Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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Many in the PLP seem to despise Corbyn more than they do the Conservatives. They appear to have little in common with the constituencies they represent, no understanding of working peoples’ lives or opinions, and something approaching contempt for the membership of the party. Chris Bryant, former Shadow Leader of the House, who accuses Corbyn of being the man who will “break” the Labour Party if he stays on, is a case in point. An Oxford-educated former Conservative student politician who supported the Iraq War, was embarrassingly implicated in the MPs’ expenses scandal, and whose own freaking constituency voted “leave” by a healthy margin: how is he not part of the problem he blames Corbyn for failing to solve? I love how, as a final flourish to the rambling, unpolished interview he gave to BBC Breakfast this morning, he failed to be drawn on who the “strong leader” he wanted Labour to have might be. I genuinely think these MPs would rather lose an election to the Conservatives than win one under Corbyn. Dawn Foster is scathing in her assessment of what throwing the party membership under the bus will mean for Labour:
The fear for the resignees is that even if they do manage to force a leadership election, Corbyn will win again: his mandate was staggering, and from members who were in the party for years as well as new members. After his election, many people, myself included, flocked back to a party they’d completely written off. Speaking to friends who joined after the general election, mostly members of no party, but occasional Green and SNP defectors, they said if a leadership election were forced, with no left candidate, they’d leave the party again. For many people, this would be the final straw in their relationship with a party that had destroyed their trust over the Iraq war, tuition fees, identity cards and a lack of opposition to austerity. Revealing their open contempt for party members will have a long-lasting effect that could condemn the Labour party to complete irrelevancy for a generation.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Of course they’re not “fabricating quotes,” Craig. They’re reporting (legitimately) on emails leaked to them by someone within Labour as part of a wider campaign to unseat Corbyn.
That this is now all being blamed on Labour, despite the demonstrable fact that disaffected Tories made up a much more substantial portion of the “leave” vote than Labour supporters is predictable, I guess. But it doesn’t hide the fact that it was the Conservatives’ inability to persuade their own voters that precipitated this. Only 42% of 2015 Tory voters went “remain,” after all. The Tory “remain” campaign was much more disastrous than Labour’s and had a much more direct bearing on the final result. Why isn’t anyone talking about that?
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Russell Brown,
You have to bear in mind the recent trauma of losing Scotland to the SNP in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum. The lesson that the Labour leadership seems to have taken from that turn of events is that coordinating too closely with the Tories toxifies the Labour brand and reinforces the “they’re all the same” strain of cynicism that has been eroding the Labour vote since Blair. Also, as others have already pointed out on this thread, exit polling suggests that the Labour vote did go to “remain” by a large margin: between 63% and 70% of those who voted Labour in 2015 cast a ballot for “remain” in this referendum. This (according to the Ashcroft polling data) compares with corresponding figures of just 42% for the Tories, 64% for the SNP, and 70% for the avowedly Europhile Lib Dems. Claims that Labour’s campaign was singularly inept simply don’t hold up in the light of those figures. The fact that Freedland and his Guardian colleagues aren’t laying into Sturgeon and Farron for failing to mobilise their bases indicates that there’s a certain degree of bad faith in this reporting, as there is with most Guardian coverage of Corbyn and his faction.
I’d also point out that disproportionate support for “leave” in Labour strongholds isn’t the same thing as Labour supporters voting leave. By and large, these voters probably weren’t Labour. Instead, they were largely habitual non-voters or what used to be called the “Tory working class,” largely invisible under First Past the Post and used to their votes not counting in national elections.
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Their is no evidence here of any rebellion against the capitalist system: rather, voters seem entirely neutral about that. Looks like the rebellion derives from a cultural divide: a massive chasm, more like.
I’d still argue that the divide is basically economic. That exit poll indicates that “leave” voters were disproportionately likely to be on state benefits or pensions and to live on council estates. This section of the “leave” constituency doesn’t participate in markets as fully as the rest of Britain does. They haven’t followed market signals and moved to where there is work. They haven’t engaged with the education system. They’re not mobile, upwardly or otherwise. Instead, the forms of identity and association that make sense to them are localized and non-market-based: the identity claims of family, street, town, region, race, or nation. To the extent to which they belong to an “imagined community” outside their own lived experience, it’s one defined by the information bubbles of The Sun and The Express: hardly a “marketplace of ideas.” This set of allegiances explains why they’re intrinsically hostile not only to economic migrants (those who follow market logic) but also to competing global forms of identity like the internet or the green movement. And pointing out that deprived regions of the UK benefit from (indeed, to a large extent, actually rely on) EU structural funds isn’t likely to cut much ice with them either. As Will Davies point out in Thoughts on the Sociology of Brexit, “handouts don’t produce gratitude.” The economics of top-down social curation combined with an attitude of metropolitan-elite condescension produce local cultures of abiding resentment.
