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

I mourn Bob Crow.

I wonder if Corbyn would have come across better if he'd actually tried to explain why he wasn't keen on the EU (I also would assume it was for the reasons above).

Wow, great thread!

Packingsoap I think that's spot on as an analysis of the Eurozone's genesis and structural instability. I tend to read a wide range of stuff (deliberately) and I'm always struck by the fact that Yanis Varoufakis (Marxist, former finance minister of Greece during the Greek crisis) and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (economics editor of the Torygraph) give pretty much the same analysis, despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Add to that genuine concerns round the political role of the Commission (this is an old article from the Guardian, but an interesting one, articulating these worries from the perspective of Germany, in particular, Martin Schultz, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/21/eu-future-post-brexit-germany-split-european-government) and there are good reasons why one might be a Eurosceptic.

All the economic arguments I think were in favour of staying in the EU but outside the Eurozone. But there were political and constitutional reasons for being a Eurosceptic. The portrayal of Leavers as "thick, ignorant and racist" was a ludicrous over-simplification of a very complex political situation.

Ian Warren @election_data
If you're analysing the election but only looking at the 2017-2019 elections you're making a fundamental mistake. This graph from @jburnmurdoch is a hint as to why. Look at what has happened since 1997 to Labour's support amongst the working-classes.

I was a remainer but I have surprised myself with how relieved I am at the GE result. Not just because we get to end the deadlock but also because of the sense of people being listened to for the first time in decades. Or perhaps just by a quirk of our electoral process it looks as though they are being listened to.

I spoilt my ballot paper and now I feel that this was the right thing to do. I couldn’t vote LibDem (my natural home) because of TWAW. Labour ditto. Repulsed by Boris. So I found myself homeless but in some ways this feels apt. I’m a Londoner and I work in financial services. I have a high salary in an influential industry. I live about 2 miles from Westminster. It probably right that this election was not about me. We need to start listening to people and stop closing them down with accusations of racism when they say they don’t really want their home town to become an unrecognisable outpost of a foreign country whose language they can’t speak. This seems to me a reasonable thing to be concerned about. We don’t live in a joyful multicultural theme park and we should stop pretending that it’s all good for all people all the time.

Our biggest local issue is a persistent Roma begging and homelessness issue - small groups of Roma women are sleeping in every single doorway in our high st right now (usually with a male minder). At one point they were sleeping on the steps of our local (state) primary school and the caretaker had to move them on and wash the steps before school could open each morning. The begging is endemic. I have to brief my children on what to do if approached when I send them to the shop. It’s awful. I won’t say it’s superduper because some moronic Labour tweeter doesn’t want either to acknowledge the downsides or even allow other people to mention them.

This thread is a breath of fresh air.

Fantastic posts packing

What I've found interesting (and depressing) in my area this election is the disparity between working class and "underclass". I noticed that whereas previously there was a large stereotypically 'aspirational' chunk of middle class, that has now crept down to working class, who now view themselves as a very distinct population to the "underclass" - and don't want to pay for them, whereas they may have been happier to previously (or perhaps just didn't talk about it anyway). This change in attitude in working class populations has already been linked to negative media coverage of "scrounging", but I think it also is affected by positive "influence" (either influencers or just other WC people) on social media.

I've noticed more "keeping up with the joneses" from WC friends recently, and in comparison a lot less empathy with those who receive all of their income in benefits. Of course not you - your circumstances are different - it's that family down the road with their twenty seven kids and seventy four flat screen TVs. The kind of attitude I had only previously seen from the more snobby of my MC friends.

Packing, Barbara - I think I would have voted Lexit also on economic grounds (state aid, that sort of socialist-y thing) but the sticking point was a realistic view of whether we had an electorate who would have voted a government that left into power. I decided probably not, so voted Remain.

Great points packingsoapandwater.

I really wish we'd had a thread like this 3 years ago..

The unbelievable irony. I used to post on the referendum board and by God you refused to hear it then red.

Like you, AutumnRose1, I really tried back in the run up to the referendum and the sarcasm and vitriol was awful. It's been a long three and a half years.

Still, as I have said before on this board, it was good training for being cast in the role of bigot over the trans issue.

Immigrants vs immigration is interesting. There are a lot of unspoken ideas around what it means to support immigration among progressives, and I think most haven't really thought them through systematically.

One of the arguments that often comes up is that EU membership means the right to move around for work, therefor those who want to restrict this kind of movement are looking to deny the rights of some, and I think that is where the accusation of bigotry ears its head. Clearly people who want to deprive others of their rights are bigots.

There seems to be no sense that there are different kinds of rights, that a citizenship right is not the same as a human right for example. No one thinks Spain is denying South Africans their human rights by not letting them vote there.

The question of movement in the EU, people who say they want to reconsider that, it's basically a political question, isn't it? it's not some claim that other people are less worthy. How is it fundamentally more legitimate to place political power at the level of Europe rather than the UK, they are both political constructs? One may be more practical than the other, but that's not really some sort of moral issue. If the EU can legitimately have immigration controls from outside, why can't a nation?

