are milder options] Since the referendum, the EU has, for example, revised its rules to prevent workers’ pay and conditions being undercut by employees posted from abroad. [However, this is described below as] adding “some tinsel and coloured lights” to various EU loopholes on migration,

There is also a minor constitutional problem:

who exactly would negotiate this improved remain option with the EU? Brussels will only talk to governments; it would not open up a parallel track to a panel of remain-minded dissidents

 
The Guardian turns today to the last resort -- prayers by Anglican bishops for unity over Brexit. After such a hate-filled and patronising campaign by Remainers, they have some forkin chance!

Snowflake melts

An insight into Remainer thinking today with an extrraordinary comment piece in the GUardina by one C Paterson, a novelist who wrote a novel about losing her job as a journalist. 

She is in full panic mode here at the thought of 'crashing out':

We all respond to stress in different ways. Since Monday afternoon, when I should have been trying to earn some money, I have been gripped by a migraine and the latest episode in the slow-motion national car crash, the one that was meant to end with a vote....Many of us are already dealing with the fallout of that vote that was meant to set us free. Homes that can’t be sold. Contracts put on hold. Lives on hold, as we don’t dare to make plans. Several people close to me have been told that they may well lose their jobs. I don’t know whether to believe Standard & Poor’s, which says that a million jobs will be lost in the case of a no-deal Brexit, or the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that a million workers will have their jobs or wages cut, or the Bank of England, which says that unemployment could rise to 7.5%....If we crash out of the EU without a deal, hundreds of thousands of people in this country will lose their jobs, their livelihoods and perhaps their homes.

Hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their jobs over globalisation, of course, not to mention EC-inspired austerity, but not NICE people? Those at risk are people she KNOWS. 

Paterson has taken her own redundancy hard, as I suppose exponents of identity politics would and must:

I lost eight pounds in three days. ...I didn’t stop shaking for two weeks. ... I ended up so exhausted by the search for work that I ended up sleeping in friends’ spare rooms as I put my flat on Airbnb. I didn’t tell him [a Brexit-voting fellow journalist] that losing my job felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me. And I’ve had cancer twice.

Naturally, her feeelings are exactly the same as everyone else's, so a real catastrophe beckons. It's no longer even hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk but:

There are 66 million of us whose jobs, homes and futures are at stake. They lie in the hands of ideologues and revolutionaries [ear;ier., she accused the Labour Party of being revolutionaries], who can’t be bothered to engage with the boring realities of life, global trading [boring?] and the law....We didn’t vote [she voted Leave?] for hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs, medicines to be rationed and dead bodies to pile up. We didn’t vote for May’s crummy “deal”, which will just lead to years of more uncertainty as the real negotiations start [I can agree with that at least].

She wants it all to be as it was before this nasty referendum gave a vote to the wrong people.

Garton in Ashes

Another Guardina piece from T Garton-Ash on the recent events. Same strange contradictions as before. Still no clear view about why he likes the EU so much.

So: 

there is now a serious chance of the British voting in a second referendum to stay in the European Union. What an extraordinary boost that would be to the whole post-1945 project of building a better Europe!

However, what if it all goes wrong?

in the long term Brexit would create a festering British ulcer, hurting and weakening the body of the European Union...The ulceration would begin soon after B-day. Britain would then have to negotiate its actual future relationship with the EU, on the basis of a vague and non-binding political declaration, and from an exceptionally weak negotiating position. Those negotiations would take years, and be very difficult. [So the May deal is crap?]  The false promises of the Brexiteers would soon be exposed. To avoid taking the blame themselves, the Brexiteers and Britain’s Eurosceptic press (no sticklers for truth, to put it mildly) would blame the country’s misfortunes on “the Europeans”, and especially on the French – something the English have been practising for 700 years....it is a dangerous illusion to believe that Britain would go on happily, constructively cooperating with the rest of Europe on foreign policy, defence, counter-terrorism (one thinks of the latest victims in Strasbourg) and intelligence-sharing and all the other areas in which the UK substantially contributes to Europe, while being mired in unhappiness about the rest of the relationship. That’s not how politics works, especially in an age of populism. It is also a delusion to think that within a few years the British would come back, with their tails between their legs, begging to rejoin. That’s a serious misreading of the British character. In short, there would be a dynamic of divergence, not of convergence.

I love it when Remainers sound off about 'the British character'. So how is all this going to lead to a new Remain vote?

the mother of parliaments [more dodgy history!]  is now taking back control [not from the EC though?] . Nobody knows what will emerge from its often arcane and operatic procedures. A new election? A government of national unity? A vote for Norway plus (British membership in the EFTA pillar of the EEA, plus a customs union)? No deal by accident rather than design? Anything is possible...[One possibility comes from] The ruling this week of the European court of justice establishes that, following a vote to remain, the UK could unilaterally revoke article 50 and stay as a member of the EU on its current terms.

