We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Politics is about many things, but one of the big things that it is about is which political tribe you are a member of, and about how big the various tribes are. So, when a whole tranche of voters manage to persuade themselves out of membership of one of the big tribes, it’s a very big deal.
As Guido puts it:
Voting UKIP was in hindsight a gateway to voting Tory.
Key word there: “gateway”. A general election is about more than what voters merely think. It is about how they see themselves. It is about who they are, and about which self-definitional barriers they might now be willing to cross, which gateways they might now be willing to pass through.
For many decades, millions of people in Britain didn’t just vote Labour. They were Labour. Not a few millions still are Labour and will vote accordingly. But the rise of UKIP, and then the Brexit referendum which UKIP made happen, spoke to an at least equally deep idea of who many Labour voters are, comparable even with being Labour. They are: British, English, not European. (See also: Scotland.)
In retrospect, I think we can see that the rise of UKIP and the subsequent Brexit referendum didn’t just change Britain’s relationship with EUrope. They also changed Britain itself, by creating new allegiances and new connections between hitherto hostile tribesmen, and it weakened many old loyalties and connections and created new tribal divisions. Both the Labour and the Conservative tribes emerged from the UKIP/referendum episode changed. The Conservative tribe emerged stronger and bigger. The Labour tribe emerged weaker and smaller.
Add to the above the toxic Jeremy Corbyn, who is the most anti-English, anti-British front-line English/British politician in my lifetime, and you can see why those Labour tribal allegiances have started seriously to fray. Echoing Barack Obama, Jeremy Corbyn’s view of the world is that Anglo-America needs to count for less in that world and that whoever else thinks that too is a friend. Luckily for us Brits, Corbyn has little of Obama’s duplicity or rhetorical skill. And nor can Corbyn or his supporters play the race card.
So, what Corbyn communicates to all those wavering Labour tribespersons is not that they are now betraying their tribe, but that Corbyn and his leftist gang have already betrayed them. Corbyn is pushing potential Labour deserters through Guido’s gateway.
Meanwhile, those toxically exclusive Etonian Conservatives – Cameron and Osborne – have been replaced by that quintessence of inclusive Middle Englishness, Theresa May. We libertarians are all grumbling about what Theresa May believes, and we are quite right to do so. But it is what she is that is now making the difference.
Interesting times.
Young Scot needed to raise awareness of the value of the EU in France
This is a fully funded placement in Dijon, France, for 12 months. The volunteers will focus on raising awareness of the European Union’s history and its importance in creating cultural diversity.
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Product Description
Jeunes Citoyens pour l’Europe is a youth mobility project in Dijon, France, focusing on raising the awareness of the European Union’s history, its construction and current situation, as well as the international role played by its institutions. Promoting a greater sense of European citizenship, Jeunes Citoyens pour l’Europe aims to enable the people of Dijon to better understand the EU and its valuable cultural diversity.
EVS volunteers will be directly involved in the Jeunes Citoyens pour l’Europe project, giving their contribution to spread the European values within the local community of Dijon, and to encourage the civic participation of its youth. Furthermore, EVS volunteers will help develop the project for its future editions and implementation in other European contexts. Previous EVS volunteers in Dijon have been able to organise the Children’s Rights Day and participate in local festivals promoting multiculturalism and the European Voluntary Service.
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Volunteers will receive insurance, accommodation (an apartment shared with other volunteers), food, local transportation and a regular stipend. Travel to/from France will also be funded.
This project is open to young people aged 17-30 and resident in the UK (Scottish applicants are particularly welcome!). EVS volunteers for this project will be selected according to their interest in the European Union values. A minimum knowledge of French will be appreciated.
“France will be led by a woman – it will be either me or Mrs Merkel.”
– Marine Le Pen, as quoted by Brendan O’Neill.
Say what you like about Le Pen (I dislike her protectionist politics), but she has probably minted the best political quote of this year, as Brendan says. Of course, being a classical liberal, I’d prefer it if countries were not “led” by anyone at all.
