Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

Is it weird? Why is it logical that a British expat in Spain should have a vote, but a Spanish expat in Britain shouldn't? As an unquestionable 'anywhere' that would be my instinctive response.

I was thinking more about the part of the comment that said that had Blair put some restrictions on immigration, as other EU countries have, she wondered if people on the left would have complained that it was racist somehow, given that so many seem to take that attitude to any attempts to control immigration.

But as far as the idea that someone in Spain could vote about Britain leaving the EU. Essentially having joined the EU, that would mean any nation would no longer have the ability for it's citizens to decide what would be best for them as a people. They might not be able to get the votes to decide to leave the EU at all if they had enough people from other places living there, which seems like a pretty significant impingement on their existence as a nation-state.

The traditional UK university experience where students leave home to reside at their university acts like a big conveyor belt taking young people

A good point, and unfortunately contributes to their sense that if the university educated crowd vote a certain way it's a more educated way and so it must be the correct way! When in fact they're just in a different social milieu and have different vested interests.

Some of this citizenship business seems to come down to where does the basis for that lie? I live in federal system, so I am a citizen of my nation, and a resident of my province. If I move to a different province I vote for my MP there, I can vote for an MLA (provincial legislature) there, and whatever sort of local government that is relevant. That province takes responsibility for my education, health care, I pay them provincial taxes. I just have to register into their system. I can't of course vote in my old province any more. The principle is total free movement for citizens within the nation.

My understanding has always been that the EU was not meant to set up a sort of federal system where European countries became like provinces, that they were to retain political control over national concerns.

If a lot of people are thinking about it that way, it probably should be expected that others will push back. It's not really the sort of thing that should be changed without being explicitly addressed.

They might not be able to get the votes to decide to leave the EU at all if they had enough people from other places living there, which seems like a pretty significant impingement on their existence as a nation-state

Well quite. In similar fashion, I think Labour has been said to benefit electorally from high net immigration because of the tendency of immigrants to be more likely to vote Labour. Hence cities currently being islands of red in seas of blue. The irony would be if that self-same high immigration were implicated in them finally losing their Red Wall of working class indigenous voters.

Goosefoot I realise you are not in the UK but are you aware some Commonwelath citizens here on short term work visas got to vote in the referendum while citizens of other EU countries who have been here for decades and UK citizens living in other EU nations for longer than (if I recall rightly) 5 years did not?

Here's an article about it from the time

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36316467

Voting in the UK is complex and there is often little 'fair' about it.

On universities, leaving home to attend university is the norm in England, and I think Wales, but not in Scotland where attending local universities is the norm.

I was the only pupil from my cohort at either my school or the neighbouring catholic one that went away to university and I only did so because there were only two universities in the UK offering my course at the time.

To pick up on the housing issue, different areas have very different circumstances, and unfortunately, so much of the debate is set with reference to London and the South East.

Within the parameters of my borough council, we have over 1000 empty social housing homes. Why? Because no one wants to live in them.

And this is the issue with social housing. You have to build it near amenities, near public transport, near transport networks, near shops and leisure facilities; otherwise, it fails. But land near all those features is expensive, and those homes also require land enough for viability (modern units need to be built with drives and car parking), so there's no land savings you can make on individual unit cost.

But even if you do build on such land in many areas of Britain, you essentially start overloading existing infrastructures -- which is the problem we now face in our area.

The answer is, pretty much, new towns. But the cost of establishing a new town is extortionate, and you have to attract employers with deals on tax and investment ... otherwise, there's no jobs. In short, you start talking about seriously big money.

So you might say, well, the solution is to encourage the retired to move out of their homes to smaller units, but that supposes there are viable smaller units for the retired to move to. And this is, again, an issue.

In my area, if you are elderly and infirm, you have three options: you can stay put and buy in care, you can put your name down to rent a low to medium assistance flat but the waiting list is about seven years, or you can try for a care home.

Very few elderly people actually need the kind of 24/7 care of a care home. And it's very expensive, and prone to crisis (all you need is a couple of workers to be sick, and a couple of people to be engaged in an emergency, and all of a sudden, you've gone below ratio if another incident occurs).

So the solution is to build low to medium assistance complexes of apartments with a 24 hour porter and nurse, but trying to get this model accepted is very difficult because it is a fairly new type of concept. The few authorities that have accepted it have no social care crisis I think York is one.

Was it Liverpool that was selling houses for a pound a few years back to anyone willing to sign up to renovate them and live there for a certain period?

