Anyone else baffled by this portrayal of the EU as progressive and liberal

[Roonerspism]

It struck me today watching the march that the EU is now being protrayed as this liberal force across European states promoting fair standards for all.

From the moment I knew I no longer believed in the EU, about five years ago, it was because I saw it as the exact opposite.

And it was this that underpinned my vote to Leave.

I'm essentially left leaning and feel increasingly lost in this sea of protests!

The EU has never meant "Europe" to me and is rather the desire for a distant superstate with power in the most powerful few countries. Indeed, the current austerity placed on the Southern European countries, to the benefit of the north seems to go unnoticed to the devastated UK youth who seem not to consider the hugely unemployed youth in south Europe.

This is a capitalist project and not a humanitarian one. The reason for free movement of people as a core concept is not because it's nice to travel but solely to ensure corporations have access to a mobile and cheap workforce this encouraging greater integration. Never mind if this decimates the country of origin.

The misery of the infliction of a single currency on countries as disparate as Germany and Greece and the subsequent power held by Germany will cause untold suffering for at least a generation.

The talks to promote TTIP have largely been held in secret and further underlines the utterly undemocratic nature of this regime.

Yet here we all are. Waving our EU flags.

I'm utterly bemused. Am I mad?!?!?!

from another small opinion poll of course. Not a real figure !

Yes, similarly the leavers objected to the poll that suggested most of the educated had voted in.

If we are going to give no credence to one, you can't give it to another. Its just confirmation bias.

Correct. The only poll with any credence is the big one we did the other week.

I object to all the other stats being thrown about. Got told the other day that the UK has 3 million racists...

Lolo excellent article

"This despondent analysis reflects the utterly bankrupt state of Britain’s so-called left. It can only mean that the left – including Corbyn – lacks any faith in its capacity to lead the British public towards a more progressive future. It does not believe that the majority of people support progressive policies, nor that it can persuade them to do so. The only way to ensure that ‘left-wing’ preferences can triumph is to rely on a fundamentally undemocratic institution to ‘lock them in’. (The same occurs domestically as ‘progressives’ rely on the entirely undemocratic House of Lords to uphold human rights and resist austerity measures.) In this sense, the Brexit debate tells us more about what Britons think of one another than what they think of the EU. And the dominant feelings are clearly fear and loathing"

Correct. The only poll with any credence is the big one we did the other week.

Ah but with such a small % difference no one would make decisions on that :)

I think that what has happened is immensely positive. Someone described it as stirring the glass - the racism, the resentment has been brought to the surface but it was always there, and now we can't ignore it and we must tackle it together. If people feel they have no voice, they don't speak out and they can't be challenged.

I am dispirited about the identity crisis within Labour but I think that was inevitable since the Blair years tbh. It's funny how, even with all the backstabbing that's been going on this week amongst the Tories, that the media downplays the divisions much more, even the left wing press.

Oh for goodness sake! You won - get over it!! And no, I haven't read the full thread.

Argy

Yay ! A big thumb !☺
We seem to have reasoned discussion from both sides , as on this thread. This cant be right. Has mumsnet been spoofed?

great link MrsVilliers!

I especially like this bit
'Had the EU said way back at the beginning “we’re proposing to knock all your countries together and make one big one” (which was the project from the start and is the only way the Euro can possibly work), nobody would have considered it for a moment; so instead, it’s been smuggled in, bit by bit, year by year, all based on the principle “we know what’s best for you”.'

and this:

'You and I were brought up to be able to go down the well to where your intuitions are, and come back with a usably coherent description.
Lots of people don’t do that; they have the intuitions but can’t articulate them, so they hang the feel of it on anything they can find, eg “foreigners”. If you demonstrate to them that what they’re saying is wrong, they just look uncomfortable and shift ground, because it was never about that in the first place.
Just because they can’t articulate, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem or that they should be ignored; they’re humans with real, immediate problems. Yes, a very few will be impossible neurotic bigots at a deep psychological level, but the majority are simply trying to say something and can’t manage it. The happy middle-class urban world tends to mock this or be sanctimonious about it in a PC way (“racists!”); I find this cruel and disgusting.