Unfortunately the Greek crisis is now all about politics in the countries that lent the money. That money, or a goodly chunk of it at least, is already gone. The continued economic devastation of Greece isn’t about getting the money back; it’s about not having to admit that the money is gone. That isn’t the way to run a continent, is it?
– Tim Worstall
I do not know enough to assess the views of Paul Romer, the chief economist for the World Bank, when it comes to his specialism. I need no special knowledge to assess his views as reported in the Times on restoring the standing of his profession. He gets it.
Economists need to stop acting as if they own the moral high ground and start behaving with more humility if they are to win back the public’s trust after Brexit, according to the World Bank’s chief economist.
Paul Romer said that a popular backlash against experts needed to be taken seriously and that Brexit had been partly a reaction to the perceived hypocrisy of economists who claimed to be making unbiased judgments but were actually taking political positions.
Dr Romer, one of the leading economists of his generation, is known for speaking out against his profession. Last September he published a paper, The Trouble with Macroeconomics, in which he accused colleagues of practising a “pseudoscience” underpinned by an “honour code” that prohibits challenge to figures of authority even when their facts are wrong.
Dr Romer said: “To me, Brexit was a vote against the expert advice of economists. We have to earn back our credibility as professionals who will give an unbiased answer. In political discourse, activists often claim that their position is morally superior and no one seems to care, but when economists did so, voters reacted very negatively, perhaps because they are alert to even a whiff of hypocrisy and they sensed that economists were behaving like activists yet invoking the authority of science.
And if any smartarse wants to bring up Michael Gove’s remark about the British people having “had enough of experts”, tell them to listen to his actual words before he was shouted down. He wasn’t talking about any expert on any subject; he was referring specifically to those who said their predictions of Brexit disaster should be believed on grounds of their business and economic expertise, yet who had egregiously got their predictions wrong on the Euro and failed to predict the 2008 crisis at all.
EU mulls legislation in the fight against online hate speech, reports Reuters.
Glad we’re leaving. But do not expect our current prime minister to fight for free speech. That would violate her programming.
Added later: Posterity, and one or two bewildered humans, demanded that I explain the foregoing. Our revered Foreign Secretary, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in a recent column for the Sun called Jeremy Corbyn “that mutton-headed old mugwump”. The Sun helpfully provided a glossary for its readers, defining the terms “mugwump” and “revanchist”, though not “glossary”. Mind you, it got the Harry Potter reference wrong; it’s International Confederation of Wizards, not Internal. What do they teach them in these schools? Soon the whole country was googling “mugwump”.
When all they really had to do was ask Theresa May. She has the answer to all our questions.
Added still later, but less late at night: I cannot now remember how I ended up with two links to the same, possibly spliced, audio clip of Theresa May’s definition of a mugwump. Let it be.
Never mind her. If you want to know the up-and-coming political candidate whose name you should look out for, take a look at this leaflet.
Andrew Lilico, who in my view is one of the sharpest and sanest commentators on issues such as Brexit (he is for it) has this to say about the benefits not just to the UK of leaving the EU behemoth, but arguably, to the remaining members of said behemoth:
We’ll also be able to do new trade deals with non-EU countries, which by 2030 will constitute around two thirds of our trade. The eurozone will grow faster, because by leaving the EU we will allow it to function better, enabling the euro to work. And future UK regulation can involve more experiments, where we try something, get it wrong and u-turn, rather than all our regulation being subject to the EU’s “ratchet” whereby once any measure in place it is almost impossible to undo. The ratchet works well when the best thing to do is obvious — cut tariffs, strip away non-tariff barriers. When it is not obvious — e.g. how best to regulate the sharing economy, the commercial exploitation of space, vaping, or green technologies — being able to experiment and u-turn is valuable. The UK can become an international leader the regulation of these new sectors by being able to experiment.
Of course at present many, if not all, EU member states will see the UK’s departure in these terms. They might suspect (as libertarians such as I hope) that the UK will head down a less regulated path, although it is worth noting that UK politicians are quite as capable of coming up with dotty rules as any Brussels civil servant (but at least those politicians can be voted out of office, which is the key thing). It bemuses me when I hear people wail that the UK is trying to become a tax haven. If only.
