Was Brexit Just Populism

[RBeer]

Is that what is was? Take away the mantras and slogans.

Was the UK caught up in this Populism wave and just by mere coincidence did it happen to cross the Ref.

It could have crossed paths with any other arc.

The US Populism crossed with Trump and insofar that is very damaging, it's not fatal.

Brexit , however, is for ever.

'Populism' is about supporting measures that have immediate appeal to a current electorate in a position to vote you in or out, and prioritising this over other wider or long term social needs.

So for example, if you were thinking about whether to close a local hospital, a populist politician would base their decision on the loudest voices of those who use the hospital at the point in time when the decision is being taken.

A populist politician would basically prioritise how it looks on the front page of a red top newspaper, and whether those affected might be persuaded to vote/not to vote for them.

Kaija, he ripped his argument to shreds. Who was saying we stay in the single market and the customs union, with free movement of people, governed by the ECJ with massive budget contributions. Give some full quotes in context. I dont remember a single leaver person saying that.

I certainly do remember. What leavers were saying was that ending freedom of movement wouldn't mean losing membership of the single market. It was only once the 27 put everyone straight on that score and it became clear that we would not be having our cake and eating it that the tune changed. Even Farage pointed to Norway and Switzerland as successful models for us to follow.

For goodness sake Kaija, why not just accept that the majority of the voting public in the UK don't agree with you. The voted to leave. So we are leaving.
Call it what you like.
I call it common sense and realism. I also call it an escape.

You sound completely allergic to foreigners, Trying...

Nobody voted to leave the customs union and/or the single market. You might think that you want to, but it wasn't the question on the ballot paper.

I'm gutted at how expensive it is to go abroad now. Going on holiday in a couple of weeks didn't realise how awful the pound was til went to change some. Worried about all the price rises next year as well. Widh we had never booked the bloody thing but did it well before Brexit.

Most people I know who voted leave didn't have a clue what they were really voting for. No one did, there was no plans so how could it anything other than populist. Just a set of weird concepts around sovereignty and nationalism.

Fawful on what evidence are you accusing Trying of xenophobia? You ought to justify it as it's a strong charge.

If you have a problem with the word 'escape', I read that as escape from a political institution.

I think both sides were selling whatever they liked and that's what populism is. Right now no one seems to know what this nation has actually bought though.

Ts taken less than a week to show what Populism has brought to America.

Populism is telling people what you think they want to here, with particular emphasis on short-term, easy solutions that appeal to our binary human instinct to 'Other' different groups when things aren't going so well - immigrants' or the 'EU' this time, benefit claimants, Afro caribbeans, Jews, Catholics, witches etc in times past.

In our own time, you can see this in eg the sixth months of tabloid front covers highlighting the scourge of immigration (one in every five, on average) in the run up to the vote.

It's attractive because it's easy. It appeals to our desire to make our decisions faster and with less effort (Daniel Galvin's book 'Blink' is good on explaining subconscious discrimination), especially if it chimes with personal experience in your immediate circle, or vicarious 'experience' fed by the media.

Ha! Malcolm Gladwell not Daniel Galvin! Too early in the morning.

Figment That explains very nicely how Leave voters have been stereotyped as racist, ignorant and uneducated. It explains very well how they have been 'othered' so they and their views and experiences can be scorned and ignored.

And I theorise that in an environment that strongly prohibits 'othering' of people of a different skin colour, race, nationality, religion, sex or sexual orientation, pretty much the only 'othering' outlet is those of a different class or a different age. And the referendum result (when things certainly 'weren't going well' for some) brought out some shocking classism and ageism.

Fawful, surely it was obvious what I meant. Escape from the political iron grip of the EU. I am not aware there is anything else I need to escape from and this thread is about the EU.
And I have no problem with foreigners. I do, however, think immigration needs to be under the control of our own Government. That thought is completely different to having a problem with foreigners.
Are you able to understand the difference?

And Paleblue can accuse me of whatever they like.
I do not value their opinion.

As she is unfamiliar with you, Paleblue was questioning another poster's "accusation" of your views, dear Trying. HTH.

Well Paleblue, Trying wants FOM to end 'ASAP' and she doesn't think EU citizens settled here should be granted the right to remain (and that if they want to carry on raising their British kids they should take them 'back home' with them), so all I'm commenting on is how much she is itching to see the back of us. She pops up on these threads to make that point over and over again in short curt sentences, which to me denote a lot of aggressiveness.

paleblue Most of the theorising on othering focuses on the nuances between the sort of othering that can be defined as "view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself." and which results in discrimination and worse "I understand now that nothing but ”otherness” killed Jews, and it began with naming them, by reducing them to the other. Then everything became possible. Even the worst atrocities like concentration camps or the slaughtering of civilians in Croatia or Bosnia." and that which is about knowing those external to the understood self. There is a Chinese saying "He who understands other people has knowledge; he who understands himself is seeing clearly."

Without doubt my red haired DD gets othered all the time, partly because it is regarded by some bigots as the last difference they can target, but does that result in any real discrimination in her life? Does it reflect an ongoing institutional discrimination against those with her hair colour. No. Does she think that she should enjoy the same protection from the effects of othering that are given to her friends of different ethnicities. Definitely No.

If you want to talk about how the way in which old people are othered results in poor care and a failure to fully provide for those who do not have the resources to care for themselves then I will agree that is shocking. However if you want to suggest that questioning why well off older voters living in areas of low immigration and with little experience of it were motivated to vote against the EU because of immigration, and such a constituency did exist in the leave vote, some are family members, then I would theorise that is trying to understand, not othering. I would also theorise that the reason was because they had been led to other immigrants by right wing politicians and the right wing press for their own ends. It is popularism in the sense of supporting a popular dissatisfaction but it was also creating that dissatisfaction by othering a group so that so that they can exploit it to their own ends.

"I voted leave because I wanted £350 million per week extra for the NHS. It was on the bus! Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both said we would get it. Boris Johnson is still in the government so it must be true. Theresa May would not have put a lying manipulator into such an important job.

Slightly paraphrased, but more or less what DM (85) said to me yesterday

I'm calling it demagoguery myself, which is what democracy can always collapse into when it is unguarded.

Or mass hysteria.

I am wrong. It's not Populism. It's nationalism.

FloweringDeranger agree with your post.

Nationalistic Populism perhaps?

It's certainly not a well thought out decision made by a mature democracy.

Cardinal, yes, that's a good term for it.