Brexit

[ecosophia]

This may sound more than a little ironic, coming from a citizen of the United States, but I'd like to congratulate those of my friends and readers who are British subjects on the newly won independence of their nation. 

Comments

and

[(Anonymous)]

Best wishes to the Scots for a similar achievement in the near future!

Re: and

[(Anonymous)]

And to the Irish and Welsh.

Re: and

[(Anonymous)]

And Cornwall, while we're at it!

Re: and

[hwistle]

Hear, Hear!

Manuel

[(Anonymous)]

This makes me so happy. Long live the ordinary English, Irish, Welsh and Scots!

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm, the ordinary Scots and, to a lesser extent, the ordinary Irish did vote to remain in the EU so let's rather congratulate the Kingdom of England and Wales alone and wish them well as they forge their future (hopefully without Scotland :-)

Manuel

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. It feels like a real turning point.

Andy

[samhays]

Aye, and how appropriate on the Eve of Imbolc; the Dawn of a new Spring.

[booklover1973]

On the day of Brexit, I read on the front page of the local newspaper an article in which the writer complains about Brexit by stating that through the exodus of Great Britain the market-liberal fraction in the EU is weakened and the Southern European countries have more of a chance to get their voices heard. The interesting thing here is that this article is at the same time politically orthodox and insightful.

[ecosophia]

Hmm. Wouldn't it be a good idea for the southern countries to have their voices heard? At least in theory, isn't the EU supposed to benefit all its member countries?

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, but the southern countries are full of bigots. Only the enlightened should have their voices heard....

[ecosophia]

No doubt.

[booklover1973]

While reading an article in Naked Capitalism about Brexit, it became clearer and clearer to me that I understand the left less and less with each passing day. Commenters insisted that Boris Johnson cannot be something other than a neoliberal, and the idea that parties can change or be changed by politicians it unfathomable to them. And then there is the knee-jerk reaction against Brexit on the grounds that big, centralized international institutions like the EU are supposedly less prone to the principle of "might makes right" than bilateral agreements among independent countries.

[ecosophia]

If the Left admitted that the Tories are changing from a neoliberal party to a party of populist nationalism, they would have to admit that parties can change -- and that would open the door to a recognition that the parties of the Left have by and large changed from partoes of the working classes to parties of, by, and for the managerial elites. For obvious reasons, that's not something they're willing to contemplate.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. Yes it's a relief.
Mind you there's a lot of BDS (Brexit Derangement Syndrome) here and there.
There are some strange silences. If it wasn't for a sailing friend of mine I would never have known that the London Gateway, our newest and biggest container port, is open and running fine. (of course I'm not a fan of the system) ; it's an interesting omission - and there are others, I guess there's still a lock on the nass media,

[ecosophia]

Of course! It always takes time for an insurgent political movement to get its viewpoint a fair hearing in the institutional media.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks JMG, I am not a British subject but I voted to leave the EU nonetheless.

It is obvious to me that the EU is now the 4th Reich done surreptitiously. Farage was interviewed and said that the French and Dutch had voted against having a European constitution. He then met a German socialist MEP who said that it would happen anyway as they had 50 ways to subvert democracy. They then called the EU constitution the Lisbon treaty and when the Irish rejected it in a referendum they were told to vote again and vote correctly this time.

I think the fourth Reich will be as successful as the third Reich was. The issue is how much damage will be caused before it disintegrates. The Euro is inflicting real hardship in poorer EU countries - mass unemployment and France is currently in uproar.

I raised a glass last night to Britannia and the Goddess Brigid. Interesting that it finally happened on Imbolc.

[ecosophia]

It's been a source of wry amusement to me that the rest of Europe spent the first half of the 20th century fighting the Germans, and the second half giving them everything they wanted in 1914 except for overseas colonies and a victory parade down the Champs Elysees.

[methylethyl]

We had a good chuckle here, over Farage's farewell (and good riddance!) speechifying to the EU Parliament.

Good fortune follow you, Britain!