(I may have imagined the price, it might have been more than a quid but was something very token)

We have reasonably good housing for elderly people here with high flats set aside for them with live in wardens. Contrary to popular belief not all high flats are/were drug ridden hellholes, though we used to have a fair few of those around too.

Also social housing units have been flying up since right to buy was ended but these have largely been to replace tracts of substandard housing rather than in addition to existing properties.

I realise you are not in the UK but are you aware some Commonwelath citizens here on short term work visas got to vote in the referendum while citizens of other EU countries who have been here for decades and UK citizens living in other EU nations for longer than (if I recall rightly) 5 years did not?

Yes, I can certainly see why some found that annoying, but I think in terms of an explanation it's understandable, it's essentially the remnants of a completely different system, with a completely different basis.

I really wonder, I cannot picture the people of France, for example, being particularly thrilled if a bunch of Spanish or English or Italian citizens wanted to vote in a referendum about something particularly dear to the identity or sovereignty of the French people, even if they had been working in France for a long time. I don't know that they'd be particularly apologetic about it either.

I have a lot of doubts about the stability of the EU in its current for, TBH, and I don't really see explicitly making it more like a federal state as going over well with a lot of people across the whole EU.

I'm finding this thread fascinating. Thanks everyone.

One thing that was touched on very briefly earlier but not followed up, was the fact that most 2017 labour voters in leave seats actually voted remain in the referendum.

I think this ties to the finding that Corbyn was the #1 issue (maybe this was code for wokeness?) and Brexit second for many.

I think this is interesting and also provides some hope that we can come back together as a country. I live in London, and around 40% of people in my constituency voted leave. The whole country is split, not really geographically. Not everyone in the former red wall voted leave, not everyone in London or Manchester voted remain. I'm also a GC feminist and that experience has very much turned me off wokeness. I think there are ways that we can come back together.

Loving learning so much about FE, labour market and housing stuff.

It would be naïve to think wokeness is the fundamental problem with Corbyn. He's seen as a far left extremist by many, an ignoramus, a terrorist sympathiser and a 70s throwback.

He was never going to win and Labour were fools to elect him. Not least because at the time he was being touted as the man to win back Scotland when all we saw was an IRA sympathiser who didn't recognise Scotland as the different from England country it is. He literally didn't know Scotland has a different legal system. I had Labour members from south of the border hurling abuse at me for pointing out he would never, ever win here before he was elected leader.

He literally didn't know Scotland has a different legal system
Which is pub quiz level stuff. Ironically for the uni hivemind who supported him, Corbyn is himself uneducated.

I wonder what the UK would look like if all areas had affordable, suitable, good quality housing and all areas had stable, full-time jobs that paid enough to live on (you know, the basics).

The standard of living in many parts of England is poor.
The nationalist Scots, the nationalist Welsh and the nationalist Irish have an outlet to fight inequalities of wealth.
Yet English nationalism is always condemned as racist.

The British ruling elite hide behind the coat tails of 56 million English people and nobody seems to acknowledge this.

The occasional ribbing I got for my (audibly) Scottish accent in London was liveable with, but I couldn’t help noting that there were basically no WC or Regional English accents outside the support staff in our large firm... I’m always shocked at the blatant classism in TV programming, certainly in the BBC output, where having a regional or WC accent is often used as a lazy stereotype to signal a dim or dodgy character... even now I am still seeing it in kids’ TV, with the leader or boss/narrator given an RP or “Southern” accent (notwithstanding the range of token accents in the wider cast eg Octonauts/Hey Duggee). And let’s not even start on Enid Blyton !

I’ve often thought that to be regional English must be frustrating, to face such prejudice in your own country.

There is still quite some stigma in some snobbish circles in Scotland having an “ordinary” accent, but obviously the rise of the SNP and so on has made a big difference. Listening to Nicola Sturgeon with her clear but unmistakeablely Scottish voice this morning was refreshing - things have moved on a lot in my lifetime.

I should have perhaps said “subservient” character rather than dim, or dodgy. When I wrote Dim or dodgy I’d moved on to Enid Blyton / Agatha Christie/Downtown in my mind..!

There is still quite some stigma in some snobbish circles in Scotland having an “ordinary” accent, but obviously the rise of the SNP and so on has made a big difference. Listening to Nicola Sturgeon with her clear but unmistakeablely Scottish voice this morning was refreshing - things have moved on a lot in my lifetime.

