Labour leavers need more delay and more emotion

A. Chakraborrty in the GRaun has another good piece, even though he had to wait until the Owl of Minerva actually crapped on his suit.

A few weeks ago I met a couple of the stereotypes who could decide which way this country turns tomorrow. And guess what – they were nothing like you’d expect. You know the caricature I mean: the working-class Brexiter..I cannot think of any other demographic treated more superficially and transactionally [?] than the four million-odd Labour voters who voted leave in 2016...At the very root is condescension, from all sides.

[One impoverished couple] voted Brexit – not out of hatred of immigrants but because, as Rebecca said: “It’s not right that we give all the money to Europe, not when we have so many people going without in this country.”...most people in this room had voted for the promises of Brexit, and yet had zero faith in them. They would believe the lying £350m bus, but not its fibbing, blond frontman. They accepted how bad things were, but they didn’t imagine for a minute that politicians would make it better. This is part of a far more complex, contradictory picture than you are normally given of working-class leave voters

He thinks:

the EU is almost always a proxy for anger at things happening right here at home [but often quite rightly in my view, as the examples indicate] ...voters remember that they have been waterboarded by crisis after crisis...Without so much as a by your leave the bankers were thrown a lifeline [£1.2bn] now deemed unaffordable for our public services.... [voters] tune out....one local flatly remarked: “It’s dead now because they took what they wanted. Thatcher smashed the unions. There used to be coal mines. Boosh! ‘We’re out of here.’ They’ve moved on.” When the culture of Labourism got destroyed, so did the attendant affiliation to the Labour party [so metropolitan identity politics is no substitute after all?]. The Westminster lot were all “liars” and London was a leech, always hungry for more.[This leaves]  a deep and sullen resentment. A nihilism that neither party nor any other democratic institution can even get their hands around, let alone find a response to.

He was kind, or unreflexive, enough not to mention the abuse and contempt heaped on this group by the metropolitans in the media. The sort of thing still being peddled by M Kettle.

This has been an unnecessary election based on a false claim. It is a Brexit election.

the central theme of the Conservative campaign – getting Brexit “done” – is a trick....This may be good enough for voters who simply want to pull the duvet over their heads, or for those who are so wealthy that the uncertainty would not affect them. [Rebuke above and below as usual -- thank God for the new petit bourgeoisie, Journalist Tendency]

The old language is still appropriate:

If the UK crashes out [!] with no trade deal in a year’s time, those tariffs and checks [between UK and NI] will become more intense, not less. [Johnson] got a deal only because he folded on the EU’s terms [So is that good or bad? Who cares as long as we can rubbish Johnson] ...[It] ...is another total porky...[that]...he will surprise them again  by getting a new trade deal.

So there is only the spoiling tactic left, presented with impeccable Graun logic:

Johnson will not be able to secure a new trading relationship with the EU in a matter of months...The alternative is to hold a confirmatory referendum on either the current deal or some other future deal. [so end a frustrating delay by adding 2 years to Johnson's delay?]  If the polls are right, most people today will vote for parties that offer this alternative [we might hear a lot of this next week -- the election was a proxy referendum after all] . The only way to get Brexit sorted [i.e.delayed again and eventually overturned by a CV] is to vote tactically for the party or candidate best placed to defeat the Conservatives

As a hint of the future campaign they still have in mind, the Graun returns to an old theme in a piece written by some Polish academics: 

Our focus is on an aspect of human nature that is underexplored in political analysis: namely political emotion, and in particular, the feeling of loss...[which]...liberals tactlessly disregard or ridicule

Emotion -- that's the only language they understand. The poor saps are simply unwilling to modernise and embrace neo-liberalism and we must offer them bereavement counselling.

We need a passionate defence of liberal democracy and the liberal order. We also need to embrace the feeling of loss and translate it into something positive and enriching, into a feeling about political community....looking to the future and building networks of friends. It requires courage, hope and compassion

I can't wait for more reminders about Churchill and the Polish spitfire pilots, more poems, imaginary histories in which privateers set out only to make trade deals with the Spanish, redemptive histories of Napoleon and praise for Wittgenstein, and watching in awe and wonder as the plants and birds cross national boundaries.