Arthur and Albion

[(Anonymous)]

This morning, before I read this, I was re-reading Gareth Knight’s ‘The secret tradition in Arthurian legend’ and had come across the passage below (after a discussion of how Arthur invades the continent to take on King Lucius of Rome) that made me think,:

‘The tradition of Britain taking on the rest of Europe’s organised might is rather mote than jingoism. In the later destiny of nations it has been required more than once. Part of the national heritage of myth is to feed and preserve the national identity and destiny.’ p47

Re: Arthur and Albion

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I need to read that again. Of course you're right; magically as well as politically speaking, Britain is in Europe but not of it, and has to function as a counterbalance to European vagaries fairly often.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you JMG. It's very sombre round my way as all my friends and family are pouring ashes on their heads and updating their Facebook photo with the European flag. The divide is still very bitter. I want there to be some sanity and healing now.

Regards,
Morfran

[(Anonymous)]

This Minnesotan hung his Union Jack up yesterday put on his English soccer jersey and toasted with Scottish whiskey her majesty’s health yesterday. 🇬🇧

In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[(Anonymous)]

As someone born and living in Britain, thanks all for your good wishes. As a member of the half of the country that doesn't want this, I think we'll need them.

John, it's 2020 not 1775. The entire world is linked economically and technologically. Those big digital/media and fossil fuel companies are bigger than most states. The biggest and most powerful states have a radically different amount of agency in the world from the smaller ones.

I hope to be proven wrong, but from here it looks as though we don't get to be independent, we just get to choose which new dependency to adjust to, whether we end up in the orbit of the USA, China or - to see your irony and raise you another one - an EU whose policies we can no longer affect but whose size and proximity means it still calls the shots.

Also, there is a very strong case for asking which 'nations' are involved here (I really recommend the writing of Fintan O'Toole, mostly in the Irish Times but also in the Guardian, about this sort of thing).

Constitutionally, and in the minds of 'The Brits', there is no British nation. The 1707 Act of Union tried to make one but left the English and Scottish kingdoms intact. The 1800 Act of Union tried again with the UK and Ireland but that didn't go all that well. Whether England and Wales form one or two nations depends on which Welsh person you ask.

The thing with all this has been that if you spin it right and aren't too dainty about the stories you tell and the promises you make you can get about half of any sub-set of us to say we want just about anything, but you can't get a majority for anything (and don't look at seats in Parliament, that system is designed to magic up majorities the same way the US system is). No-one wants to think about how you might deal with that (how about proportional representation in parliament, a culture of coalition and consensus-building, enjoying difference ...?)

All the best, Andi Chapple, Cumbria

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[(Anonymous)]

As someone else living in Britain, but not born here, I agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote.

After reading John's post and most of the other commenters' celebrations, I can only confirm my conviction that most observers, especially from across the pond, still don't understand what the EU is and especially how it works, and probably never will. But, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his Weltanschauung depends on his not understanding it', so that didn't come as a surprise.

Mind you, I am not a defender of the EU no-matter-what, especially in its current neoliberal form - I, for one, still cling to the old 'Europe of Regions' idea. But also have strong reservations to the simplistic idea that the EU nation-building project is undemocratic, let alone anti-democratic, primarily because it conveniently forgets that (as you have exemplified for the British case) very very few nations were built democratically. Compared to most, actually, the EU construction is a splendid example of a participatory process through - as it is proper - the use of the existing representative democratic institutions.

We'll see shortly if the experiment of 'collapsing now to avoid the rush' on which the English have embarked taking Scots and Irish with them against their will is one to follow. But good luck to them all, they'll need it.

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[ecosophia]

Andi, statements like the one you used to head this post -- "In the 21st century an independent country is a myth" -- are ideological claims, and like all ideological claims, they're meant to benefit certain classes at the expense of other classes. I recommend Michael Lind's new book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite as a good starting point here. The mere fact that we have a different set of digits on the calendar doesn't make it less relevant for people who by and large share a common history, language, and related set of cultures to have the right to govern themselves, rather than being forced to obey edicts handed down by a foreign bureaucracy answerable to nobody.