But it is an interesting observation that with the UK out of the EU, the eurozone (the UK is not a member of it) will “work”. Maybe it might. Maybe Germany, France and the others will, without those pesky Anglo-Saxons carping about regulations of carrots, vitamins and light bulbs, be able to create some sort of federal European entity where policy is in sync with the demands of a single currency. The UK gets to break free of an arrangement that has become increasingly vexatious, and the Continentals can make their vision (well, that of their political class) come true.
It might just be that the best thing for the Continentals is to get shot of we Brits and push ahead. Of course, if or when the dream of a European federal union turns out to be the authortarian clusterfuck of Biblical proportions that some expect, the UK will be in the beneficial position, hopefully, if having insulated itself from this by bringing up plenty of new trading relations with non-EU nations near and far. And it will be able to give the ultimate “I told you so” to the continent on the follies of transnational progressivism.
I liked this statement by Julian Jessop, chief economist (recently appointed) of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the classical liberal think tank in the UK:
“It’s disappointing that the decision to convert existing EU laws is again being justified in terms of continuity and certainty. Instead, Brexit should provide an opportunity to reduce the burden of regulation on UK households and firms alike.
“It’s also disappointing that the default option in the event of no agreement is being framed in terms of the most pessimistic WTO scenario, ignoring any benefits that might come from unilateral free trade. The UK will have the opportunity to lower barriers that prevent our consumers and businesses from accessing the best and cheapest goods and services, wherever they come from. What’s more, we should consider doing so even if other countries – including the rest of the EU – continue to embrace protectionism.
“However, it’s welcome the commitment to a quick agreement on reciprocal rights for people from the rest of the EU already living and working here and for UK citizens on the continent. Now that Article 50 has been triggered there is no longer any excuse for either side to delay. Indeed, this will be an early test of the willingness of politicians in the rest of the EU to put the interests of ordinary people above their own narrow political projects.”
Surely now, no-one can doubt that the EU is so much more than a set of laws regulating trade and commerce? Why did so many UK politicians try and pretend this was just a business or commercial arrangement? As this declaration reminds us in a timely way, at the heart of the EU is the strong desire to create a single country. It will have common borders, one currency, one foreign policy and one social policy. It will have its own energy policy, its own transport policy. Indeed, it has much of that already. It is only those who refuse to read EU documents who can think otherwise.
– John Redwood MP, referring to “The Rome Declaration” of EU states drawn up a week ago, which he says shows a clear intent to create a single European state, from which the UK has today, via the Article 50 process, begun to extricate itself.
Of course, England has been here before. The EU (that’s the Pope and the whole of Catholic Europe) excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and barred all trade with us; not even a WTO-terms deal, only a bit of state-sanctioned piracy and smuggling kept us going. In reaction we went further afield to find new trade partners and accidentally founded the British Empire, established dominance of the seas and oceans and led the world in trade and commerce. They did us a favour, really.
– Raedwald, taking a few liberties but making a great point 😀
A lot of strange stuff has been written about the referendum and its aftermath, so a writer really has to go some to stand out from the crowd. As was highlighted today by Walter Ellis (brilliant Reaction Remainer, who shows we are a broad church while generally being for enthusiastically getting on with Brexit), the case of Christopher Booker is most strange. Booker was, along with his associates, a robust voice for leaving the EU for many years. Now he writes it will be a disaster because we are leaving the customs union and because NO-ONE WILL LISTEN TO HIM AND HIS FRIENDS, or something. Let’s face it. There is a strand in the Eurosceptic movement that liked being a minority interest. There is a similarity there with music fans who like showing their alleged superiority by being into an obscure act. What they hate most is when other people start buying the records of their hitherto little-known favourites.
– Iain Martin
If you needed yet another reason to reject the EU as an utterly toxic organisation, here is an absolute corker:
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday that Europe must not cave in to U.S demands to raise military spending, arguing that development and humanitarian aid could also count as security.
No doubt Jean-Claude Juncker feels that NATO should deploy Oxfam, Save the Children & Charlotte Church to Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn in order to deter any Russian incursions into the Baltic states.
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