Can we dial back a bit, to the poster (Salty?) who asked why so many people aged 60 - 80 voted Leave? My MIL, and her husband being the 2 I think of first (possibly my DPs and FIL plus his partner too, though we never discuss politics). Their children and spouses (all in our 40s) pretty much all voted Remain, and our family includes 2 Eastern European immigrant DILs who are clearly personally affected.
I was struck on a different referendum thread that someone said that we should pay attention to the views of the 60+ generation because they (unlike us) remember what the country was like pre EU, and although that's true I also think that that generation have not come to terms with the fact that globalisation means that a Leave vote won't dial us back to the economic conditions of the 1970s. The fact is that as a country the UK barely exports much 'stuff', and the importance of having the UK manufacture things to sell either at home or abroad has not been something that any post Thatcher government has been interested in assisting. The result is the loss of lots of respected, respectable, skilled manual jobs, which used to pay enough to support a family (ship-building, mining, making ceramics etc in the Potteries etc). The alternative employment available is often zero hour, minimum wage stuff, which isn't as high status.
These people (often men, mostly white) should be forgiven for feeling unsettled and insecure even though I expect many would find this condescending, and I feel that they used to be Labour's core constituency, but that Labour no longer know how to represented them. Principled ideology is all well and good, but it doesn't make people proud of themselves. I sense that behind a lot of the anti immigration/political correctness/health and safety gone maaad/ England flag waving shtick out there is a feeling that the white working class aren't secure and are frightened.
These are the people that mainstream politicians need to represent properly, and I am afraid that the current parties just don't. Labour is falling apart and up its own arse, the Lib Dems are incorrigibly middle class, and no one will convince me that the Tories are capable of looking after anyone but the wealthiest and pretending to care about middle England. I am sceptical that a "progressive alliance" of the current parties would be able to put old baggage aside and come up with something new which genuinely supports the fears of the white working class, while not shitting on the middle class, or being so revolutionary that big business is scared off to our EU neighbours.
Basically I think we need the anti UKIP, run by the good guys, who are smart enough to figure out what the bad guys are doing. Anyone else agree?
P.S. Thanks for the Irish Times article: totally captures what's wrong with the business of politics today, now all we need are some decent responses. Let's hope the Democrats can find a way.