Hope springs eternal in the Remainer soul

The UK General Election is a pretty dull affair with no criminal cases, porn stars, guns or senility. Instead we have the same old, same old --promises that no-one believes will be kept with sinister agendas lurking hidden behind the bland PR. 

Remainers/rejoiners have not given up hope even now, however, hoping that one of the sinister agendas lurks within Starmer's discussion of developing 'closer ties with Europe'.Not rejoining as such, of course. 

One Trojan horse might be proposals to allow the free movement of young people, for example. Who could possibly object to the idea that the young should be free to live, love, and above all work wherever they want in 'Europe'. We will have forgotten, surely, that this will mostly mean a one-way flow, of course, and could be the thin end of a wedge, but won't it be lovely to have bright young French, German and Spanish people serving our coffee in London again?

A Rawnsley in the Observer is one of several recently saying the whole issue must be revisited anyway:

In all this noisy election debate, why is there a conspiracy of silence about Brexit?

When the histories are written, every other failure of this Tory era will be a footnote compared with that epic folly.

Lest we forget, it is all down to the smooth-tongued liars and misleaders:

With Partygate and all the other scandals on his watch, Boris Johnson recklessly tested Britain’s tolerance for being governed by a prime minster who flagrantly debased standards in public life. With the maxi-disaster of her mini-budget, Liz Truss conducted a deranged experiment that exploded not just in her face, but blew the doors off the country....Rishi Sunak, who advocated Brexit, doesn’t want to talk about it for the obvious reason that none of the promises which accompanied that enterprise – “a new golden age” anyone? – has come true. He will also be aware that most voters have concluded it has been such a calamity for the UK that we ought never to have torn ourselves apart from the EU....Labour seeks the support of people who backed “out”, especially in working-class areas of the Midlands and northern England, and the party’s pollsters have cautioned the Labour leader that these voters really don’t want to be made to think about Brexit.

Of course there are one or two other things to discuss.I can't see quite how these are tied to Brexit for Rawnsley -- they would be solved if we were still in?:

there’s a climate crisis that is increasing in severity...decayed public services when the national finances are fragile. Although the creaking state of the NHS, schools, courts, prisons and other key elements of the public realm are supposed to be central to this election, we are not going to have a full and frank conversation about how to revive them because this would entail having an adult discourse about taxation....The voters are right to treat everyone’s claims with deep suspicion. Read my lips, no one is being candid about tax...council tax is long overdue reform. Did you know that Buckingham Palace pays less in the property tax than a family in the average three-bedroom semi in Blackpool?...a tiny group of the UK’s wealthiest estates were able to shelter nearly £2bn of assets from inheritance tax in the 2020-21 tax year. That would buy you a lot of hospital scanners, operating theatres and A&E suites.

There is also a bit of a slience about other expensive causes too, of course, not only Covid and the recession but the Ukraine war. Reckless old Boris was quite keen on that too.

Then there is the ever-lovable P Toynbee. The background is a recent noticeable swing to the 'right' in elections to the paper tiger European Parliament, which has alarmed liberals in Europe. Not Toynbee though:

Europe is lurching right on immigration. Despite Farage and Sunak’s best efforts, Britain will not follow

These [European and British] demagogues are good at their art. A snap poll anointed Farage the “winner” in last week’s TV debate on Britain’s Got Talent criteria, his booming oratory shamelessly free of factchecking. Only one sulphurous issue propels him, the same immigration fears and factoids that power the far right across Europe.

And the voters, presumably

That political elixir blends nationalism with disappointment and justified grievance, so easily blaming migrants for a lack of housing or NHS appointments, low wages, bad jobs. Those raw emotions have too often felt too visceral for conventional politicians to dare confront, leaving them mumbling awkwardly and promising the impossible. Borders do matter, determining nationhood and who shares in taxing and spending. Porous borders signal a state malfunction, as images of arrivals – mainly men – packed in perilous inflatables allow this small proportion of immigrants to be gleefully misrepresented as the bulk of big numbers here by invitation.

[Farage] and Boris Johnson, outstanding rogues of the era, are gifted performers licensed to say whatever pleases: theatricality, quick wit and a dose of sociopathy is all it takes (other EU populists share those traits).

All it takes is a calm lecture to these ignorant peasants who voted for these charlatans, and voters will soon give up their prejudiced ideas:

Instead of explaining the need for foreign workers, governments took the coward’s way and promised what they can’t and shouldn’t deliver.... Dishonesty about immigration has bred the deepest distrust of politics. Delivering an honest explanation is easier now than ever before, as public opinion has swung markedly towards understanding migration. Most people can see the need: more than 150,000 vacancies for care workers leave 1.6 million frail people left in neglect. Cafes and restaurants close for lack of chefs. Britain’s nuclear projects are short of the 138,000 workers they need by 2030. Who will fix the National Grid, water pipes and sewage outflows, let alone build Labour’s 1.5m homes, with the number of construction workers in the UK falling by 14% since 2019? Few think it reasonable to count valuable foreign students in immigration numbers, as they go home. But leaving all this unargued too often lets Faragism win the day....

[Labour] Policy to get those more than 2.5 million sick people cured and into work, as well as investing in missing skills, apprenticeships and further education, should [!] lead to more home recruitment. Raising pay and improving career paths start with a fair pay agreement for care workers. 

We shall see if a fissiparous European far right bound by anti-immigration sentiments can hold together. Back here, the sight of countries across the channel turning rightwards leaves distressed Spectator writers protesting that Britain’s left turn is “a wild anachronism”. But in Britain, it’s they who are now the left-behind dying breed. I note their language changing to describing Europe as “our continent”: do they yearn to return?

Very well, alone then! Very suitable for the 80th anniversay of D-Day. A nationalist dog-whistle, one might say.

Toynbee does quote a very good source for her views: 'Prof Rob Ford shows more than half of voters think immigration levels should stay the same or need to rise'. Her reference leads to an absurd tweet, but the actual podcast by Ford is much more subtle and complex. 

To be very brief, the issue of immigration became more of a symbolic one than a 'rational' debate about labour supply for BOTH sides during the Referendum. Taking back conrol meant an abstract issue of restoring national government rather than EC government and Brexit was enough to reassure people that control had been reasserted whatever the numbers,so the issue lost its sting. For Remainers, immigration became the symbolic issue that represented all their key values of tolerance and civility that they saw embodied in the EU and challenged by nasty Brexiteers, again irrespective of the economic case --they are still fighting this symbolic struggle. Ford also notes that 'immigration' is also entwined with racism, with Black and Asian immigrants before European ones, and that Britain is a tolerant society there, especially  among the young -- so questions about 'immigrants' might not distinguish the issues.