"Five years on from the Brexit vote, the most remarkable outcome is the way in which voters have defined themselves by their decision on 23 June 2016."
"It is something that John Curtice identified early and has repeated time and again as he is invited to analyse election and by-election results: the UK is divided far more between ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ than between Labour, Conservative and the Scottish National Party (SNP)."
"The reason the Brexiteers ‘keep on winning’ is that nothing has changed since 2016 in terms of the underlying causes of the British catastrophe."
Alas... “Among major economies, the United Kingdom may well be the biggest casualty of the pandemic,” Credit Suisse said.
Alas... “Among major economies, the United Kingdom may well be the biggest casualty of the pandemic,” Credit Suisse said.
"The first thing to understand is that Brexit is about agency, not economics."
"I do not refer to agency in the abstract, philosophical sense of who does what to whom, although this is not completely irrelevant."
"I do not refer to agency in the abstract, philosophical sense of who does what to whom, although this is not completely irrelevant."
"The question people want to know the answer to is: what meaning and relevance do I have in the power system and what difference can I make, however small?"
What we hear is NOISE akin to the Tower of Babel - without structure nor strategy to implement coherent plans for change.
What we hear is NOISE akin to the Tower of Babel - without structure nor strategy to implement coherent plans for change.
"In the first decades of the 21st Century, the UK had a quadruple crisis of agency, during which we lost belief in ourselves."
"The causes can be crudely labelled as: the monarchical constitution; the globalised, hedge-fund economy; neoliberal politics; and England. All four sucked meaning, purpose and security out of our lives."
"Brexit was the wrong answer to these problems. But, although it was misconceived, the compelling power of ‘take back control’ was that it offered an answer. It rightly recognised a problem of agency – of who we are and what we can do."
"The Remain leaders and their main supporters, in effect, denied that there was a problem of agency. They did this by refusing to address it and dismissing the issues it posed as unimportant."
"Their chosen slogan ‘stronger in’ admitted that we are weak and unable to do anything about it. They bet on British voters being too pathetic to take a risk and the ENGLISH told them to get lost."
Akin to Scots being told they're 'too wee, too poor and too stupid" for #ScottishIndependence 🏴
It's TIME for SCOTLAND to tell the Union to get lost!!
It's TIME for SCOTLAND to tell the Union to get lost!!
"Suzanne Moore summed it up neatly: “Brexit showed us it wasn’t ‘the economy, stupid’ that determined votes; other values were equally important."
"Remain did not have a story to tell or even thought it needed one, apart from sneering at Leave voters. Its campaign was a huge failure of imagination about how many people live day to day and how they really feel.”"
book4you.org/book/7228476/1…
book4you.org/book/7228476/1…
"Examining the collapse of agency – the problem that Brexit tries to answer – is necessary because the only way to break the influence and the narrative of Boris Johnson’s Government of Brexiters is if we can come up with a better set of answers to the UK’s crisis of agency."
"This cannot be achieved unless until we recognise the problems."
"If we want to stop just talking to ourselves, we have to engage finally with the set of issues that broke the loyalty Leavers placed in the historic elite that governed Britain."
"If we want to stop just talking to ourselves, we have to engage finally with the set of issues that broke the loyalty Leavers placed in the historic elite that governed Britain."
"We have to be able to say: you are quite right to want to ‘take back control’ but this is not the best way to do it."
"To do so, we need to understand what they had lost."
"To do so, we need to understand what they had lost."
"Firstly, there was a collapse of belief in our monarchical constitution."
"Secondly, the impressive tradition of world-leading British manufacturing and banking that represented a shared interest with national workforces has dissolved."
"Secondly, the impressive tradition of world-leading British manufacturing and banking that represented a shared interest with national workforces has dissolved."
"Thirdly, there is neoliberal politics."
"Fourthly, the SNP resisted the tide of fatalism. Although not left-wing, its call for self-determination offered a belief in agency within the framework of an EU that empowers small countries (as can be seen in Ireland)."
"Fourthly, the SNP resisted the tide of fatalism. Although not left-wing, its call for self-determination offered a belief in agency within the framework of an EU that empowers small countries (as can be seen in Ireland)."
"Scotland had a patriotic party that made some sense; England-Britain did not. Blair’s New Labour reforms broke the old constitution but failed – refused, indeed – to replace it with a modern one."
"England especially was deprived of any political representation of its interests as a historic nation."
Devolution is unfinished business!!
Yet, #LiarJohnson and Tory UK Government will have it no other way - because chaos and disunity serves their personal interests best!
Devolution is unfinished business!!
Yet, #LiarJohnson and Tory UK Government will have it no other way - because chaos and disunity serves their personal interests best!
"When these four factors are put together, we can start to understand how a deep sense of pointlessness and political that was entirely justified ennui gripped the souls of the English outside the metropolitan centres."
"They were invited to project their malaise onto the European Union."
Many MPs proclaimed that it had been their 'life's work' to agitate and advocate for UK to leave the EU but yet, failed to make any plans known publicly or even, to recount the benefits from Brexit for ALL!