Nor is the current state of global economic interconnectedness necessarily permanent, or a good idea; again, it's a state of affairs that was put in place to benefit certain people at the expense of others. Those who insist that it's the wave of the future have forgotten that sooner or later every wave breaks and flows back out to sea. What we face throughout the industrial world right now is a conflict between populist nationalism and elitist internationalism -- and to judge by how things are going so far in Britain and the US, the elites don't seem to be doing very well.

One more thing. Of course it's a matter of which power bloc Britain ends up in; once Britain stopped being a global superpower, that was going to happen. The question that a great many Britons seem to have asked themselves is whether they wanted to align with the US, which allows its allies and satellites a very broad degree of self-government, or with the EU (meaning Germany), which insists on micromanaging every detail of public and private life. It doesn't surprise me that so many chose the US.

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[(Anonymous)]

What has baffled me from day one of this is how much of the rhetoric has been about the economic situation - much more than any other point. The entire population of the UK seems to have been brainwashed into thinking that the economy is the only thing that counts, whether or not it benefits those living in the country. It is taken as axiomatic that an economic rising tide floats all boats even when the data proves time and again that this is rarely true.

Then, if I countered leavers by asking them whether they were happy with the idea of the formation of a European superstate led by Germany, they rolled their eyes and said things like "don't be daft, that's not what the EU is about" even though it is a stated aim of the EU (my German colleagues, OTOH, are quite clear and up front on this point) and then headed straight back to arguments about the economy, loss of jobs etc.

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[ecosophia]

That's been the standard rhetoric of the managerial class all along: "Give us everythign we want and the economy will improve." And of course that's happened in a certain sense -- if you belong to the comfortable classes, the economy under globalization has treated you very well; it's the working classes who got screwed by metastatic regulation, plunging wages, and the mass offshoring of jobs. But they have to talk about the economy -- honestly, what else could they say in favor of the EU?

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[(Anonymous)]

another thing that I see that baffles me, as a 12th generation North American (this part matters momentarily), is observing my liberal leftist immigrant Brit and ex-pat friends on both sides of the pond, is how much the argument is also about freedom - nay - human right! - to immigrate anywhere barrierlessly.

Two more minor confusions are:
a) also a very strange flip-flop-flip all the time about whether various government heads are the embodiment of neoliberal evil, or a cultured, upholder of moral bearings. One ex-pat (living in London, Canadian dual citizen) friend has posted repeatedly about the greed and monstrosity of Macron's intended cuts to pensions... then shared with hearts and appreciation his Brexit speech.
b) Same friend and her friends were livid -"sickened"-by the fireworks and celebrations in their neighbourhoods... but touched to tears by Brussels' light display tribute. How dare people celebrate something other people didnt want... unless it's the one the right people wanted, I guess.

But I feel there is a something else that I have been trying to work out for my part - as the 12th generation settler -
I am assured by good white liberals who support Reconciliation with First Nations, that I am NOT a Canadian, because there is no such thing, I am a settler, a stealer of land, an interloper. But also, that immigrants are *real Canadians* too, who are valuable and contribute immensely to what makes Canada special. Any suggestion otherwise is racism, pure and simple. I've tried to explain how that the narrative about Good Immigrants they have is ExACTlY what my- and their, maybe only two or three generations ago - ancestors were ALSO welcomed with and told by the sponsoring state. But it was more complicated than that for the existing residents who had mixed reactions, some welcoming trade goods and the novelty, others strongly xenophobic or territorial, and everything in between. It's not an exact comparison regarding the early nation to nation reactions, but it should... spark something? About how maybe history won't stay on their side about the new immigrants either? or that maybe the previous ones weren't entirely evil incarnate either? That immigration is a really complicated, complicating incendiary thing by nature, not something that should be sanitized into oblivion like that?

