Only Britain has been forced to deal with a Brexdemic.
All countries have suffered Covid, but the UK has uniquely been exposed to the economic and moral damage of Brexit too. theguardian.com/business/2021/…
The good work of half a century of being closely integrated into Europe is being undone. The inconvenience and disruption make previous complaints about “Brussels bureaucracy” look like a sick joke.
The so-called red-wall seats of the north-east are being especially badly hit by Brexit. Just how long will it be before so many Brexiters wake up to the fact that they have been “had”?
And it is not just Brexit. It is what Brexit brought in its wake: the erosion of respect for the rule of law, and a general corruption and coarsening of standards.
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Deindustrialisation has shattered Labour's working class support base, and left millions of people in a confusing and fragmented society open to the Tory propaganda of tribal nationalism and culture wars. How can the opposition respond? #FBPA#FBPPR sussexbylines.co.uk/un-divide-to-c…
In the middle of the last century the Labour movement was deeply embedded in stable working class communities. The Tories were a mass membership party serving the middle class and hundreds of thousands of British businesses.
Since the middle of the last century the working and middle classes have crumbled as political forces. Now we have an 18th century style of politics in which the political and media minions of a sociopathic fragment of the super-rich manipulate a fragmented electorate.
Recent polls reinforce the message that we need a Progressive Alliance. With a divided opposition the Tories would almost certainly win a Parliamentary majority, whereas a united opposition would gain a clear victory.
A Progressive Alliance must not look like a cynical electoral manipulation devised by the party leaders. It has to emerge out of debate within and outside the parties. That's why the Compass campaign in Labour, LibDems and Greens is vital. @Neal_Compass compassonline.org.uk/campaigns/
It must be clear that a Progressive Alliance is about defending and strengthening our democracy, and pitting our values like truth, honesty, fairness, justice, cooperation and care against the populist right’s offering of lies, corruption, manipulation, fear, hatred and division
Deindustrialisation has shattered the class politics that dominated the last century. The Tories have taken full advantage, returning to the corrupt politics of 18th century oligarchy. The opposition needs a new political road map. Me in @SussexBylines sussexbylines.co.uk/un-divide-to-c…
The end of class politics resulting from deindustrialisation is by far the most important political development of our times. The Tories in their cynical way have rapidly adapted to it. The opposition, especially Labour, are still struggling to grasp what has happened.
By destroying much of the social base of the Labour movement deindustrialisation has opened up much of the working class to the bogus promise of social solidarity offered by right-wing nationalism.
As Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost analysts of the rise of Nazism warned, lies destroy democracy. By tolerating a serial liar like Johnson the House of Commons has become a cancer eating away our democracy. We can have democracy or the lies and liars. We cannot have both.
When lies they become endemic they breed fear, distrust, cynism and apathy, they destroy people's ability to make reasoned political judgements, they divide us into warring groups unable to converse with each other. They push society into a politics of raw emotion & brute power.
To have a reasoned disagreement with someone, you have to agree with them about almost everything. If you disagree about too much, you don't have a debate, you just have a shouting match, the other person seems mad or plain evil. That's why lies are so dangerous politically.
1/ #WhitePrivilege It is not anti-racism that has caused white working class kids to perform badly at school, and it's cynical and divisive of the Tories to suggest otherwise.
But there is clearly a problem among a segment of the white working class. So some thoughts.
2/ Deindustrialisation has hit the working class hard. Employment patterns, communities and working class organisations have crumbled. Millions of stable unskilled jobs have disappeared and those that remain are often in the gig economy.
3/ Since the 1970s patterns of working class life that had endured for generations have disappeared. Many working class people have adapted and thrived in the post-industrial economy, but many others are struggling in a less stable economy that demands higher skills.
Bercow says the Tories have become “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic”, and that "people are sick of lies, sick of empty slogans, sick of a failure to deliver.’’
This is what Starmer should be saying - the plain truth about the Tories.
I like Starmer, he's decent and intelligent, but he is a hopeless leader, like a rabbit frozen in the headlights. He should be rallying Labour support on all sides of the party through an all-out attack on the Tories - and there is so much to attack.
Starmer acts like he's in a courtroom. He's very good at it. But politics isn't like that. It's about the relentless repetition of simple emotionally charged messages, and Starmer is far too polite and reasonable for that.