My comment only referred to Brexit negotiations. It seems to me that "we're hard, trust us" was a bit weak, given that folks are very conflicted on Brexit, and there is a good bit of buyer's remorse. Seems that May banked on disarray in other parties without appreciating the disarray in her own party. This is primarily a rebuke of "hard" Brexit posturing.

Whilst i have my concerns about the whole shooting match i have watched david davis in front of the brexit committee.

He has a great grasp of his brief, appears to understand the complexities and has been cautious about strategy.

I do not believe for a second we will get what we want and we lack the experience of the EU negotiators BUT it will not be because DD does nkt understand it or isn't smart enough.

Labour just won kensington. It really does not get madder than that.

Yup, it looks like all "Remain" areas jumped. ~7% toward Labour. Cheer up, it looks like things can only get worse. Tories own virtually every single aspect of Brexit. OTOH, nothing lasts forever. Once Brexit is done, things will revert to some form of the status quo level of dysfunction.

From reports here and in the media, the young appear to have gone for Corbyn and the Labourites in a big way. No surprise, given that the socialist leader and his party offered them a tantalizing vision of being able to live perpetually at the expense of others. Frederic Bastiat had something to say about that, when he wrote his 1848 essay "The State":


"As, on the one hand, it is certain that we all address some such request to the state, and, on the other hand, it is a well-established fact that the state cannot procure satisfaction for some without adding to the labor of others, while awaiting another definition of the state, I believe myself entitled to give my own here. Who knows if it will not carry off the prize? Here it is: The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."


From what I've seen of Corbyn and Labour, they genuinely seem to want to punish success and are resentful of wealth, or at least of those who have it and refuse to participate in 100-percent redistribution schemes.

In the end, there was no way May and the Conservatives could come across as anything more than "Labour Lite" with their half-hearted stab at extreme egalitarianism and push for equality of outcome, (May's constant talk of creating a society that left no one behind, for example).

Given a choice between a faux Labour scheme and an actual Labour scheme (that implied an ability live at the expense of others), it's little wonder that the young in Britain -- who haven't as yet come anywhere near reaping the material benefits (affordable housing, good jobs, etc.) that other previous generations have enjoyed -- cast their lot in the way they did.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I think that is part if it without a doubt but last year the over 50's threw the under 35's under the proverbial bus.

Entirely the under 35's fault they did not vote BUT the vote for brexit was as much a fuck you to the lib metro politan globalist elite as it was about leaving for more basic reasons

So this time for all the promises made which people believed just as many i suspect held their nose and voted labout to say fuck you to the hard brexit tories who took a 4% win in the referendum as permission to do what they like

The funniest thing about this (if there is one) is that nigel farage is threatening to come back if he does not get what he wants. The point he has missed is that his core vote ate literally dying off and young people will come out overwhelmingly in opposition to him

I suspect his vision is fucked

Eventually people will losr interest again but at the moment the tories need to find some way of appeasing the electorate

A vote for corbyn was not necessarily for him. It was for anything but tories

Great points.

Is some of this swing to Labour to do with what I remember (from having lived in Europe for a time a few decades ago) being the old-style British reluctance to consider themselves "European" -- preferring instead to be "British," an entity separate, and even superior to, "Europe" -- and with the younger generations of Britons' comfort level with identifying as "European" (sometimes more than as "just" British)?

As you say, the over-50s seem to be more pro-Brexit and less Euro-centric than those under that age marker. First, the young saw Leave win out -- and maybe collectively regret not having gone to the polls and are kicking themselves over it -- and now, the young vote heavily for Corbyn, who was also no fan of Leave (both May and Corbyn supported Remain, for what it's worth, but May appears to have become a zealous convert to Leave) and who's promising some sort of all-encompassing social program that the Top 5% of income earners in Britain will of course be required to pay for.

How do you think that will work out?

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Its not completely old / young, its urban / rural, education / left school at 16, professional / manual and north south

The devolved nations were split. Scot nationalists want out of uk but to stay in europe. Wales want out of europe but in uk

Basically brexit was carried over the line by a combination of the old / rural / manual / less educated and north.

