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Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
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4 Mar, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Brussels has pledged legal action after ministers announced plans to unilaterally change a part of the Northern Ireland Brexit deal to better suit British businesses.

Starmer and Davey need to wise up. Brexit is not done, and it isn't going away.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
The Tories and the tax-dodging Brexit billionaire press will repeatedly use conflicts with Brussels to stir up English nationalism. Opposition parties that stay silent will look vacillating and ineffectual and will see their pro-EU support base gradually drain away.
Of course if opposition parties attack the government on Brexit issues they will be accused of treason etc., but they will increase support among the anti-Brexit majority, and with a #ProgressiveAlliance they will have the votes needed for victory.
The problem with Labour is that it doesn't want to cooperate with other parties. So knowing that at least 10-15% of the vote will go to the LibDems and Greens it has to frantically scrabble around for the votes of socially conservative Red Wall Leavers.

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More from @nickreeves9876

Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
21 Feb
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.
Read 6 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
8 Feb
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.
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
7 Feb
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".
Read 5 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
7 Feb
British towns with the most
immigrants and highest levels of diversity tend to do far better economically than areas with little, a study has found.

Brexit was built on the xenophobic lies of the right-wing press and politicians.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
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…
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
6 Feb
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..
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
6 Feb
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'.
Read 5 tweets

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