I'm not sure this has so much to do with the SNP as with changes in the education system.

When I was at school we were still in the tail end of an era when speaking Scots was frowned upon. We were told we were wrong, stupid, should speak 'properly' if we said 'cannae' instead of 'can't' or ammunt' instead of 'am not'. People a few years older than me got the belt for using ordinary Scots words.

That changed with the introduction of Standard Grades when Scottish literature and history were made integral parts of the curriculum. I'm of an age to have sat a mixture of O Grades and Standard Grades and the shift in thinking didn't really filter down to primary level for a few more years but by the time my own kids started school the change was very noticeable. Far from being frowned upon Scots was celebrated.

I also think it is worth noting that the snobbishness against it was always somewhat regional. While the middle classes round Glasgow sneered at thee local dialect that was never the case in the north east. Aberdonians of all classes have always been proud of their language.

In terms of England's regional dialects a big change I have noticed in my lifetime is a reduction in the number of actors speaking in northern or west country dialects. There don't seem to be nearly as many working class people in the profession. There was always 'BBC English' in terms of news readers etc but there seemed a lot more variation in drama and comedy in the past.

I also find the labelling of regional terms as 'problematic' by the woke types depressing. They seem desperate to make everybody conform to a very narrow pattern of 'approved' language with no thought for the rich diversity of English dialects which I find a huge shame. I love that people in any given region can pin point where people are from by their accents and dialects, often down to precise towns and villages. Why we can't celebrate that diversity is never explained.

Arnold, which regional terms have been deemed problematic?

My last uni and my wider friend group are very woke and I've not come across that (yet).

I've been lurking and reading for the last few days: thank you all so much for such an intelligent and wide-ranging discussion of so many topics. I'm 39, got 3 As at A-level (including History!) and a 2:1 from King's, and still know very little about the history of this country, its political landscape and how we've ended up where we are; this thread has been extremely informative.

Re packing's mention of supported living for the elderly - this is a big issue that has huge consequences for the NHS, as well as housing (elderly people living in big family-sized houses that they can't keep up, paying for hugely expensive carers that can change every month, etc).

Whilst no one should be forced to give up their home, there certainly should be more attractive options made available to the elderly who may only need minimal, occasional support. I know a 90-something year old who has (only within the last 5ish years) moved into a high-rise supported-living block. Each resident has their own flat, with bedroom, accessible bathroom & kitchen, & living room. There's a porter on-site 24/7, and I think regular visits from carers (not sure how often, but hopefully on a needs-based basis). There's a large communal area on the ground floor where the residents can hang out together, chat, watch tv, or they can visit each other's flats. It's a nice, friendly, sociable environment - she has loads of mates!

It seems a very good set-up for those who can't/don't wish to live alone with random carers dropping in. Presumably such places could be provided with varying levels of on-site staffing and support, depending on the differing levels of need. One of the biggest problems faced by the NHS is 'bed-blocking' by elderly patients who cannot be discharged until an appropriate (and usually complex and expensive) care package has been put in place. Places like this - both for temporary and long-term usage - could ease that problem significantly.

(And this is in Brixton, south-east London.)

Use of terms like pet, love, hen comes up frequently. Also recently seen use of queer in the sense of odd, as is still common in parts of England labelled unacceptable. The Amercian use of guys as a collective, neutral term for a group of people is another so this isn't just limited to UK regional variation.

Try saying 'folk' on FWR, Tocopherol. And then run away, fast.

Ah, OK. I see what you mean. How tiresome - perhaps me and my friends are a bit too old and missed those developments. I graduated several years ago and things certainly seem to have worsened in the last 2/3. Or perhaps because I was up North?

Lol@ folk!

The regional terms found all around the UK do seem to be problematic.
Locally ducky and luvvy is commonplace and their use tends to be sneered at, particularly in the workplace, but these really are just terms of endearment.
Those words tend to be used mostly by the older generation and the established local families and seems to mark them all out as a bit yokel.

Their language deserves more respect.

It all boils down to indigenous people (loosely speaking) again.

An English friend of mine called my cat "my little chicken" and I was so confused. Not offended, it's just not a term of endearment I was previously aware of. Meanwhile Americans expect us all to speak with a generic vaguely posh accent.

We need a word to describe established extended families that have settled in an area that doesn't refer to class or ethnicity.

The word 'indigenous' sort of works but has connotations of history long gone.