Winseer:
All the time we have Left and Right divisions along the lines you depict above - then we’re not ever going to get anywhere.
But there are left and right divisions, it’s that simple.
What rubbish that Brexit was ever about “RIght wing lies”.
If I belived for a minute that Brexit was about “Pushing down wages” for example, then I, of all people - would hardly be in favour of it - would I?
So why vote for a party whose agenda is precisely that?!
More and More I reckon that the reason a lot of people voted Remain - was because “The wrong government was seen to be in power to implement Brexit”.
I don’t agree. The Tory party under Cameron was pro-Remain. It might be true to say that some people were even more staunchly pro-Remain due to the fact that Brexit was driven by right-wing radicals (that’s true of me, for example), but being driven by right-wing radicals is also probably part of the reason why some people were even more staunchly pro-Brexit (the bosses and businessmen who want to see wages attacked).
In other words, we now have two distinct different visions of Brexit that are believed by Left and Right respectively:
(1) The Left want us to retain all the upsides of Remain, keep the “Laws” that force the UK to be nice to criminals, foreigners, and other undesirables, whilst leaving the EU in “Name Only”.
The laws that “force the UK to be nice to criminals” are simply the rule of law itself. As for foreign criminals (I assume that’s what you meant when you characterised foreigners as undesirables), it’s one thing kicking back out gangsters who arrived here 3 months ago, nobody really objects to that in principle (and as far as I know, it’s always been permitted by law).
It’s another thing completely to kick out people who arrived here as toddlers, whose entire family and community are here, back to some notional homeland of which they have no memory or experience - in substance that’s a policy of transportation and exile, not deportation and “return”. It is these sorts of policies that the law is designed to stop. And as the Windrush scandal shows, they are necessary protections for citizens and restrictions on right-wing politics, because right-wingers don’t stop where reasonable people would expect them to, in the political and bureaucratic shadows they go far beyond it, usually so that they can pretend they are getting spectacular results tackling a problem that in fact barely exists, or so that they can deflect attention away from the hardships their other policies impose on the masses.
The UK gets to stay called the United Kingdom and the Republican elements of Europe (including Brits of that leaning) - decide to very magnanimously drop their calls for our monarchy to cease.
“Brexit means f—all” in essence.
I think for left-wingers, the only issue at stake is democratic control of the economy. Even things like ending free movement, are designed to control the bosses by cutting off their endless supply of cheaper labour and forcing them to provide proper training and careers for settled workers - it’s got nothing to do with “foreign undesirables” and similar.
(2) The RIght want full judical control, full border control, and full trade route selection control - which is to do what? Chuck everyone in prison who votes Labour? Nope. Kick everyone out who wasn’t born here? Nope. Trade with the rest the world on a capitalist basis rather than heavily regulated EU basis? - Hell yes!
Yes, and trading on a “capitalist”, free-trade basis will mean lower wages! What is it about these dots that you cannot connect?
I’m not aware of a single case in history where British judges were to the left of EU law - after all, British lawyers wrote it. EU law is either used as a fig leaf for unpopular laws and policies that national right-wing politicians actually support on a sustained basis, or it has stopped British judges and politicians going even further to the right.
You are precisely an example of a right-winger who would make me vote Remain, WInseer!
(3) Then there’s people like me, who are neutral on the Monarchy, Neutral on “Those immigrants already here”, Neutral on “Which government would be best post-Brexit”, but overly in favour of a Law and Order crackdown on Crimes against the Person, a replacement of Strasbourg/Brussels laws with those we already had in the first place - based on Magna Carta, and of course a full Democracy, where civil laws become fluid, and can be changed by popular vote as and when our population sees fit, which requires reform of BOTH houses of parliament in due course.
Why are you obsessed with Magna Carta? Do you really think that it bequeathed effective rights to the average peasant? Most peasants rights were enforced simply through the threat of riot and uprising. And do you think it protected peasants from evictions and enclosures on land they and their families had worked since time immemorial, and being forced into squalid factories during the industrial revolution?
The working man in this country only gained a democratic vote in 1918! A mere hundred years ago! The working class woman not until 1928. It wasn’t until 1948 that double votes for businessmen and university graduates were abolished!
This idea that the British state has some long history of protecting the common man is laughable. Working people fought the British state tooth and nail for their rights - working people were massacred at Peterloo in 1819 for demanding parliamentary representation and an end to the Rotten Boroughs which meant the House of Commons was dominated by the influence of old-monied aristocrats - and it was until the 20th century that it even remotely started to democratically represent ordinary people.
Anyone who mentions Magna Carta as a fine British tradition of laws and rights, I know he’s living in a dreamworld. There has even been a civil and war and revolution in England since the days of the Magna Carta, fought to overturn the King’s autocratic power.
And the judges of the common law were not guardians of the little man - they were members of the ruling class, determined to keep ordinary people in their rightful place, and themselves in theirs.
If we all stand apart, and slag each other off over what were “Lies” and what were not - then the whole thing become a matter of Faith. WHO do you believe?
Indeed, who do you believe? Not the right-wingers, in my case.
DO you believe that you’ve got more chance of being Stabbed in London by a fellow Londoner, Blown up in any UK city by an Islamist, or Poisoned by a Russian in a Cathederal City?
You can believe part, none, or all of those three of course. I know what I believe though, and it’s what I get to see first-hand, rather than on anyone’s hearsay.
So you accept that you have more chance of being stabbed in London by a fellow Londoner (which is the truth)? Or am I misinterpreting your rhetoric?
Actual dead people - is hard to lie about. Anything else we get told by our illustrious ruling classes - should be considered as bully until proven otherwise. “Say So” is NOT proof. They are ALL liars then, and they need to win back the goodwill of the public, rather than just be considered one’s enemies because we didn’t happen to vote for them at the last election.
Left wing extremists are just as much filth as Right wing extremists then. That doesn’t make yours truly a centerist of course. I’m just anti “Criminal” full stop. You can be of any background and be that, of course.
So if you’re anti-criminal, do you want to see all trade union and collective bargaining rights abolished? Since workers broke the law, became criminals, and some were sent to prison, to insist on these?