Corbyn rose to power on the others.

Corbyn was a fuck you to brexit. Think metropolitan liberals in million pound homes banking 200k a year voting for a marxist

Tocqueville, "A democratic government is the only one in which citizens can vote for a tax and escape the obligation to pay it." ps A democratic gov't is the only one where citizens can vote!.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Of course, that dynamic has existed for centuries, and doesn't explain this shift. The clear change has been that Remainers (primarily young) came out and turned massively away from Tories. One need only see the results in each area.

Looking forward, the left has the same issues as Dems in the States between "New Labour" (Blair) and a Sanders-esque view. That will continue to develop, how could it not with wealth disparities and social mobility hitting historic levels. That said, this one is about Brexit.

"Basically brexit was carried over the line by a combination of the old / rural / manual / less educated and north. "




I didn't know there were so many Trump voters in the UK. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That dynamic seems to have hit the UK hard this time around. We have a kind of failsafe in that regard, I believe, due to being a non-parliamentarian constitutional republic with an electoral college, which is where the result is the only one that counts, not the "popularity contest" that is the citizen vote.

I think that only here in the U.S. could a Donald Trump have managed to win through, dominating the electoral college over Hillary Clinton, because there were enough states that felt unease at the current fiscal path we're trodding. How long that will last, I have no idea. I also admit to being completely dumbfounded at the man's victory last November 8th. ;-)

Really, could a Donald Trump, under the British parliamentary system, have gotten even close to the reins of power? I honestly don't know.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

The word in bold is unnecessary.

The youngsters just don't get that. Silly them.


ETA: more seriously, I genuinely see a difference in mindset between the British and the Europeans. We (the Brits) are adversarial. Our legal system is adversarial. Our Parliament arranges the Govt benches facing the Opposition benches, as armies facing each other waiting to do batttle. We have a two party political system where middle or third parties get drowned out or are regarded as havens for the undecided. We have first past the post in elections - winner takes all. Political coalitions are exceptionally rare. This feeds into the media and into debate: if you're not A, you're anti-A. There's very little grey or nuance - it's all very black and white. There's little space for concession or bridge-building, because it's all about winning or losing. We thrive on conflict.

A lot of European countries have some form of PR rather than FPTP. Coalitions - bridge-building, finding consensus - come more naturally, because they have to. They don't have common law legal systems, and they have legal procedures that are more inquisitorial than adversarial: the joining of battle element isn't there. When I hear European politicians interviewed on the radio, they are inevitably questioned in a way intended to box them into being either A or anti-A. Yet very often they recoil from that sort of simplicity and say that the position is not that simple, giving a more nuanced and balanced answer. I've heard it said that when Europeans negotiate politics, they are more open in their opening position about what they want, because they want to build a consensus and it helps to do that if you show the other side frankly what your foundations and your design is. We negotiate like it's poker, because the endgame is a win/lose for us.

Although this is all deeply broad brush stereotype stuff, I do think that there is a kernel of truth in it in that there is a real difference of mindset. So I think we are genuinely different to continental Europeans. The young 'uns here though have been brought up in a more tolerant and inclusive society, and I think that is starting to eclipse the innate A vs A-anti mentality of the older generations. So they perhaps have a mindset less incompatible with a European mindset.

All personal musings and observations of course; no evidence to back any of it up.

Silly me. My mistake. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Lols. I've given a more thoughtful response above in the edit.

And a brilliant response it was. :-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That's my hometown! Wealthy liberals are simply trying to be more pragmatic about the long-term viability of extraordinary wealth disparities.

Couldn't they just give someone a job. A well paying one at that? But they might have to actually interact with "poor" people

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Most of them are already hiring folks.

What no one seems to have noticed is that bringing the most ardent protestant unionists into Government may lead to more violence in Ireland

Even if that doesnt happen. The power sharing is fucked. Thr british government cant act as neutral arbiter when its in bed with one of the parties