It night even be bad news for remainers: 

Of course we might lose the referendum vote again. Even then, the country would be in no worse a position than it is now, and arguably in a better one: no one could then argue that people did not know what they were voting for...It is ridiculous to suggest it would be undemocratic for Britain’s sovereign parliament to take the question back to the people. The resulting referendum campaign could be angry and divisive. But one has to weigh that short-term risk against the much larger long-term risks to both Britain and Europe.

Repetition of the claim that Britain is sovereign, and a long silence about whether the EU restricts that sovereignty at all. A meek promise to shut up if it went against them again -- there would be more allegations about lies and racism, more personal abuse of Leavers, more cries of foul, demands for a third referendum or authoritarian solutions to dissolve the people and impose a new GNU?

What would be the positive case?

What is certainly true is that, to ensure a Britain that constructively re-engages, helping to bring the EU the reforms it badly needs, we need to achieve a decisive margin for staying in. Recent opinion polls are pointing in that direction, but we must make a much better pro-European campaign than we had in 2016.

So what would clinch it? Garton Ash appeals not to the British electorate, but to 'the EU' (Juncker?) itself to help out by insisting Britain is welcome.I don't think he is asking for any actual concessions on the deal, of course:

Article 50 would have to be extended for a few months..[and there is a tricky issue to address] around British participation in the European elections in May [should be a good one -- would we still be in or out by then? If in, and we elected lots of Leaver MEPs, they could cause trouble] 

More desperately, to end...

If you are persuaded that building a stronger Europe in a dangerous world needs the UK to be pulling its weight inside the EU; if you regard any blow struck against the dark forces of nationalist populism as a good thing; if what the UK has contributed to Europe over the centuries means anything to you; if you place any value on what Britain did for European freedom in the second world war, for postwar reconstruction and for helping to throw off the yoke of communist dictatorships; then let us have this chance. If you have worked with British colleagues, spent time at a British university, enjoyed some aspect of British sport or culture, or have British friends; if anything the British have ever done has touched your heart [as if EC bureaucrats have a heart!] ; then give us your solidarity and support. In helping Britain you will also be helping Europe.

The cultural politics of negativity*

A letter in the Times today points to what has long been argued here -- there may be some dubious predictions about economic growth, but there just is no positive case for the EU in Remainerdom:

Sir, In 2016, the campaign to remain in the EU was correctly criticised for its negativity and scare tactics. If there is a second referendum, leading Remainers will have to explain the positive elements of their case, because they need to argue in favour of “rejoining” (letters, Dec 7).
Voters will want to know the advantages of tax and economic harmonisation for all EU countries, the benefits of defence and social policy integration to its disparate members, the legal and democratic changes to be endured, and so on.
A second referendum could prove a poor tactic for Remainers who will be pressed to explain what “ever closer union” truly entails for coming generations of British people. It is not an easy case to argue, which is why it was not attempted last time.
Edmund Camerer CussArundel, W Sussex



The problem is I think there just is no positive case. The cultural politics of distanciation always works off inverting popular/populist views. It chimes with generational politics too, and with class hatred of both Tory nobs and Leaver proles and racists, of course. The nearest you get to anything positive is the fantasy identification of 'Europe' as wonderfully progressive and somehow modern, and an imaginary rainbow coalition of right thinking people and oppressed cultural minorities

Incidentally, J Hunt, no less, argued over the weekend (again in the Times I think) that of the two tribes, the Remainers are likely to be the flakiest in their commitments. If they just need reassurance that the UK would continue to be open and cosmo, still with lots of cultural links to Europe, they would fade from the fight, he thinks.

Meanwhile.,J Harris, the Gurdina columnist who comes closest, has a piece today on the cultural divides between the two tribes:

For millions of people, a basic stance on Brexit runs much deeper than any affinity they might feel with a political party: recent work by the psephologist John Curtice found that 77% of us identify with either side of the debate to a strong extent, as against only 37% who feel a similar allegiance to a party, with the respective figures for “very strong” put at 44% and a miserable 9%.... it was no great surprise to read that how voters felt about Europe slotted into their opinions on multiculturalism, social liberalism, the internet, globalisation and immigration; nor that such factors as age, class and education had been central to how people voted. Indeed, when I was out on the road during the campaign, it felt as if an even simpler question would decide the outcome: whether your view of the globalist, liberal future into which the country seemed to be inevitably heading was optimistic, or whether prejudice or a pessimism rooted in deep economic insecurity (or both) had pushed you to the opposite conclusion....pre-Brexit electoral politics often meant that the two main parties had to aim at bringing very different voters together in order to win elections, the gaps between large parts of the electorate were constantly smoothed over. The grim political perfection of Brexit, by contrast, was that it represented a convulsive argument about a package of stuff that went straight to the heart of all of these tensions, and decisively pushed people one way or the other.