And that also kinda mixes with the strange Macron flip-flop, which I see again and again regarding when I then explain my mixed heritage is Metis. That may either make them 360 because that is recognized indigenous in Canada OR need to quantify how much First Nations, to determine if still sympathetic, because French ancestry is still bad, French were bad people, Catholics bad, the creation of the Metis was entirely rape. Okay... that's also not entirely true, but let's run for it. Explains Quebec I guess. But if the french catholics were evil, then weren't my Huguenot side that ran here eventually via Germany good oppressed people? How about the Irish Orangemen, ha! 10 generations from now, will the Syrians here still be good, or bad? Why aren't good white liberals with dual and triple citizenships triply interlopers, belonging nowhere and traveling like locusts? Why is my deep, story-rich admixed blood and changing cultural construct with each generation a shameful example of the barrenness of settler culture, but one EU-citizen's assemblage of experience of living in many countries admirable? Why is that better - even, especially! - among the people likely to say they strongly value Indigeneity, and indigenous self-determination, and cultural preservation. It's hypocrisy, obviously, but of what specific flavour - what qlipothic imbalance, I suppose... I'm struggling with, because I think there is something important about it.

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[avalonautumn]

Uh-- to denigrate the "older" settlers-turned-citizens and welcome new immigrants is a great way to signal that one is virtuous. I think that is the motive behind the monstrous hypocrisy.

Re: In the 21st century an independent country is a myth

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the slow reply, I have been stockpiling tinned food :-)

JMG, thanks for your thoughtful reply to my comment. Of course I agree that any statement is ideological, I am delighted to see you coming over to the post-modernist way of looking at things. Since you seem to disagree with what I wrote, though, I wonder if you are using 'ideological' in the perjorative way that some do?

Since it is ideological to claim that there can't be an independent nation (using the sorts of definitions of those two words accepted fairly widely in the past few decades, although if I had the energy I'd try to make a case that there isn't a coherent definition of a nation, even along the sensible-sounding lines you suggest) in the world as it is currently organised, isn't it ideological to wish citizens of the United Kingdom joy that their "nation" has become "independent"? That's just suggesting the opposite of my (thoroughly ideological) suggestion, it seems.

Also I agree with you that no political arrangement is permanent, nor should it be. God forbid. Didn't intend to give the impression that I thought differently. As a creaky old socialist I would add that a non-elitist internationalism of solidarity and similar good stuff is still well in play along with the two tendencies you mention, though getting a bit of a kicking from both of them.

I enjoyed your third paragraph, especially the bit about a broad degree of self-government. Huawei? Trident? Gary Mackinnon? And our government hasn't even signed up for satellite status yet! I would also want to look a bit more closely at what people were voting for in the referendum on EU membership and in the general election at the end of last year. Indications are many people's thoughts were much closer to home.

Sorry, you're not correct about the micromanaging thing. Trust me, I lived in Britain the whole time it was in the EU. A lot of the sort of thing people mean by that is the decision to do through regulation what in the USA would be done by people going to court, which seems less efficient and less fair as poor people rarely have access to the process. And the EU = Germany equation really doesn't stand up, it is clearly the biggest economy but they don't get their own way all the time and they stand up for other EU members (note the solidarity of the whole bloc with the Irish Republic during negotiations with the UK) even if they play rough quite often. Also Germany (thanks in large part to the Marshall Plan) is not the country it once was.

All the best, Andi

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations Brexiters! I hope it works out perfectly for everyone.

Congratulations to the UK

[(Anonymous)]

...they will be dearly missed for certain, leaving the rest of us on the claws of the "Oints du Seigneur".

[(Anonymous)]

I will be watching to see how Brexit plays out in Scotland and Ireland. With Scotland, it will be how strong the Scottish Independence Movement proves to be. In Ireland, what happens with Northern Ireland and at their border. Because technically, Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain - a Scots-Irish colony, in fact, built heavily on recruited Borderers. And the rest of Ireland has a loooong history of wanting the English off their backs at any cost. Even though England made up its mind some time ago that they could no longer afford to keep on oppressing the Irish.

And yet, in a mystical sense, the entire island of Britain is a single entity, though with an English core and a Celtic periphery.

We live in interesting times. And yes, I did miss the significance of it happening at Beltane.

Note: on this side of the pond the Secular Beltane is Superbowl Sunday.

[booklover1973]

The date is rather Imbolc than Beltaine.

[(Anonymous)]

It happened on Imbolc not Beltane. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom not part of Britain. And I wouldn't say Britain is a single entity either. Lots of Scots would disagree with you.

As for the Irish, it's complicated. The British had to be fought to get out of Ireland but Unionists in the North were fighting for them to stay. I don't see a United Ireland any time soon.

Secular Beltane

[deborah_bender]

And the values of the United States are on full display as ritual theater.

Teamwork, organized violence, competition, self-promotion, jingoism, multiracial and multiethnic inclusion, patriarchy, boastfulness, big business, spectacle. The longer this country carries on, the more it resembles the Roman Empire, for good and ill.

Re: Secular Beltane

[(Anonymous)]

reading several comments on various sites, one American 'Conservative' is lauding Brexit to the skies for its nationalistic overtones, whilst another former Brit in Spain is taking out Spanish citizenship and slamming Brexit.
Both are 'conservatives' in other realms. Weird, huh?

Re: Secular Beltane

[ecosophia]

We're in the middle of a massive realignment of politics, in which what counts as "liberal" and "conservative" are up for grabs. It's a familiar sort of discontinuity, in historical terms. Hang on tight; it'll get wilder before it's done!

[(Anonymous)]

It’s February! Will Magic Monday start tonight?

[ecosophia]

Come back here in 45 minutes and see...

;-)

[(Anonymous)]

It’s a date!

More UK Jobs

[(Anonymous)]

Looks like UK employers are now starting to actually hire locals for local jobs, now that EU migration is drying up.

Early signs of the kind of stuff JMG is talking about maybe:

BBC says

"School leavers train as carers as EU migration falls"

NHS hiring 10,000 British school leavers for hospital jobs (as opposed to posting advertisements in Poland as they would have before)


https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51094279

PS - Welcome back to blogging this month JMG

[(Anonymous)]

A more thoughtful response from the other side, with a bit of historical perspective:

https://gladstonediaries.blogspot.com/2020/01/brexit-in-historical-perspective-age-of.html?m=1

Ouch!

[(Anonymous)]

MASSIVE Mental slip on my part. I meant to say Imbolc, of course. Well, yesterday topped out at 61 degrees F, flowers are everywhere, a tree that looks like a magnolia (I haven't had a close-up look yet, being afflicted with That Prolonged Cough virus) and signs of romantic love as filtered through commerce are all over this comfortable cage. SORRY!

Now back to Brexit - the news story about hiring high school dropouts for jobs they'd normally send to Poland to fill is fine news indeed.

Pat, still wondering about which way the lands of her (paternal) ancestors will jump, and will they race back to the arms of the EU?

Brexit good news

[(Anonymous)]

One more in the Brexit good news list:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/foreign-affairs/brexit/news/109569/nissan-pull-out-europe-and-concentrate-uk-event-hard

Nissan has a huge car manufacturing base in the UK - mainly in the depressed Northern town of Sunderland where they are by far the biggest employer. Sunderland is one of the strongest Brexit supporting areas and a lot of sneering was directed their way for voting for Brexit, knowing that if post-Brexit tariffs came into play, Nissan could not export to Europe anymore and they'd all lose their jobs.

And yet, a leaked internal Nissan memo suggests this week that if there are WTO tariffs after the transition period, they will abandon their *European* manufacturing, shut down plants in France and Spain and concentrate on the UK with a view to dominating the local market (since EU export from the UK is not viable under WTO tariffs). That would be fantastic for Sunderland and should not just retain but increase local jobs as they shift European manufacturing to Sunderland.

Now of course Nissan has denied the existence of any such plan after it was leaked, and we don't know what the tariff position will be because we don't know what deal Boris will strike with the EU.

But this is not just encouraging but it is VERY counter-intuitive - who would have thought Nissan would even think about expanding Sunderland (even if no official plan exists), when its main raison d'etre (export to Europe) vanished? And that Sunderland voters had done the *right* thing (for themselves and their economic prospects I mean) by voting for Brexit??

How many more of these counter-intuitive turnarounds are coming?