To me it seems like people who are thinking concerns about immigration indicates sort of inner bigotry are actually very skeptical of any sort of nationalism at all, they don't like things like patriotism, they tend to be suspicious of their national history, and they are also suspicious of nation states. Which is perhaps at least consistent, except they often don't seem to take the same view of other nation states and their political and cultural legitimacy.
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And to add to what I said above, it makes it a little hard to believe when they make the claim that they are not in any way being anti-nationalist, that they don't think there is a connection.

Rather like people who will say at the same time that that the EU does not in any way impinge on the democratic decisions of the UK, but they don't want to leave the EU because they think the people of the UK will make bad decisions.

I've seen a few people (on Twitter where common sense goes to die, to be fair) arguing that there should be no borders at all and everyone should be allowed to just move wherever they want, which in theory I can see why that would sound good to a kind and idealistic person, but on a practical level that's just not going to work for all kinds of reasons.

This is by far the best thread on post-election analysis I’ve seen on mumsnet. Brilliant stuff.

Packing your earlier post was amazing. That’s an article that really needs to be published somewhere.

This is really just echoing what you’ve said, but earlier in another thread I was not very successfully attempting to discuss the fact that I always thought that part of Boris’ appeal was that he actually seems to like Britain and the British, and to be proud of the country. The left absolutely hates those values of pride in country, and sees them as innately racist, but Boris seems unashamedly and unapologetically British - happy to be so, in fact. I think this has real appeal for many people who are sick of being told that their more patriotic views represent some kind of unspeakable thought-crime.

I too was relieved at the GE result, largely because something had finally happened to release the pressure from what was rapidly becoming an unstable situation in my eyes.

I've never heard people in my region talk with such vehemence about politics and Westminster as I have since May's premiership. I thought to myself that if it carried on, we were looking at civil unrest.

I think we were really close to something very nasty. And that's the thing about this that the left and Labour under Corbyn do not seem to understand anymore: this is not a game. It's not a twitter argument. It's not a debate in your junior common room. This is reality.

I kept reading about hung parliaments and the notion that deals would be done between the SNP and Labour to allow Corbyn in as PM, and I just thought that if that happened, shit was gonna blow.

Thanks all for the link to the Douglas Murray article and the comments. Needmoresleep thanks so much for sharing your experiences - glad you found a good solution to caring for your mother. I was really touched by the thought of her feeding ducks with the carer’s grandchildren. It touches on a huge area of concern for women. It should be equally men and women of course but typically it sounds as if you did most of the day to day co-ordination.

JillyHilly
Yes. Add to that Corbyns perceived sym pop athy with terrorists, and you've got a case of Well, Boris is not the best of us, but at least he's one of us.

That's not really a conscious reaction for a lot of people but it colours your thinking.

Us and them. Tribalism is a powerful force.

The "no borders" demand boils my head.

But it is indicative of a naive trend in modern political commentary whereby policy and legislation somehow only applies to nice people.

So no borders means upstanding citizens of other EU countries come to work in Britain, pay their taxes, queue politely, and generally add an air of European congeniality all round, but somehow no borders doesn't mean people trafficking vulnerable girls to work in brothels, drug runners flooding the country with dodgy cocaine, organised crime smuggling weapons across Europe onto a British streets, or serious sex offenders escaping the arm of justice.

Sometimes I wonder if these "no borders" bods have ever thought about what it really means. Shit, they'd soon change their tune if Daesh turned up in their back yard.

Yes Jilly, to like being British has been thoroughly unacceptable on the Left for some time now. I think many people are fed up of the message for the last twenty years or so that they shouldn't like themselves or their community as they are and that cultural change, encroaching upon them unasked for via high net immigration will somehow improve them morally.

I have absolutely no truck with 'no borders' either. This coming from people who presumably operate controls over who comes and goes through their own front door. They are perfectly able to grasp the rationale of border control at that level.

Yes Antibles it’s like people who say well you share a toilet with men in your own house, so what’s wrong with the same in a public toilet?

It's also another idea that sounds better in America, which is about a third of a continent, than it does in the UK, which is a collection of not particularly massive islands. There is a limit to how many people the UK can conceivably hold, so no, not everyone who wants to move to the UK can. And no, saying this doesn't mean that you want Syrian refugees to drown in the Med.

On a certain level I do actually think that there is a sense where people should be free to move around. None of us made the earth, and it's my view that it is here for everyone to support themselves, and that it is a kind of moral imperitive that we make room for people to work on the land where there is land to be worked. There is something deeply wrong when some have an excess and some have none, or where it is normal to be dependent on a wage working for the good of others rather than for yourself. In that sense I suppose I am far left though it's really a Catholic position on the right to movement.

However, in practice, there are all kinds of things that could simple free movement for all unjust. Because there is also a sort of right to the integrity of the local community, to keep the results of your own labour, to a relationship with place. Not to mention mundane things like how the community governs itself and so on.

So we end up with a political structure that tries to allow a lot of freedom but not so much that there are a lot of problems, which means limits have to be chosen. In western countries in recent times its often been freedom as a citizen to move within the nation, or leave it if you like and have somewhere to go. And even that is possibly a trade off as it doesn't give as much of a guarantee to live in the same community you come from as some might like, freedom to stay is perhaps sacrificed to freedom to move to some degree. And still, freedom to move in practice is a freedom of the well-off.

Not only do people who want to blanket advocate free movement ignore these questions, they take a whole different POV when you are talking about indigenous peoples and colonialism, or even certain types of cultural exchange.