I honestly find it difficult to keep up with everything happening in the American political landscape, so imagine how difficult it is to keep up with all of the sh-t happening in British politics. Brexit has been a disaster from start to finish, only no one really know how to finish it. I truly don’t understand how the UK cannot just take a mulligan on the 2016 Brexit vote, and just do a general vote again to see if British citizens still want to Brexit. But I’m sure there are “reasons” why that can’t happen, so instead, Theresa May has been trying, for more than a year, to put together some kind of soft-Brexit deal which wouldn’t wreck the British economy. Her attempts have all failed. And now May is facing a vote of no confidence:
British Prime Minister Theresa May will face a vote of confidence in her leadership of the Conservative party Wednesday, something she vowed to contest “with everything I’ve got.” Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, confirmed he has received the 48 letters of no confidence — from 15 percent of current Conservative MPs — needed to trigger the ballot. Only Tory MPs will vote.
The challenge is to May’s leadership of her party and if she lost it would not automatically trigger an election, though if she is replaced as Tory leader her successor would take over as prime minister. The news came after May delayed a House of Commons vote on her Brexit deal, which had been due to take place Tuesday night. Instead, she spent Tuesday touring European capitals in a bid to secure assurances over the controversial Northern Irish backstop from other EU27 leaders in the hope of winning over more Tory MPs, many of whom have said they opposed the divorce deal the prime minister negotiated with Brussels.
Speaking outside No.10 Downing Street, May warned a change of leadership now would “create uncertainty when we can least afford it” and said any new prime minister would be forced to extend the Article 50 Brexit negotiating period or revoke it all together.
So… May’s argument is that if she’s thrown out and a new prime minister comes in – however temporarily – then the Brexit negotiating period would have to be extended? But isn’t that what a majority of British voters want? As I said, I don’t really understand any of this – parliamentary rules seem impossibly obscure and obtuse to me. So, will May survive the vote of no confidence??
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
We can’t take a second vote because of a little thing called democracy. The people voted and that was the decision. We can’t just rinse and repeat until we get the right one.
I get what you’re saying but I truly don’t think people knew what they were voting for. People like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage just kept on shouting words like immigrants and NHS and that’s all they heard. My democracy was voting for an MP that could negotiate the difficulties of leaving the EU and voting on that, it was always to complicated for a public vote. If people had another chance now I think it would be very different.
This ^^^
But that’s kind of what elections are always like, Lara. Candidates shouting buzzwords they know will appeal to a certain demographic and get them the vote they need. Even if you try to explain how a certain vote will adversely affect them, they just hear the buzzwords.
Yeah… democracy. There is substantial evidence of dodgy/criminal campaign funding and abuse of voters’ personal information by the Leave campaign, going as far as Russian involvement in the campaign, which may have swayed the referendum vote. Look up the work of Carole Cadwalladr, an investigative journalist who worked on exposing Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s dirty involvement, deliberately feeding millions of people false information. And who is behind this – Steve Bannon. The UK referendum may well have been testing ground for the US elections half a year later.
I refer you to the Lisbon Treaty referendums in 2008 in Ireland. It was rejected the first time and there was a second referendum later that year which is passed. So it is possible and not undemocratic, as Lara says above, especially if voters are not given correct/enough information the first time around.
I completely agree with a lot of what everyone is saying below however there is a large portion of the country that voted for brexit who still support it and would be up in arms if another vote was called. Many people who voted for brexit did so because they felt disenfranchised and ignored and another vote would only aggravate this issue. We need to start holding politicians responsible for what they say and people like Boris Johnson should be properly investigated.
Yeah, we call those peeps “the base” here in the US and frankly I don’t care what an easily manipulated, xenophobic minority wants.
@Tw but what if they’re, unfortunately, still the majority? :/
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I actually told my mum “what was the point of the referendum, then? They can’t go back on the people’s vote”
The vote was the opposite of democracy. Basically leave won because a majority of the English voted to leave and England has the largest population. It was never democratic to give the English a vote on whether there should be peace in Ireland. Or the future prosperity of Scotland. For a leave vote to be upheld all four nations should have had to vote for it.
This^^^^^ 100% agreed . Poor Scotland and northern Ireland ! Such a beauty democracy isn’t? Especially when politicians use people as they want!
This is just pure posturing to see who gets to be the PM who finalises Brexit and gets all the ‘credit’ for it now that she’s done all the work. Personally, I think she will survive the no-confidence vote but it will be close – the others who could take over are even less palatable to the UK public than she is.
Delaying Brexit will have serious repercussions esp relating to the NI backstop – which once enforced could be difficult to end and is why she’s gone back to the EU seeking assurances it will only be temporary.
Yeah, she’s seen as the ‘least bad’ option I think. I think none of the rats nipping at her heels really want to be in her position until March 29, but they’re building base and want to be remembered as strongly opposing her. Once she completes the dirty work and the country is in ruins, one of them will sweep in and play saviour. Easy to do when the nation is on its knees.
This role had glass cliff written all over it from the beginning. I always admired her for taking it; she must have a strong sense of duty.
Or maybe she’s stupid or stupidly dogged? Seriously, who would want to have the dirty work of outside agitators hung around her neck (and reputation)?
Watched some of the debate just now. Theresa May is not backing down and the opposition is certainly keeping up the attacks.
I only want to remark that all the men who put UK in this situation are nowhere to be seen, and they left the other solve the mess the have created.
A mess they cooked up in a freakin Pizzeria Uno at an airport just to keep their more xenophobic voters from defecting to UKIP, assuming it would never pass. Pizzeria Uno is terrible.
THIS! I may not agree with her at all, but once again the men made the mess and left a woman to clean it up.
@Teamawsome: I am an Italian who live in France, so I don’t get everything, but I find admirable she hasn’t quit yet leaving all the alpha eatonian males to solve their mess.
I literally don’t have the energy for this nonsense any more. This has been a sh*t show from day one. I’ve never been a Tory supporter but I’ll NEVER forgive David Cameron for starting all of this, not bothering to campaign properly and then not having the gumption to see it through afterwards.
I don’t support May and half the time I don’t even know what to think any more, but I actually think it’s best if she survives this. If she doesn’t the ramifications are huge, we’ll have a leadership challenge, possibly another election, and all the while the clock is ticking to March 29th next year.
As a lay person this has completely destroyed my faith in politics in this country. All the politicians are out for themselves and just want to be right, they don’t want what’s best for the country because Brexit won’t affect them with their massive salaries and generous expense packages. It’s everyone else who will suffer, and I dread to think what the consequences might be for Ireland if they don’t get this right.
ARGH!
I agree with you on the Ireland situation. My husband is from Northern Ireland and grew up in a time where every Wednesday an Army helicopter landed in the field next to his house. He only learned that was odd when his Canadian cousins visited – apparently not everyone had helicopter Wednesday! It can’t go back to that.
Exactly! And it makes me SO angry that neither side mentioned the small issue of the Irish border during the original campaign. It was all “£350 Mill a week for the NHS” and “taking back our sovereignty” which is utterly laughable.
I mean it’s the same reason we can’t do a second 2016 election just because we got Trump. The rules saying we can’t arent that obscure lol they’re the cornerstone of our democracy for better or worse which sucks when most of the electorate is raciststipod and gerrymandered
No it’s not the same at all. In four years time you can vote Trump out, if this goes through that’s it. The EU won’t allow us to constantly change our minds.
I’m sure the EU would happily reinstate the EU dues for the UK… so I’d bet they WOULD let the UK change their mind… again.
Democracies have consequences and one of them is, even if the majority is wolves and the minority is sheep, we can’t just have sheep for dinner. As pathetic, sad, xenophobic, uninformed, etc etc etc as this LEAVE cohort is, they are entitled to representation and, it appears, turned out harder on this vote. (I don’t like it per se but thems is facts.)
A referendum and an election are two entirely different things, especially in this case
No, it’s not the same thing at all. A referendum is not binding, it’s essentially an opinion poll. And people were lied to at the time. And now that things are clearer and we know thet utter shit show that is unfolding I think it’s right to ask that opinion again.
It’s like saying –
Hey, I made you a sandwich. It’s an amazing sandwich, and you’ll love it.
Yes you say, I will do.
Okay – here’s your sandwich. Now I’ll tell you that it’s full of mouldy seafood and cat faeces.
And you say no, actually I don’t want to eat the sandwich.
But you HAVE to, you said you would eat it!
Now you’ve told me what’s in your shitty sandwich, I don’t want to eat it.
BUT YOU HAVE TO YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD EAT MY SHIT SANDWICH.
I am going to use this analogy constantly!
Thank you. I’ll never understand why people comment on things they don’t understand.
That is the funniest thing I have read it quite a while! I love it!!!!
What a mess, just like all the other political messes that had bad consequences throughout history. A timeout for a full public examination of the role of Russian interference and the work of Cambridge Analytica might be the only way out so of course that won’t happen.
Good point. I wish Assange would be arrested asap, so we could get more information on the mechanisms that were put in place by CA to target voters with hacked data and inflame their prejudices with racist lies–in both UK and US. One thing for sure is that the disruption serves enemies, not allies.
Rock and a hard place. Incompetent Tories or incompetent Labour. It’s a real mess and there seems no escape – no-one seems to want to offer any leadership until after the date the UK leaves the EU because none of them want to be held responsible for the mess that will ensue.
I dislike May but can see that she’s trying to make a deal out of horrifically sh*tty ingredients that will eventually lead to her being chucked on the scrapheap and someone else (in all possibility a Brexiteer) blaming it all on her when she did not want to nor did she set the damned Brexit genie free.
Cameron, Farage, and Johnson are nowhere…
They toddled away the minute things got tricky when the results came through. Spineless.
Can someone explain the Ireland thing?
Basically, it’s related to the Good Friday agreement between Ireland and Northern Ireland which ended the war between nationalists and unionists. The agreement meant that people & goods from the Northern Ireland and Ireland could move freely without a hard border. With the UK leaving the EU, a hard border might replace the soft border which nobody wants especially those in NI and Ireland.
Thank you! I was trying, very clumsily, to explain this to my 14yo American son who was listening to May’s speech on Monday.
But if no one wants a border why would one be created? In showing my American ignorance here….is it because one of them wouldn’t leave the EU or something?
Everyone correct me please but isn’t it because Northern Ireland is still British, so it would have to Brexit along with Great Britain, and Ireland (the rest of the country) would remain its own country not enmeshed in Brexit? Thus, the island would be split between a piece IN the European Union, free trade, and a piece OUT of the European Union, no free trade. And no free trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland, either – thus a “hard” border.
Because Northern Ireland is part of the UK and the Republic of Ireland isn’t. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, I just feel like some Americans don’t know that these are two different countries.
If the UK (incl. Northern Ireland) goes for a hard Brexit and leaves the EU AND the Customs Union, there needs to be some sort of border due to customs (and other things).
It could either be a border between NI (not in the EU) and RoI (in the EU) which threatens the peace process and Good Friday Agreement.
Or there could be a sea border between NI and England/Scotland/Wales. Which Northern Irish unionists won’t accept and May needs their votes in parliament.
Meowuirose, because NI is part of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) which is leaving the EU and Ireland is part of the EU so a border might be needed for that.
What Valois replied as well.
It’s really bizarre talking to younger people who don’t know anything about it.* Even as an American kid in the nineties, I remember hearing about the IRA bombings and subsequent legal conflicts over the border. It’s a Big Deal that kind of got swept under the rug of American political news in the 21st century.
*Albeit, my father was a naval man and my family had to live in Britain for a few years when I was younger, so it’s possible we picked up more of it through those channels.
In addition to that, NI is still a very segregated society with a high potential for conflict and a hard border would pose a serious threat to a) the relatively peaceful situation and b) the economic stability of NI which is seen as a major base for sad peaceful state.
Oooohhh, I see. Thank you for explaining this. I knew they were separate but thought they were still both part of the United Kingdom (if that is the correct term). What a mess. Kinda seems like the world is falling to pieces.
I’m not going to lie, with the disaster going on here in the US I’ve run out of emotional and mental energy to keep up with politics outside the US. Everything just seems so bleak and hopeless.
Jennifer — how did you get your 14 yo son interested enough to listen to not only politics, but British politics? I can barely get mine to turn off You Tube for a “what did you do at school today” conversation never mind discuss politics! Seriously envious!!
I just can’t with these politicians! Who will benefit from this?! Certainly not the public, so many people grand standing with their own agenda but haven’t provided a credible solution to this mess. I agree that there should be another referendum as the Leave campaign was found to have violated campaign funds and then there’s the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. I can’t believe how some people are so simple minded as to think it’s that easy to untangle ourselves from the EU when there are a lot of agreements/treaties/deals that are in place but people who believe in leaving keep on bleating about it so long as it keeps immigrants out. Well, good luck to them when price of goods rise and their money loses buying power.
Then there’s the fact that there is no one in the opposition that is a viable alternative.
I think a referendum is different to an election as we don’t get to change our minds in 4 years. I’d like to see a rerun, without the campaigning but with a cool calm explanation of what it all means. Rather than Project Fear v Project Unicorn droppings people need the facts. The pros and cons of both sides. It’s a simplification to just say that Brexiteers were xenophobes & racists. It’s a fact that UK companies are using the ready supply of cheap labour to reduce their costs. It’s made life very difficult for anyone in the low skilled sector, emploee rights have got significantly worse due to the huge supply of workers. That’s not the immigrants fault who just want what’s best for their families. I blame the politicians of both parties who haven’t bothered putting in the necessary checks and balances other countries have in place. Immigration has added a huge amount to our culture over the years but the pace has gone up dramatically and nobody bothered to put the infrastructure in place to cope with the extra people. I would hope we stay in the EU but that we can introduce measures to bring us into line with our neighbours….identity cards, a bit more taxation etc.
Yall dont have ID cards? Or you mean ID cards specifically for immigrants?
There is already ID cards for immigrants especially from those outside of the EU and within the EU. Are you saying you want check points in place?
My niece worked in a hospital in London. She said people come in there with ID cards and you knew it wasn’t the person they look totally different People just give their ID cards to other people and use them for healthcare and other things.
That’s bizaare! Do you like in the UK? People here are required to register with a gp and have their own nhs number. Medical workers then access that for medical history/records when needed. If you go to an a&e, you can get medical help without presenting an ID but you still have to fill a form with your personal details and where you are registered with a gp.
Exactly she said they registered at the a&e as someone they were not. For example a person might give his card to his brother and that person registers with his ID. She said that nurses were treated horribly by many men who came from countries that treated women as less than. If she in any told them to start treating her with respect they called her racist. She said that the medical system in the UK is falling apart and people don’t realize it. She left about a year ago. Said the working conditions were terrible and pay was bad as well.
No not just for immigrants. For all of us. The system seems to work in other European countries but we always balls things up here. Once you’re in this country it’s quite relaxed. In Germany you have to register with a police station to say where you’re living. I think the Spanish make sure they reclaim hospital fees for overseas patients. Other countries manage to control their private rental market so it isn’t a money grabbing free for all. We just don’t bother with it. We lose illegal immigrants then expel people who have been living here legally for decades. Nobody bothered counting people in v amenities and infrastructure. That’s not meant as an insult to people wanting to come here it’s just that the government didn’t take steps to accommodate them.
I believe you have to be registered no matter what? I’m in Denmark, and everybody should be registered here, however, they lose track of illegal immigrants half the time. Brexit is very complicated I guess. It gets a lot of coverage right now and even in Denmark everybody’s truly concerned. We really didn’t believe it would happen, which was naive.
I read yesterday that because of some technicality—something to do with the timing and deadlines—that another vote COULD be taken. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but if that’s true, why not take the opportunity and do another vote?
Because of political posturing and the sunk cost fallacy — it’s gone so far they feel invested in making Brexit ‘work’ when in fact it cannot ‘work.’ There is no sane recourse other than to vote again, but sanity never had much to do with politics.
I think that a lot of people blame the recent votes in Italy, in the United States, and in the UK racism and other people or countries have changed the vote. People like Steve Brannon. . I think that this is wrong. People voted the way they did because they feel disenfranchised. The price of housing is growing up. The price of groceries is going up. The price of everything is going up but wages are not. It is actually quite scary middle class is what makes a nation strong. In places where democracy fails it is generally because of poverty. If the UK takes another vote it is basically because certain people want to different resul. Those certain people are usually city dwellers and more frequently in the upper middle class or elite. They stand to lose money if this deal goes through. The disenfranshed however feel they will lose more if it doesn’t go through. what would you expect those people who still wanted it to do? Should they continue to fight and ask for another vote in another year or so.? Should they riot? Because for them democracy has failed. France voted differently than the countries I I mentioned above they are now rioting. The problem is is it these countries are slowly turning into Third World countries. People are voting the way they need to to try to change it Will it work? Probably not. However what’s happening now in countries is not working either.what if they did Re-vote and it went the same way? Would everyone be happy then? I am sad that people in England are not wanting to listen to the vote of the people and move forward. This is howdemocracy works. The chaos that is now happening is because some people in government or angry it didn’t go their way. They honest truth is when you look at France and Germany and Italy The EU probably won’t last that long anyway.
No offense, but are you from the UK, France, Italy or German? Because it sounds like you’re making broad statements on political sentiments in a number of countries yet you don’t seem to have an actual insight into what’s going on
I am unsure what you mean? France is in turmoil right now. The riots? Germany is going more right. Italy as well has had a dramatic change in government. They are not currently talking about leaving the EU. But I am unsure how you think that these changes don’t make the EU unstable it is like a powder keg waiting to blow up. I assume you watch the news?
“The chaos that is now happening is because some people in government or angry it didn’t go their way.”
Is simply wrong. Brexit was always going to be an absolute disaster and not just because the government is incompetent which it is.
I watch the news (more than that, actually). And unlike you I actually live in Europe and claiming that these countries are turning into 3rd world countries is ridiculous. The problems they’re undoubtedly facing and that pose a serious threat (like Italy for example) are extremely multifaceted and cannot be reduced to a failure of the European project that is the EU. It’s like you’re taking five million things and you’re reducing them to one common denominator.
I solemnly believe you’re clueless as to what a 3rd world country is.
Seconded. Largely due to the fact that “third-world” is an antiquated Cold War term that no longer actually applies or adequately describes the development of a country.
Sorry Louise but you do sound like you’ve been on the UKIP juice. Do you know who profited the most from the Brexit vote? Hedge funds: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short-how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash
Do you know that the loudest Brexiteers have been moving their investment funds to EU countries for post-Brexit?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jacob-rees-mogg-brexit-scm-ireland-investment-fund-conservative-mp-a8461021.html
So can we stop with the talk that the upper class and the elite want to sabotage Brexit? That’s straight out of right-wing propaganda.
The erosion of public services was caused by austerity measures by the conservative government. Even with eroded public services the idea of European countries turning into third world is laughable. Anyway, public anger has been cleverly misdirected to the EU, like it’s the EU immigrants who are a drain on the system, or EU policies that hold back social and economic progress. Guess what? It’s not true. In fact it’s the opposite. And once we leave the EU, the poor will be poorer and angrier. But someone will certainly profit from it, and it’s not the working or middle class.
It’s not the immigrants who are to blame. It’s the government (both sides, Labour and Tory) who allowed businesses to take advantage of the increased supply in low skilled labour forcing wages and conditions down. . Labour’s minimum wage and then the Tory’s workplace pension has unwittingly encouraged businesses to take staff off the pay roll paying them via an agency or making them ‘self employed’. One trick was making them work for an agency claiming that as they are employed by a company in Scotland but work at some big warehouse in Norwich then they can claim ‘expenses’ taking them below the taxation level. Scam after scam. Now zero hours contracts and low pay are the norm. Labour kindly introduced tax credits which just means tax payers are topping up the lower paid and subsidising the large employers yet again. The minimum wage now just means most employers see that as the going rate for unskilled work rather than as the barest minimum. ……and breathe 😡. My Dad’s analogy is that the economy is a cake. The rich get the first serving, the icing, and we all feed off what’s left in ever decreasing portions. The workers at the bottom effectively get the crumbs. Now the rich get the icing, the butter cream and the top tier. By the time it gets to the working classes there’s little left. The greed at the top is taking a bigger chunk every year and increasingly the workers, be they British, European, African or whoever get less and less.
I think some people voted out because they’ve always hated Europe and want to go back to 50/60s but more voted because our political system has let most of us down and Brexiteers were claiming to be oh so different when actually they were worse.
My father voted out, he is highly intelligent and in no way a xenophobe but he believed the supply of incoming workers was having an adverse impact on workers rights. If we got to vote again he might be persuaded to change his mind.
The problem I have with Brexit is not fundamentally any concern for what will happen to those who voted to exit or chose not to vote. You made your decision. You can eat the consequences of a hard Brexit for all I care.
The problem is, of course, is that it won’t be just them dealing with the consequences. It will be all of Britain, and the resultant anger won’t be directed at themselves, either. It’ll be channeled against minorities, refugees, displaced ethnic groups, etc. Because that’s the out Farage and the others gave themselves. That’s why the whole campaign was built around xenophobia in the first place. I imagine there are lot of people there looking at their options to leave.
People voted because of xenophobia makes this whole thing too simplistic. Many of the people who voted felt left behind due to poor wages and the inability to survive. Do some of them blame the many immigrants for that change. Perhaps. However if people still had good jobs and were making a good living I don’t think you would’ve seen them vote this way regardless of how many immigrants were in the country. Putting it down to xenophobia just is lazy. There are many factors that to this and they need to be acknowledged
There’s growing inequality, people feel disenfranchised, and they expressed their frustrations THROUGH xenophobia and a desire for isolation. It’s a cotillion of causes, not a solo. It’s a dynamic process, not a rubric-based choice.
Instead of holding their representatives accountable, they took it on others more vulnerable than themselves. Swell.
Yeah, I have an ax to grind. I’m part East European, though an immigrant for the last two decades. Britain can use a bit of post-colonial clarity. It can be an, ahem, growing opportunity. Of course, as of now they set their asses on fire and pouring more gasoline on it.
I think (could be wrong) there was a comprehensive study of patterns in the Brexit vote, as well as self-reported motivations. The counties with the lowest immigration percentage of population voted overwhelmingly for Brexit citing immigration fears as their motivation. Sure, there is all kinds of room for error in this study but it does point pretty predominantly to xenophobia as a top contender.
If you actually read my comment again, you would see that I never stated xenophobia was the entire thrust of the problem. I am aware that the issue is complex. I said xenophobia is an outlet being offered by politicians with their own ambitions and motivations to distract people from placing blame on the upper classes where their anger really belongs. We see the same thing going on in America as the income gap widens as a result of resources being hoarded by the 1% and parties using minorities and immigrants as scapegoats for the real source of the problem.
But regardless of how “oversimplified” it sounds, the reality is that we are responsible for understanding the political mechanisms into which we play when we vote. If you voted for a movement for reasons other than xenophobia knowing full well that xenophobia was being used as a strategy to turn others, then…you voted for xenophobia. Same as Trump supporters who claim to have voted for him for economic or to “shake up the system.” They’re racist. Because racism wasn’t a deal breaker or enough to make them question their motives. If I have to be responsible for Obama’s continued aggression in the Middle East, they have to be responsible for kids in cages at the border. Sorry, them’s the brakes, guys. We are responsible for the repercussions of our votes.
Louise: You never said what country you’re from, neatly sidestepping that question put to you up thread.
I respect her for her ambition and strength as well. I don’t care if she is a good people or bad people – nobody ever questions a male politician about that. They get elected and schlep through their job.
She took the job that the men completely botched up, stuck with it and now that most of the work is done they are trying to oust her to let someone else “save” the deal? Oh, please. It is so obvious.
So first to the poster who seemed to think that Europe could never become a third world it could happen faster than we all think it could. History shows us that.
As to the vote. Many in the UK realize that money is tight. Often they look at the fact that they are working and paying taxes while they have less and less. They then see those coming from other countries (regardless of the colour of their skin) and think that they are using resources (eg health care, etc). As well they come and take jobs and then work for less which brings down the average wage. This creates anger. As well it creates a lot of poverty. If all immigrants came and worked at well paid jobs, paid for their own health care, etc I honestly don’t think we would see what we are seeing now. People think that the immigration has made the country poorer as well as has eroded the common British culture. That would be similar to millions of people moving to Saudi Arabia, getting free health care, changing the customs of dress, etc. The people in Saudi would be upset. It is just human nature. Britain cannot continue to take as many immigrants and continue with the current social programs. It is impossible. This is what people are reacting too. It is irresponsible to say that it is all xenophobia. Those whose disagree must also look at the fears and concerns and take a careful look st immigration and discuss it responsibility.
History shows us what exactly – and when?
By the way, you sound much more like an American talking about immigration than an Brit. And there’s shades of Breitbart in that reference on “common British culture”. Can you even define that?
Maybe you should take a look at the statistics surrounding the wage gaps in industrialized nations as to who actually has the wealth and where it’s being funneled. That might give you a clearer image as to who the actual source of the wealth inequality problem is. You may also want to open a few history books and look at how often this situation plays out – and who exactly is singling out those minorities and immigrants as the origin of the issue and how it benefits them.
so All the things you say I get. However to the average person how they feel matters. And blaming Breitbart doesn’t help. People make up there own minds based on experience and what they witness. And to ask what is British culture shows – so Brits don’t have their own culture? That is interesting because people travel to England to experience it. And some people feel they are losing it. You might think it’s not happening but some people do, and that needs to be validated and discussed. Trying to make people look stupid and racist because of fears doesn’t help the situation. Everyone needs more tolerance. The right and the left. Both are evenly to blame for this mess
You want tolerance for your poorly defined tropes and feelings of xenophobia. Hard pass.
That’s a bit harsh. I’d hate any country to lose its own culture, that thing that makes it unique.
What is Common British culture…moaning but not leaping into action, saying sorry for no reason, Mickey taking, talking about the weather, caravan holidays, sense of fair play, loving an underdog, Moaning about the Royal Family but loving the Royal Family, Wimbledon, animal lovers, hating show offs, church bells on a sunday, Queens speech, binge drinking (I blame the Vikings). The four saints days, Poppy week, WI, coach outings, stately homes, cream tea, saying morning to strangers you pass on the street, island mentality. Queuing!!
I agree those aren’t under attack from immigrants (well maybe queuing) but an excess of political correctness from certain quarters looking for racism where none exists makes people feel defensive. Especially if the tabloids pick up the stories. Between the two you can understand why people might feel concerned.
Canber you said you live here, do you not think there is an overlying British culture? I think there is and a plenty of people making this country their home adopt it and love it.
I’m an American of East European descent and I appreciate you giving me an aggregate of what an ineffable culture or general belonging means in the case of Britain. I really do. I was challenging another American to explain her half masticated made-in-Breitbart cliches.