To ask why opposition seems so powerless against the resurgence of the right on our continent?

[damaged]

Italy and Salvini being a prime example at the moment, but they are obviously not the only ones. Here at home we have moved to the right, and our future is currently uncertain.

It seems to be a trend in a lot of places, to a greater or lesser extent. We are next door to delightful people like Erdogan and Orban, and Trump refers to the EU as “foe”.

Meanwhile Bannon is apparently in Europe, preaching his ideals.

What can we do about it?

Why does the opposition seem so weak, even though there is opposition.

"People have given their opinions and experiences only to be told to pipe down by others and that it is no concern and they are wrong."

I have only seen people asking questions (what is changing? - that is not being told to pipe down. Neither is asking for information/facts). and also my original point. Tolerance of intolerance gives rise to ever more intolerant groups. I could also add that the overton window has moved which makes it easier for hate groups to rise. And gives the excuse that disagreeing with someone is oppressing them and their valid views.

.

Furthermore, when bien pensant liberals claim this has been 'good for the economy', they're being disengenuous. Indeed, it's meant GDP growth, but has not necessarily meant the growth of GDP per capita. In fact, in recent years, it's meant the opposite, as wages ARE surpressed at the bottom, and inflation is driven up at a faster rate than earnings.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-impact-of-migration-on-uk-population-growth/

In any case, why is it that people who are shocked and worried about what is happening in terms of the swinging pendulum are so apparently voiceless?

I agree with you scottishdiem re. the tolerance of intolerance paradox.

Is immigration not a scapegoat for lowered standards of living in general - for reasons other than immigration?

Ironically, Scottishdiem, the Overton Window has been shifted by supposed 'progressives' too. We see this with the intolerance of TERFs and sex-hating puritanical feminists, and with the egregious claims of 'offence' to stifle dissent among the snowflake generation. THese pearl-clutchers are jsut as bad as the reactionary conservatives of old.

And I say all this as an old-school socialist and internationalist. I'm not ideologically against migration, but it needs to be managed responsibly, empirically and without sentimentality.

"That is not the case for those millions of the indigenous populaiton who have been left behind by demographic, social and economic change."

Define left behind? But I do accept that globalisation has changed our economic perceptions and what type of country we are in response to those global changes. What I find confusing is that because manufactuing jobs have move to other countries that immigrants in this country are the cause of that.

The non-organic population growth of the UK is between 5 and 10 million since 1991, and services and infrastructure have not kept pace with this."

Organic?

Immigration is not to blame for that. Immigrants come here, get jobs (or steal them from the ogranic population depending on your point of view) and then pay taxes. It is a mixture of government who dont spend taxes on infrastructure and nimbys who dont want infrastructure built that means we have services not able to cope. Without immigrants we would have services that would not be able to deliver services due to staff shortages.

And do you think your partner is the face of acceptable face of change and that other people who complain of change arent talking about your partner?

Italy is effectively being used as part of a people trafficking route; the Italian government is having to deal with this, medically aid, and try to process the migrants without much or any help from the EU, so I can see why there is opposition to this.

The NGOs aren't helping by picking the migrants up. It would be better to tow the boats back to Libya.

"Italy is effectively being used as part of a people trafficking route; the Italian government is having to deal with this, medically aid, and try to process the migrants without much or any help from the EU, so I can see why there is opposition to this."

On this I agree that the EU has been a failure for the most part (except Germany and Sweden). People trafficking needs to be addressed. It exploits the vulnerable.

"The NGOs aren't helping by picking the migrants up. It would be better to tow the boats back to Libya."

Yeah not sure that dragging boats with a propensity to sink anywhere is a good thing.

Though to be fair, the immigration "crisis" numbers have fallen dramatically.

But nobody seems to wonder why they are coming in the first place. Fleeing war seems a reasonable thing to do. And for those wondering why they might do it for economic reasons look around Western Europe and wonder where a lot of resources were plundered from in the first place. Then look at the politics we put in place when we left. We supported strong men dictators for a long time. In those countries we left it took a while (or never did) for democracy, the rule of law, police we can trust, education systems etc to take off. We hold those things as important and then wonder why people who dont have access to them also think they are good things to have.

I actually think the root of it is the press and career politicians. We are meant to be proud of our ‘free’ press and their free speech/lack of censorship, but in reality they are owned by a handful of elites who use them to push their own agendas. Even the BBC don’t seem to be reliable anymore and seem to be a lot more biased than in the past.
If people can’t get unbiased news, a lot start believing the views pushed by the papers. I don’t know how you could fix this, but maybe start by allowing investors/owners to only have interests in 1 news outlet and start making the punishments more severe when they knowingly print lies. I think it should be the same with politicians tbh, they shouldn’t be allowed to have a stake in/be owner of a news outlet or be on the board of large companies. There just seems to be far too much corruption and lying in politics now more than ever and it really muddies the waters. And don’t even get me started on their being proper repercussions for knowingly lying to try and sway how people vote (especially in something like a referendum). I think in cases where this can be proven there should be jail time. That might seem harsh, but something serious needs to be done to deter politicians, papers and news channels just spreading their own biased versions of events all the time just to suit their own agendas. It increasingly feels nowadays like our country is run by and for a handful of elites, rather than the majority of the nation.

But, Scottishdiem, the FT.com link I posted shows that while EU immigrants make a net contribution (paying taxes), non-EU immigrants - on average - don't. They take more from the system than they pay in. Therefore, your claim about paying taxes is demonstrably wrong.

Europe and the West have a choice - limited immigration and centrist government, or unlimited immigration and hard right / fascist government.

I would strongly prefer the former, but for some unfathomable reason the open-borders left is doing everything it can to precipitate the latter!

Can you provide any evidence of this? 250,000 marched against Trump on Friday no arrests, Tommy Robinson march on saturday (much smaller) - arrests.

I wasn't talking about the Trump march but generally there have been loads of instances when Antifa and other far left thugs have been violent, have sought to shut down debate (for example on University Campuses - Germaine Greer, Jordan Petersen, even Peter Tatchell!).

The Death of Truth
Interesting Guardian article.

That isnt correct commonarewe

It would be unlimited immigration and then a hard right / fascist government. Cant see a hard right gov supporting immigration at all.

Even then I think it would be a hard right / fascist government to prevent immigration.

But as I have said, we need immigrants and will need more of them so its going to be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Babycham1979, totally agree with everything you have said.

Exactly, Commonarewe. The sad irony is that it's the virtue-signallers and hand-wringers who will ultimately be responsible the the inevitable, and horrible, backlash. Yet, they'll never, ever learn.

Because European politics were swelled very far to the left. This is just a correction. Having one left wing party and one right wing party as your two biggest parties is better than having one far left and one centre left.

NotSuchaSmugMarriedNow1 has it bang on in their post. The pot has finally boiled over. I said this would happen when Blair opened the floodgates and i was 14 years old then FFS. Why the shock? It's been a long time coming and the kick back is, unsurprisingly, hard.

Scottishdiem, we need SOME of them (and selected ones, at that). Why do you think we need MORE of them? It's cheap labour that has driven-down our procutivity, and surpressed investment in capital, reseach and development. As other countries have invested in plant to automate productivity, we've relied on cheap, unskilled labour (again, driving down productivity AND wages).

To give one example fo the problems ahead, jsut imagine what will happen when Uber roll-out driverless cars. There will be tens of thousands of unskilled, young, angry men with poor language skills thrown into unemployment pretty much overnight. Then what? Social and economic unrest. And that's just a fraction of what's to come.

Brexiters aren't against immigration. They are against high levels of unsustainable immigration, damaging the local infrastructure, jobs and access to facilities. I don't care if 50 million immigrants are let in, as long as there are jobs and housing and education and accessible healthcare for everyone who lives here.

Scottish excellent posts. 👍🏼

Because European politics were swelled very far to the left. This is just a correction.

Where? I hope you’re not going to tell me Blair was left wing.

The reason the Tommy Robinson March erupted in violence is because a significant group of hard left activists mobilised to oppose it. Guess what? When violent idiots of opposing political stripes gather in the same spot, then violent idiocy occurs.

Great opinion piece in the Guardian over the weekend on why identity politics feeds and nourishes right wing movements. Simply put, threaten them with diversity and difference, and see the hackles rise. Emphasise similarity and sameness, and a different reaction occurs.

Another great irony that tickles me is that the racism of 'some' Brexiters that drove them to vote leave will result in more brown people in the UK, not fewer!

Fewer (white) EU immigrants will, inevitably mean more from the third world. The racist fantasies of Farage and Bojo of 'Commonwealth Immigration' will really mean cleaners and taxi drivers from Pakistan and NIgeria, Not teachers and lawyers from Australia and Canada!

Scottishdiem Yeah not sure that dragging boats with a propensity to sink anywhere is a good thing. If you beach them, the migrants are back on dry land. The NGOs are doing the people traffickers job for them, and saving them fuel costs. The traffickers rake in the money, stick the migrants on a large inflatable dinghy with a thimbleful of fuel, enough to get them outside the 12 mile limit, and then set them on their way. The NGOs are complicit by picking them up and taking them to Italy, Malta or Spain, as opposed to just towing them back to Libya.

Why do they come - as you say, they want what we have. The question for me is, why, despite the trillions that have been poured into Africa by the rest of the world from when I was a kid in the 70s, hasn't that money been used to improve their societies so they have the foundations of what we have? It's been 40 years at least since I saw the first film about the need to give aid.

The only constant is change. Get the level right and on the whole, people adapt.

Too much and too fast and you have reaction. Yet no-one listens in politics as they are too rigid in 'already being right' that people end up between a rock and a hard place with their vote.

All sides need to demonstrate some compromise and that isn't really happening. We are seeing reaction voting in the UK, EU and US yet - and this thread also demonstrates it - everyone is still so focused on being 'right' instead of listening and compromising that nothing will change.

The far right want no more immigration. The far left/left want open borders. The centrists want controlled immigration. Yet the centrist and far right are both labelled 'racist', so the centrist majority don't vote left as the left are not listening and compromising. When presented with 'like it or lump it' then don't be shocked when people say 'lump it'.