Carryfast:
Rjan:
Britain was last a high-wage economy in the 1970s, and since then had simply been cannibalising more and more sectors, and selling off more and more public wealth or being careful only to attack the next generation to disguise the systemic consequences and avoid uproar.
Firstly there’s every reason to conflate our EEC/EU member status with that.Including the ease of moving capital and jobs around and the sell off of public owned utilities,which it provided/s.
I agree, although it must be remembered that no EU diktat requires Britain to keep electing Tory governments which both intend to use aspects of EU membership as a tool to attack workers, and which also intend to use their influence at the table to shape the EU into a form that is amenable to these attacks.
Even under the Blair government, the effect for example of free movement would have been greatly moderated if there had been stronger constraints in place to reinforce wages and prevent casual and short-term working which encourages carpetbagging and skills-creaming.
All problems ultimately still pass through the nexus that the British electorate keep installing right wing governments.
A lot of people, yourself included, seem to want to find a narrative in which you have been voting for and supporting the correct right-wing politics all along, and the only problem has been foreign institutions or malign left-wing influence.
On immigration specifically, it has always skyrocketed under the Tories in every period of post-war government (with the exception of Heath)
And yet the Tories’ rhetoric against it is always the strongest, and many people who want an end to EU membership because of free movement feel that the Tories are the party of tight borders and Labour the party of open borders.
Even considering Blair’s time in office, which many use as the benchmark of Labour’s attitude to immigration, the Tories under Cameron and May have still exceeded Blair’s record handsomely - including on the non-EU component on which they have full control of immigration policy.
It is the responsibility of the electorate to respond to that gap between rhetoric and reality, and to understand that the reason the Tories employ this gap is because it can be used to win elections that then allow them to attack wages.
While ironically it started mainly with the transfer of Brit wealth and manufacturing sector jobs to the higher wage German economy mainly to meet geopolitical aims.With the win win for the CBI that it decreased the demand for labour and increased the labour supply at home.That part of the agenda still remaining to an extent.
As for your divisive age issues that process hit approaching retirement WW2 generation workers just as much as it hit their sons and daughters.With if anything many of the young generations being the ones who backed Thatcher.
I agree in terms of who was young and old in 1979. But those who were young in 1979 are getting on a bit now, and there has been a definite pattern amongst organised labour and the wider populace over the past 40 years to protect grandfather rights whilst allowing the next intake to be offered inferior terms.
However, I was not primarily referring to this. I was referring to the behaviour of governments in attacking only the next generation by salami slicing. For example, when they introduced student loans in 1990, they did not retrospectively charge old students, they only charged subsequent students. When they introduced AST tenancies, they did not immediately abolish existing secure tenancies. When most pension schemes have been closed, they have only been closed to new members. When agencies and casualisation enlarged from the early 90s, they did not transfer the entire workforce to casual contracts, but simply stopped replacing the permanent workforce (or did so on inferior terms). And so on.
Until here we are with a load of young generation turkeys voting for Christmas in the form of support for the EU.Who want to put our energy supply and with it payment regime in the hands of foreign conglomerates and who don’t ever want to go back to the ‘dark days’ of 1972. 
I think the young generation is predominantly pro-EU because for many on the right who have been driving Brexit for their own reasons, leaving the EU is predominantly about an older generation’s xenophobia and attacks on citizens rights, and that’s what you’re seeing the reaction against.
If Brexiteers were talking sensibly about better career prospects for students and suchlike, and not about throwing their friends who are already here out of the country, then they’d probably be more ready to listen.
Of course, for the likes of Farage and Boris, the idea of trade being restricted to the sort which benefits workers, and less money for bosses, is anathema to their agenda.