All good stuff, but then Harris commits Gaurdianism by referring for support back to -- an essay by G Orwell.


An other promising point is culturalised:

The same rising individualism created the conditions for the laissez-faire economics that first took root in the UK and US in the early 1980s, [enshrined in the EU of course]  ravaged no end of industrial communities, and pushed politics away from the kind of collectivist thinking that had started to fade as the shadow of the second world war receded. The key point was made perfectly by the British music writer Charles Shaar Murray: “The line from hippie to yuppie is not nearly as convoluted as some people like to believe.”

Harris finds similarities in social polarisation in Germany and the USA. Then back to his own childhood:

Cars, houses and holidays offered people some means of keeping up with the Joneses, but there was nothing like the modern consumerist culture built on the constant imperative to somehow appear sophisticated and successful. TV offered three channels. Politics was largely a simple choice between two different views of the state and economic distribution...But then came the things that have so pushed us apart. Social mobility stalled. Deindustrialisation carried on apace. Insecurity skyrocketed. The complexity of modern society burst into public debate. And our sources of information eventually fragmented, with two key effects. Malign forces found new openings. More generally, we are now close to losing any coherent sense of who “we” are: one of the reasons why all that talk from Brexiteers about the will of the people seems so absurd.

Then to business as usual:

It is no accident [classic!] that many of the politicians – May [blimey -- she's a core Brexiteer?] , Farage, Rees-Mogg – who now sit at the heart of Brexit have the look of people untouched by the huge social changes that originated back [in the 60s]

The 'will of the people' also seems less absurd when Remainers cite it though:  'Brexit looks to me like an epochal disaster to which the best answer is probably another public vote' 

So -- quite good, but still a matter of classic liberal limitations of analysis and inevitable contradictions, with Brexit as irrational nostalgia plus active reaction. Nothing on the active constant processes of distanciation that will find new divisions even when the old ones disappear. Of course, the Guadrian is an active player in those.

European values*

An appeal to Corbyn from European socialists in teh Guardina today to stay in the EU and help take power back from an organization where :

The contagious creed of austerity has spread through its airways. The interests of capital and global corporations have come to take precedence over those of citizens. Despite more wealth than ever before, the disparities across the continent have fostered exploitation and insecurity.

Given that the European socialist and communist parties failed so spectacularly even where they were very strong, the prospects are a bit remote now.

The article also links to a piece by T Garton-Ash on European values  which I must have missed first time around. The values concerned are those of : 'liberal democracy, pluralism, the rule of law and free speech.'. As usual, these are spelled out only by contrasting them with values Garton-Ash disapproves of, as represented by the ruling parties in Hungary and Poland.

There is a marvellous confused passage:

I am confident Britain will remain a liberal democracy even if it leaves the EU; Hungary and Poland, by contrast, will remain members of the EU but are ceasing to be liberal democracies. In the very countries where, three decades ago, the causes of freedom and Europe advanced so magnificently arm in arm, these causes are now being prised apart by skilful, anti-liberal populists exploiting a longstanding disconnect between the Europe of values and the Europe of money.

So 'Europe'  is not a reason for liberal democracy, not even a guarantor of it, but the two coincide in particular conjunctures like the circumstances of 30 years ago (globalisation and the 'end of ideology'?). 'Europe's values' seem a bit contingent or opportunistic as a result. They also seem to be uneasily combined with massive inequality, as in  the 'disconnect' in the last sentence. None of this is discussed of course.

There is instead a typical Guardian jibe at one of their favourite hate figures -- B Johnson:

“My policy on cake,” Johnson famously says, “is pro having it and pro eating it.”... Viktor Orbán’s nationalist populist Hungarian government, by contrast, is triumphantly practising the Johnson doctrine. It receives more European Union cake per capita than any other member state while mustering nationalist support by biting the Brussels hand that feeds it. Boris Johnzsönhelyi would be a happy trooper on the Danube...a crucial part of east-central European Johnsonism is using EU funds for political patronage, rewarding supportive media owners and other cronies, as well as more straightforward pocket-lining.

 
Heaven forbid this sort of thing should go on in liberal democracies! All this is reminiscent of the early Remain campaigns stressing the subsidies for infrastructure that the benevolent EU were spending in the UK, rather cruelly exposed by the campaign and the slogan on the bus. Euroneuros have never understood that it is not primarily a matter of  abstract amounts of money anyway. 