Remember, we don’t have a “working class” any more; it’s been split up and invisible-ised, in your lifetime. Using the fundamental British class snobbery that nobody wishes to think of themself as “working class”, the brighter end was dressed-up in middle-class fancy dress (home ownership, university) and saddled with huge debts (mortgages, tuition fees). The hopeless end was left as a festering invisible underclass. The remainder (majority) of the decent but minimally-skilled thus lost the articulate support of their now middle-class colleagues, along with their identity — this was when Thatcher was deliberately smashing up the country’s industrial base so there were no longer obviously identifiable things like “miners” or “steelworkers” but just a fragmented mess that could be exploited, along with terminally demonised unions.
The outcome is zero-hours contracts etc without any serious mechanism for fighting back, and a despairing sense of being unrepresented at any level.'

None of which is a reason to come out of the EU and risk these low paid people's incomes further.

Its like cutting your leg off because your arm hurts, the leg will feel a whole lot worse, but you won't notice the arm.

really really missing the point there Smallfox
sneering at 'turkeys voting for christmas'

I repeat:
'Just because they can’t articulate, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem or that they should be ignored; they’re humans with real, immediate problems. Yes, a very few will be impossible neurotic bigots at a deep psychological level, but the majority are simply trying to say something and can’t manage it. The happy middle-class urban world tends to mock this or be sanctimonious about it in a PC way (“racists!”); I find this cruel and disgusting'

and:
'The outcome is zero-hours contracts etc without any serious mechanism for fighting back, and a despairing sense of being unrepresented at any level.'

There's no point engaging with smallfox1980 she will in no way accept even the tiniest chance a Leave voter may have had a valid reason for their vote. It simply does not enter her head that she could be wrong or partially wrong.

ok, thanks for the headsup Asprilla11 :o

and you think they will be represented now how?

Really? You think the conservatives are going to represent those in Hartlepool?

Or do you think those pesky EU regulations that cost British business so much will go first? You know like the one that states that you have to give temporary workers the same conditions as full time, or the working time directive, or a host of others?

What about the loss of EU funding to these areas, even the bits that go direct to the councils, do you think Westminster will fund them?

Don't fucking pretend to me like this was some kind of left wing rising up of the people.

Sad fact is, and I'm not sneering, that the people bought the rhetoric, they have wilfully done themselves harm.

Do not ever presume to tell this Northerner, this person born in Hartlepool and raised in County Durham about the "north" and people's voices. Where the fuck were you during the miners strike? Where the fuck were you when they closed Redcar Steel works? Where the fuck where you when the Tories slashed funding dramatically to all the Labour voting councils?

I tell you where presuming to tell people on the internet that they don't know what they are talking about. Tell you where I was? Campaigning and organising for UK uncut, working in food banks, teaching in North London comprehensives when someone of my qualifications could have been doing something else.

Your presumptions that I am sneering, or anything else, see some of us have lived through this before, we know the writing on the wall, and it isn't some working class revolution.

hey, take it easy Smallpox you'll never get to sleep if you start ranting and raving at this late hour!

You might also want to apologise for your autocorrect there shining before you get a rant about your 'intellectual calibre'

But you don't have any Dacre, you're a Lexiter.

Voting out because you think things will get better for the left shows little rigour of thought.

I think that what has happened is immensely positive. Someone described it as stirring the glass - the racism, the resentment has been brought to the surface but it was always there, and now we can't ignore it

I take it you've not had any racial abuse directed at you, or your family then?

As I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be so quick to try and put a positive spin on it, if that were the case.

When people start getting physically assaulted and worse, lets see how "positive" you find things then?

It's very kind of you to hang around and persevere in showing us the error of our sloppy brains small.

No worries Dacre, you can't help it I suppose.

Poor Cherie - being kept up at this late hour because Tone's bricking it about the Chilcot Report....