Today is certainly a good day for England. God save the Queen!

I must say I wasn't impressed by either campaign. Very few people seemed to know much about the true nature of the EU, its history, or its relationship with Britain. This was especially true of the remain side, who often ludicrously boasted about their superior knowledge (which all seemed to be some basic economic figures and little about the powers or operations of the EU, or even much about the history of its role in Britain's economy). In some cases I suspect some remain leaders knew but obscured it (I heard Cameron absurdly compare our membership of the EU, which de facto shares sovereignty with us, to our membership in the UN or NATO). More amongst the leave prominent supporters seemed to know about the nature of the EU, but they weren't that good at communicating it, or thought immigrantion and the like were all that the masses would pay attention to.

If I were on the leave campaign I would have handed out Booker and North's The Great Deception to all comers. But who would have read it?

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

If I were on the leave campaign I would have handed out Booker and North's The Great Deception to all comers. But who would have read it?

What if you were on the remain campaign?

Alexander wrote:

Boris has his moments, but he is too much of a buffoon for me to want him as PM.

 
The question is twofold: can he do the job and will he resonate with voters? Somebody like Gove can definitely get the job done, but I doubt he would be as popular. While I am hardly a fan of it, I don't think a jokester persona should be disqualifying

seigneur wrote:

What if you were on the remain campaign?

 ​If I sincerely believed in the remain cause but was most interested in winning, I think I would have probably run the campaign as they did. They tried to gather all the experts and business voices they could, even if those experts were primarily talking about short term economic risk and little else. Then I would have implied my opponents were xenophobic, narrow-minded, and so on. The remain campaign basically did this. I can't think of another route they could have taken that would have led to success. Perhaps they could have done better disentangling certain things from the EU. I don't like the EU, and I understand how its power and influence is not exaggerated by the likes of UKIP - indeed, if anything many Eurosceptics don't show just how vast its reach is. But I heard campaigners narrating how they were talking to people blaming the EU for things that weren't primarily its fault. 

If I were on the remain campaign and was more interested in a thoughtful public discussion on the issue, I'd try to communicate the nature of the EU and actually discuss issues like nationhood versus internationalism and so on, which the British Europhiles avoided. This approach would not have succeeded, but it would have been a more worthwhile debate.
 

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Personally, I must say I don't think there is anything wrong with opposition to mass immigration.

Mass immigration is a form of invasion, so there's natural opposition to it. Then there are following nuances worth considering, in my opinion.

Peoples and nations can be divided as those who have the assimilating/integrating capacity and those who don't. There's a certain critical mass of immigration at which point it becomes practically unpalatable, so that the native population on location concretely suffers. Below that point, immigration can be constructive in various ways and can be considered a natural flux.

Another aspect, there are historically invading/colonizing countries on the one hand and the colonized on the other. Britain is the prime example of a historical colonial empire. Many are the peoples and nations you have invaded, exploited, annihilated or assimilated. From this perspective, you are currently just receiving your own karma, and this karma is not yet full.

It's interesting to see how different countries handle this. The politicians of the bigger EU countries (historical colonial powers plus Germany and the Nordic countries) tend to try to be more generous. That's understandable, because they have a colonial past (and thus a sense of historical urgency to amend their mistakes) and/or the brute assimilating capacity. The problem arises when they delegate these sentiments to the Eastern EU members, who are historically oppressed and whose native populations are small enough to feel threatened by mass immigration. As a reaction, nationalism/fascism is concretely reappearing as we speak, even within the big/generous countries themselves, so they have no excuse.

For example in Sweden, the vilified Sverigedemokraterna had a massive success in last elections and are playing a key role in the Parliament between the ruling factions and opposition factions. The ruling Social Democrat government appears to be trying to buffer the nationalist sentiments by making immigration rules stricter. With the new rules, passed this month, less immigrants qualify for the daily money and less categories qualify for unification of family. And there's a new category "help needer" with highly ambiguous rights distinguished from "asylum seeker" with clearly defined meaningful rights as their application is being handled.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

If I were on the remain campaign and was more interested in a thoughtful public discussion on the issue, I'd try to communicate the nature of the EU and actually discuss issues like nationhood versus internationalism and so on, which the British Europhiles avoided. This approach would not have succeeded, but it would have been a more worthwhile debate.

Just to add my two cents, from the continental perspective Britain never was a proper member of the EU. Up front, Britain negotiated a ridiculous list of extraordinary exceptions for themselves and even then kept whining and threatening at every turn everafter (e.g. remember Cameron last year at EU meetings). Britain never had any meaningful sense of internationalism, never any conciliatory spirit, political compromise, much less any alignment to the EU policies and regulations. From this perspective, Britain is good riddance.*

Further, Brexit manifests the internal weakness of the whole EU structure. It's always been clear that there are various cracks in the very foundation. Instead of repairing them, Britain contributed to exacerbating them. No good in any of this either way.

I watched half of Scruton's speech. He talks about how different Britain's legal system is from the EU, and how from the British perspective, the British system is as European as the EU system. Well, the natural retort would be that the EU system is also as European as the British system, and with good will the two could have been reconciled. There just never was any good will. That's about it.

And it's significant how Scruton verbally contrasts the EU with Britain, instead of saying something like the continent or Brussels versus Britain. Evidently, he never saw Britain as in the EU in the first place so as to make a different verbal contrast possible, and that's exactly my point.

* In fact, the official immediate EU response at the highest level seems to be saying exactly that: "As agreed, the “New Settlement for the United Kingdom within the European Union”, reached at the European Council on 18-19 February 2016, will now not take effect and ceases to exist. There will be no renegotiation." Meaning, the entire diplomatic dumbfoolery between Cameron and Brussels throughout last year is null and void, adieu Britain http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/06/24-joint-statement-uk-referendum/

Last edited by seigneur (6/25/2016 3:57 am)