Garton-Ash argues for more EC responses to Hungarian and Polish populism and  thinks the current responses are ineffective. It seems this tolerant liberal wants EU funding made contingent on political reform. As in Greece and Italy?

When I make this argument to friends in these centre-right parties, they say: “Oh, but it’s still better to have Orbán inside because we can influence him there.” And so they go on nursing the classic illusions of appeasement, playing chess against a kickboxer...We don’t have time for this any more. The matter is urgent. If Poland follows the Hungarian path, much of east-central Europe will have succumbed to creeping  authoritarianism – and all of this will have happened inside the European Union.

This sits rather oddly with the main piece urging socialist unity against EU liberalism, of course. Is socialism compatible with these European values? If a right-wing populism can thwart the EU, can a left-wing one? If the EU punishes right-wing populism will it also penalise a left-wing version?

Lull before a storm

It's all gone rather quiet, surprisingly, in this tense run-up to the vote on May's deal on Tuesday. TV and press pundits have been exhaustively charting details of what will happen if she loses the vote, which everyone seems to think is inevitable.Options range from having another vote after even more scares, a renewed renegotiation with the EC to bin the Irish backstop (the EC says it won't change its mind), a general election maybe after a vote of no confidence, a proposal for a new referendum, leaving with no deal, remaining after the Government withdraws its Article 50 request to leave. Most pundits seem to agree there is no clear majority in Parliament for any of these options.

Pragmatic moves include, today, a proposal to delay the vote. There could be longer delays -- delay to March 29th. Some sort of delay would be inevitable for any new referendum.

Channel 4 News was pushing an older proposal, a GNU, where sensible people of all parties unite -- and keep us in, maybe by unilaterally withdrawing our Article 50 without further debate? C4 presenters ended each interview with a question to the politician about whether they would serve under a GNU, as if it were all a foregone conclusion and one were being set up. It seems there is a simple national interest for C4 News after all. Scratch a supporter of Parliamentary democracy...

It all comes against a background of loss of confidence in a People's Vote. L. McClusky says it is unlikely that there is total support for it in the Labour Party, and the article goes on:

There are also fears that a significant minority of Labour MPs would not back the policy, even if it was backed by the frontbench.
Those MPs include Brexiters, such as Dennis Skinner, John Mann and Frank Field, as well as MPs in strong leave-leaning seats, such as Caroline Flint, Gareth Snell and Laura Smith.

Similarly, in the Times, J Russell develops her earlier reservations about a PV. Opinion has not changed she thinks.Apparent small majorities for Remain declared in recent polls do not exceed the margin of error (fancy literary bourgeois knowing about them!). Above all:

Remainers assume that the errors and disasters of Brexit are becoming so apparent that they are self-evident, and that the voters have only to be asked for a second opinion to turn against it.
I am afraid they are making exactly the same mistake that they did in the first vote, thinking the electorate will be swayed by facts, official predictions, economic self-interest. That confidence is horribly misplaced. The deep and emotional loyalties that people have developed over Brexit have become tribal, reach into their sense of self and are almost impossible to shift.

How amusing that so many nice middle-class advocates of emotions in politics are having their arses bitten.

Russell quotes her 'friends' talking to people (eg their employees or fellow church-goers) in the Midlands:

Dire predictions from the Bank of England about a shrinking economy or warnings about no fresh food in supermarkets within days of no-deal are just shrugged off, either disbelieved or dismissed. Leavers are emphatic, enthusiastic, gleeful about having affected something for the first time in their lives...[As I have been predicting all along]...Some are so angered by Remainer criticism or ostracism that they have doubled down and now prefer no deal to any soft Brexit. When you ask them why they are misty-eyed. Sovereignty. Independence. Control.

Such political objectives are a surprise to the new petit-bourgeois, I imagine, who have assumed all along that threats of poverty would work better -- as if we haven't had that for the last 10 years. Luckily they must be irrational, 'misty-eyed':

“They just want out, nothing to do with Europe at all, it’s all worth it as long as we’re not a slave nation any more. They’ve swallowed all that propaganda about Europe as the enemy, they’re completely entrenched.”

Can we expect rational counter-argument dispelling these sentimental and idealistic views? Apparently not -- all Russell can do is invert and oppose them, a classic form of distanciation where the correct values are just the opposite of anything that the masses want:

What matters to me — interdependence, prosperity, influence, the freedom and security that comes from being part of a greater European bloc — simply doesn’t resonate with them. My priorities aren’t theirs.

That lack of resonance has been a source of smug virtue-signalling in the past, no doubt, but now the plebs might have a vote. Let's not risk it after all.