For erstwhile liberal leftists like me who are appalled by this result, meanwhile, it’s a reminder of how embedded we ourselves are within global neoliberal capitalism, and how much we’ve assimilated that logic into our own identities. We’re a mobile bunch; we’ll happily migrate to follow a job or a career path or shift towns to attend university. Local ties and allegiances might not mean much to us, but that’s a function of our relative privilege. I’m qualified; I’m mobile; I’m open to market signals. But millions of Britons aren’t and the implications of that worldview were made clear to the rest of us on Thursday.
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Judging by the BBC coverage, we are well into “this is fine” territory. Osborne insists the economy is basically strong and that he is working with EU and IMF colleagues; Merkel’s statement that there is no need to rush is being widely reported; the key message seems to be: “don’t panic; we got this.” The markets are up so far.
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God. Former Labour Shadow Minister Chris Bryant was just on BBC Breakfast explaining why he and his colleagues are resigning en masse. “We need a strong leader who can unite the party,” he said, while ignoring the membership and tearing the party apart. When asked if he had a potential “strong leader” in mind, he insisted that he didn’t. Well, that was a good case on behalf of the PLP, Chris. Keep digging.
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At this point, "referendum? What referendum?" is starting to seem like the best solution.
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Just back from the pub on a lovely Sunday summer afternoon in London. There’s a weird, subdued atmosphere in the city (at least this part of it: I’m in Southwark, which went 72% Remain). Most of the conversations other tables were having (however jocular) seemed in some way to be about Brexit. Lots of City workers live here. There’s going to be enormous disruption to that community once the full effects of this result start to come through.
Oddly, not many people here are talking about the failures of the EU. They’re thinking instead about job security; the collapse of the pound and impending price rises for food and fuel; restrictions on freedom of movement for themselves and their children; further cuts to public spending; the horrifying prospect of a Prime Minister Johnson or May or Gove.
Or at least that’s what people in my social, professional, and media bubbles are discussing. I’m sure conversations elsewhere in the country are different. Because there’s a large and frightening cultural and economic divide in the way this referendum and its results are being interpreted. The statistical breakdowns in Lord Ashcroft’s exit poll are pretty stark and telling. A clear majority of those in paid employment voted to remain; those on state benefits or pensions voted to leave. Two thirds of council or housing association tenants went leave. The age gap has been widely reported, but the educational one is also vast: there’s a clear correlation between lack of education and support for Brexit. Those who said they paid “little or no attention” to politics went “leave” by 58% to 42%. These are people who weren’t going to be moved by arguments about the fate of the Erasmus programme, or the effect of Brexit on university research funding or arts charities that rely on EU funding, or the ability of young people and professionals to move freely in pursuit of job opportunities from one European city to the next. And yet, of course, they’ve imperilled all that. Those who stand to lose are understandably pretty angry, and so the culture wars get more and more ugly.
What makes it even worse is that the leadership of the Leave campaign clearly didn’t want or expect this result. The haunted, subdued demeanour of Gove and Johnson at their shared Friday morning press conference gave that game away. This was shadow boxing; political theatre. They wanted a close result that would “send a message” to Cameron and improve their chances of succession to the Prime Ministership once Cameron departed. They didn’t want Brexit itself. And yet here we are. It seems, politically and economically at least, like a July 1914 moment: a perfect storm of botched brinkmanship and miscalculation that leads to a result no one wanted or expected. And just as in 1914, it’s the young who will suffer most for the follies of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
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Went to see Phoenix Foundation up in Hackney earlier this month. Realized I hadn't seen them play since a theatre gig they did in Wellington with SJD back in ... 2006, maybe? I was expecting a purely Kiwi expat audience (and the bar beforehand was indeed a den of Kiwi voices), but it totally wasn't really. Just ... People. Getting lost in the music, the generic twists and turns. As I was walking back to the train platform afterwards, there were these two leather-jacketed North London geezers. One said to the other: "aren't they great? So unpredictable. You don't know where they're going to go next." Indeed. And "Supernatural" live is such a homesickness heat seeking missile. Just a great gig.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Songs of Ennui, in reply to JacksonP,
Have to say, Foals have never done much for me, but I’m liking what I’ve heard of the new album so far. Speaking of good new stuff from the UK, Urth, the debut album from Nottingham band Kagoule (released last week) is pretty damn great: