1/ It looks like the majority of the working class are Leavers. That's not so surprising given working class employment, communities and organisations have been hit hardest by deindustrialisation, leaving many people to seek safety in what I call the tribe-nation.
2/ Human beings evolved and survived in tribes. Our psychology has a strong tribal element. In situations of social stress we tend to seek safety in the tribe. Once that might have been the Labour movement, now in the deindustrialised UK it's the tribe-nation.
3/ A defensive tribal mentality wants the tribe to be united. It is therefore suspicious of outsiders and of those within who manifest different cultural and social attitudes. And it sees those who ask too many questions as being disruptive and disloyal.
4/ A defensive tribal mentality wants to feel the tribe is strong. It does not want to hear people talking-down the nation. It wants strong leaders, far more than it wants honest and fair leaders. And like all basic human social relations tribalism is deeply emotive.
5/ The young, educated and middle classes are less prone to tribalism because they feel less vulnerable and more able to succeed individually. For them oppeness presents opportunities, not threats.
6/ Tribal nationalism is set to stay for the foreseeable future. The economic and social structures that made the working class a political power have mostly collapsed. Many of those who would have identified with working class politics have shifted to tribal nationalism.
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1/ Millions of Germans continued to back Hitler even as the Third Reich crumbled into ruins. Around 80% of Trump voters think he won the election. Tribal nationalism is the rabies of the political mind. Fear drives people into the emotive loyalty of tribalism.
2/ The Brexit right cynically whipped up fear, and in a society largely broken by deindustrialisation people have sought safety in tribal nationalism. Like support of a football team, tribal identification is deeply emotional. Tribal nationalist politics is not going away.
3/ Tribalism poses a grave threat to democracy. A socio-political tribe will see opponents not as fellow members of a democratic community, but as outsiders who when conflict occurs, can legitimately be fought by non-democratic means.
1/ After a Nazi referendum victory Goebbels said that "the will of the people is the will of the government and vice versa". He said this to delegitimise the core democratic right to oppose. The Brexiters used the "Will of the People" in exactly the same way.
2/ Aspiring populist dictators love referendums because they give them the chance to demonise opponents as "enemies of the democratic will of the people". Thatcher was entirely right when she echoed Attlee in saying that "the referendum was a device of dictators and demagogues".
3/ In a healthy democracy there are the majority and minority, there are arguments and compromises, there is government and opposition. There is no place for the totalitarian unity of the "Will of the People".
Here's something which almost never got mentioned in over 4 years of Brexit debate. EU migrants had higher employment rates and far better education levels than their native counterparts. They are on average the kind of people who boost the economy.
And in 2017 Gove said that migrants had raised school standards in London. Such a contrast to the usual xenophobic Brexit lie that migrants lower school standards. A pity that Gove didn't say that before the referendum. bbc.co.uk/news/education…
Peter Oborne – “I have been a political reporter for almost three decades,” he writes, “I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.” theguardian.com/books/2021/feb…
But more important than Johnson's lies is that a majority of Tory MPs, members and voters put him into power and continue to support him. It seems they approve of his lies, because they are the lies that win them power and express their prejudices.
Lies undermine and destroy democracy, so we must conclude that the majority of Tory MPs, members and supporters no longer support democracy. For them, we are the enemy, winning is everything, and if lies lead to victory then they are good lies..
One of the most toxic legacies of Brexit is the "Will of the People" which replaces the core democratic right to oppose with the totalitarian notion of the monolithically united people and its enemies, who by dint of opposing the result of a vote are outside 'the people'.
It is of course the rich and powerful who get to define who are the 'real people', who belong to decent (white native) middle England and who are the alien chattering classes, the cosmopolitan infestation in the polluting the otherwise healthy English body politics.
It is no accident that the Daily Mail located the 'chattering classes' in North London, where the paradigmatic intellectuals are often Jewish. The attack on the cosmopolitan other has strong echoes of the Nazi attack against the 'rootless Jews'.
1/ 37% of a rigged electorate excluding the most affected groups. Advisory status used as a legal loophole to prevent the referendum being annulled because of electoral fraud. A campaign of hate and lies, dark ads and Russian & private US interference. Brexit was a coup.
2/ A Leave option which was a catch-all blank cheque, bait and switch propaganda, a post-referendum campaign of populist intimidation leading to death threats which silenced many opponents and the BBC shutting out Remain voices. Brexit was a coup.
3/ The lies continued. In the 2019 election campaign 88% of Conservative ads on Facebook were 'misleading'. A vote won by lies is not democratic. Firms discussing Brexit arrangements with the govt were gagged. Information was withheld. Parliament was illegally prorogued.