Many MPs proclaimed that it had been their 'life's work' to agitate and advocate for UK to leave the EU but yet, failed to make any plans known publicly or even, to recount the benefits from Brexit for ALL!
"Two larger questions are now worthy of consideration: how did a historically experienced ruling class allow this to happen in the first place – what went wrong at the top?; and how did half of the country, despite this, see through it and remain Remainers? "
"The answer to the first question is that the ruling elite did not simply weaponise anti-European sentiment to further their own hedge-fund, Vladimir Putin-backed, greed."
"The whole lot of them are trapped in the collapse of agency they brought about in the belief that not really being part of the EU – being half-in and half-out – would save their Britain from becoming like other countries."
"They want to be in Europe to benefit from the considerable pickings but didn’t want to Europeanise the UK with a codified constitution that would have prevented their lucrative corruptions."
"The right were onto the depth of the discontent and its dangers more swiftly in the United States. Here, the one politician who grasped that we needed to ‘end the shame’ was Boris Johnson. He understood that to do so required a patriotic story and echoed Donald Trump’s."
"He set out to make Britain great again. Oddly enough, to do so he had to lean into the need for ideas – and came up with sovereignty."
"Sovereignty would restore belief in the way we govern ourselves, re-establish the economy on a world scale, end the fatalism of neoliberal politics, take globalisation and shake it by the tail, and provide the patriotic narrative that the English craved."
"One half of us saw through this."
There is a saying..."You can fool some of the people some of the time but, you can't fool all of the people all of the time"!
There is a saying..."You can fool some of the people some of the time but, you can't fool all of the people all of the time"!
"As Brexit slowly fails as a psychological project, the Brexit media will become increasingly hysterical – pillorying such attitudes as ‘woke’ or worse. But we will stubbornly continue with them because they are grounded."
"When New Labour was introducing new parliaments and, in effect, giving Scotland and Wales – and, in a different way, Northern Ireland – new constitutional projects of self-government, ..."
"...there was an opportunity to extend the process to England by initiating a new settlement for the whole of the UK. This moment has passed. Great Britishness is now irrevocably appropriated by Brexit."
The li'l boat with the union jack has sailed far away and over the horizon!
The li'l boat with the union jack has sailed far away and over the horizon!
"Once again, Boris Johnson understands this."
Credit where credit is due!
Credit where credit is due!
"Scotland is crucial to his success because Britishness now means a single union under Downing Street, which demands crushing New Labour’s half-modernisation: freedom of information, human rights, Scottish autonomy, the Good Friday Agreement, a London Mayor elected on PR system."
" – all of the initial steps towards the democratisation of ‘elected dictatorship’ that the reform movement won, ‘global Britishness’ must now reverse."
How many UK citizens knowingly voted in EU Ref 2016 for UK to dismantle all progress achieved in what was once a democracy?
How many UK citizens knowingly voted in EU Ref 2016 for UK to dismantle all progress achieved in what was once a democracy?
Can this be what is intended by #LiarJohnson's favourite euphemism of 'levelling up'?
It gives 'Back to the Future' rather a tragic interpretation!
The tragedy is that time and tide wait for no man, woman or child...and that the world advances forwards to a progressive Future.
It gives 'Back to the Future' rather a tragic interpretation!
The tragedy is that time and tide wait for no man, woman or child...and that the world advances forwards to a progressive Future.
"There has to be a counter-patriot argument to initiate a different kind of democracy to Johnson’s. The way to take Britain back is first to celebrate the independence of our countries and then join together in a free association."
"It is the only definitive way to burst the Brexit project and, at the same time, as English, to take confidence in ourselves."
"But the crucial issue is that England must free itself of our oppressive elected dictatorship – and the only way we can do this is to break the ‘British’ narrative. Break the spirit of Johnson and his despicable crew, and England can become the country we deserve."
"The elite had indeed misled us and our democracy was a hollow sham. It needed to be rejected. But it was our democracy that was the problem, not the EU."
"Now we have something even less democratic that is becoming more authoritarian by the week. So, once more, we must change the rules of the game. We in England must again seek our independence, this time from the real cause of our misery – the Great British state. "
"Why will this break the gridlock of division? Because we Remainers will be leaning across to shake the hands of Leave voters and, instead of telling them that they were wrong or misled, ..."
"...we will be saying something positive: good try, well done, thank you for booting out the old elite, but the new lot are just as bad."
"Under Cameron we had charlatans led by a crook. Now we have crooks led by a charlatan."
#indyref2 🏴
#ScottishIndependence 🏴
"Under Cameron we had charlatans led by a crook. Now we have crooks led by a charlatan."
#indyref2 🏴
#ScottishIndependence 🏴
"Democracy is one of the universal core values and principles of the United Nations. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the principle of holding periodic and genuine elections by universal suffrage are essential elements of democracy."
"These values are embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and further developed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which enshrines a host of political rights and civil liberties underpinning meaningful democracies."
ohchr.org/en/Issues/Rule…
ohchr.org/en/Issues/Rule…
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