Shellshocked MPs of the sensible tendency are now seriously alarmed. You find them in a daze around Westminster and its news studio green-rooms stunned by Tuesday night’s failure of the modest Cooper amendment to prevent a no-deal crash-out...The shock of the failure of the Cooper amendment was that it was brought down by 25 Labour MPs voting against or abstaining: no one expected many beyond the usual Eurosceptics. But they were joined by sensible people – like Jim McMahon, ex-leader of Oldham or Gloria De Piero and others who understand real-world effects of parliamentary gestures. It was shocking too that eight shadow ministers defying a vital three-line whip – the likes of Tracy Brabin, Melanie Onn, Judith Cummins – were not sacked, unlike those forced to resign in June for voting to stay close to the European Economic Area – which later became Labour policy...Those Labour MPs who broke the whip did great damage. Across the floor are unknown numbers of vacillating Tories who voted to let May have one last forlorn chance at renegotiating her plan, but next time might vote to prevent a no-deal result. Richard Harrington, business minister, says he gives her two weeks, but then will vote to stop no deal. Amber Rudd, Greg Clark, Philip Hammond and other ministers might resign to vote against no deal – and others stand on that brink. But they will only break their own whip and take that plunge if they are certain the numbers are there: looking across at those Labour 25 who wrecked the Cooper amendment, they may calculate it’s not worth making a gallant gesture unless certain to succeed. They need another 12 on top of the 16 Tories who rebelled on Tuesday.
All is not quite lost though: 'referendum campaigners always knew it would only be the last option when all else finally fails.' However, referring to the 2016 referendum: 'Tory leaders pandered to Eurosceptic fever – worst of all David Cameron ceding this lethal referendum.' Some referendums are lethal if they deliver the wrong result, but then Toynbee hopes many Leave voters will have died off.
Toynbee is still not sure where to place her bets as long as something is done:
[May] will return effectively empty-handed from Brussels, needing to tell her party only a softer Norwegian-style deal stands a chance. Delay, rethink, renegotiate – or a final say for the voters – these are all more plausible than the Commons opting for no deal. Though she has badly misjudged every stage of Brexit, even she will surely pull back at the last moment. Why would she want to captain the ship when a no-deal tsunami swamps the decks?
Meanwhile G Younge seems closer to the issues. He notices that some black people rejected slavery even if it made them better off and goes on:
It has long been a challenge, particularly for those who are comfortable, to understand why anybody who is struggling would choose to be worse off. Liberals can take it particularly personally when those who would most benefit materially from a change in policy or circumstance opt to reject it. The assumption is that they must be misinformed, ill-informed, uninformed, stupid, naive or cruelly misled....Quite why well-off liberals in particular would find someone voting against their material interests such a baffling idea is odd. They do it all the time. Whenever they vote Labour, or for any party that plans to raise taxes on the wealthy and redistribute income, they vote to make themselves worse off materially. True, they are better positioned to take a hit than those at the other end of the income scale. But there’s more to it than that. They do so, for the most part, because when it comes to politics they don’t just vote for their own financial wellbeing. They are thinking about the kind of country and world they want to live in, and the values that they hold dear...The notion that working-class voters approach politics differently is extremely patronising. Indeed it is precisely the kind of attitude that provides fodder to the rightwing culture warriors who rail against the “coastal elites” in the US and “do-gooders”. There really are some liberals who think that they know what’s better for working-class people than working-class people themselves do.
With some notable exceptions, remain advocates have [forsaken] respectful engagement in favour of a combination of face-palming at the stupidity of lemmings going for a leap and promising Armageddon when they land...it’s not working now. This is partly because leave voters don’t believe the hype. A recent poll showed a significant majority of them believed Brexit posed a less serious crisis than either the financial crash or the miners’ strike. In other words, it’s not that they don’t understand things could get worse; they just feel they’ve been through worse.
Polling by the Centre for Social Investigation [not investigated {sic} further] revealed that remain voters significantly underestimated the importance that leave voters attached to sovereignty. The UK making its own rules came a close second out of four (immigration was first) in the reasons why people voted leave. When remain voters were asked why they thought people had voted leave they put the UK making its own laws last, after “teach British politicians a lesson”...[If] someone argues, “If you do this your factory might close,” you might respond: “It’s not my factory and ‘they’ve’ been closing factories around here for years. But it is my country and I don’t want ‘them’ messing with it.” In this story “they” is a moving target. It could be immigrants, it could be Brussels, it could be foreign companies. The only thing “we” know for sure is it’s not “us”.
Younge does well at the end, despite failing to acknowledge that the EU is now on the wrong side:
And it is fanciful about our future: our political sovereignty, like everybody else’s, is primarily constrained not by Brussels, but international capital. And since you can’t vote to leave that, staying in or out of the EU will make us less effective, but not more independent. But I also think, in the absence of other stories, it is compelling. Far more compelling than the threat of a scarcity of fresh vegetables and a run on the pound if we crash out with no deal.
The Grudnia, in a rare piece based on what Leave voters actually say continues the theme:
Poverty may be acceptable price, say some in seat where Labour MP voted against Cooper proposal
[The local MP] was one of 14 Labour MPs to defy the party whip and vote against Yvette Cooper’s delaying amendment. “It is clear from the feedback I’ve had from constituents in recent days that many people saw this amendment as nothing more than an attempt to delay and frustrate Brexit,” she said.
However, the stereotype persists in the quote from one voter: 'It will be terrible but I still want it, because of immigration.”', although another voter, an immigrant herself said: '"coming here has broadened my mind … there aren’t as many jobs and many of them are on lower pay.”'
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