All fairly obvious stuff from Matthew Goodwin in the Spectator…except to the BBC and fellow liberals who, as noted below, continue to frame Brexit solely as an economic problem failing to understand or believe, despite being told again and again, that it was about immigration and culture in the main…communities did not like being ‘swamped’ by thousands of foreigners turning up practically overnight making them strangers in their own land…the BBC merely brushes such concerns aside as ignorant, bigoted and racist and claims it is all about economics…if the poor [who all voted for Brexit says the BBC] saw that the economy was doing well and there was money for more schools and hospitals and houses they wouldn’t care if all their neighbours were foreign….that’s just not true though is it?….
What has led to the rise of populism? The conventional answer involves inequality, flattening wages – and general economic malaise. In Europe, one year after the vote for Brexit, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times claimed that the global financial crisis had ‘opened the door to a populist surge’. In America, thousands rushed out to buy J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a coming of age story about down-and-outs in poverty stricken Kentucky, as a blueprint on the Trump voter. Yet this take is deeply misleading. If populists only required economic hardship to thrive then they would be rocking in Portugal and Spain while collapsing in states that have had some of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, such as Austria and the Netherlands. The reality is that they are tanking in the former and surging in the latter.
So what’s going on? One possible answer (anathema to economists) is that people do not only care about jobs and GDP and that something else is having a much stronger effect. We might think back to an innovative experiment conducted in the 1990s by Paul Sniderman and his colleagues to find out why the Dutch were hostile toward rising immigration. Contrary to conventional wisdom they found that it was a sense of cultural rather than economic threat that had ‘by far the largest impact’.
We found [in our own studies in Britain] that worries over cultural threat overshadow concerns about the economy. So even in the shadow of a major financial crisis, recession, austerity, wage stagnation, squeezed living standards and an increasing number of terrorist attacks, it is still worries about culture –specifically, a belief that ‘British culture is threatened’ – that mattered more.
In both 2011 and 2016, feelings that British culture is threatened were most closely linked to hostility toward minority groups. This sense of cultural protectionism had the largest effect on explaining hostility toward Muslims.
This cultural rather than economic backlash is absolutely central to making sense of why millions of citizens across the West are pushing back against immigration and turning to parties that want to curb this rapid ethnic churn in the name of defending traditional national values, ways of life and identity. Our political world is dominated by transactional debates about jobs and resources yet it is clear that voters put an equal if not greater value on something that is more diffuse yet politically potent if it is seen to be under threat – a shared history, culture, tradition and way of life.
This not only goes some way to explaining why the ramblings of an economic elite and jobs-focused Remain camp fell flat during the 2016 referendum but also why the centre-left across Europe has steadily been drained of support by voters wanting to mobilise in the name of defending their culture and values, whether from a refugee crisis or political, business and many media elites who celebrate internationalism and seemingly feel no real allegiance to a national community.
So cultural backlash erupting across the West is distinctly unlikely to evaporate in the near future, even if economic growth is somehow restored. As societies continue to become more ethnically and culturally diverse, and as the populist right gives one side of this debate a much greater sense of political agency, these revolts may yet have a long way to run.
I think the MSM have deliberately allowed what is a simple argument to become bogged down in talk of benefits and GDP. They feel they are on safe ground when they claim increased GDP, and point to brown doctors and native white benefit scroungers.
“Culture” bothers them but, in a sense, I have to agree that it’s not ideal. It immediately raises the question “What is British/English” culture (I leave out Scottish/Welsh culture because the question is never asked) and that tends to put those opposed to large scale immigration on the defensive. We know that our culture exists but, like the air around us, we find it hard to describe because it’s an intangible combination of many things, not necessarily exclusive, and not necessarily uniform throughout the UK.
IMO, a better argument is that I want my country to remain recognisably English. Several decades ago, if I had been parachuted blindfold in to any part of the UK, I would have known before long where I was (the remoter parts of Scotland would have taken a little longer). Now, there are increasing parts of the UK – Bradford, Luton etc, where the only clue would be from the style of some of the older buildings. Bradford’s Yorkshire sandstone is a giveaway, but that’s about it.
It’s simple really. The country is being changed into a radically different place, but not France, Italy or Germany, which would at least have some virtues. People didn’t vote for it, have been lied to about the process, and they simply don’t want it. If they preferred Pakistan, they would have moved there.
That’s all there is to it.
There may be (marginally) increased GDP but GDP per capita has been in rapid decline. Obvious really, but if you increase the population by about 8% as we have done in the last 13 years or so, GDP overall has to go up by that for GDP per capita to stand still.
Time and time again we have to remember the lies of the BlairBrown junta about 15,000 pa EE immigrants, Government debt decreasing, the ‘contribution’ of immigrant workers to our tax base when a single employee needs to be earning about twice the NMW before his low NHI and tax payments (assuming legal employment) only just cover the cost per capita of the NHS. If the immigrant worker is married and has children they can get a net subsidy from the state of up to £15k before the cost of childrens’ education is added. That is why our economy is DonaldDucked!
Exactly.
Only this morning both SKY and the BBC have been talking about the failure of the police to tackle modern slavery.
This is an imported problem, and yet another hidden cost which is not factored in when the so-called economic benefits of immigration are discussed. I don’t think much of police priorities these days, but they are being pulled in so many directions at once.
(BTW “That’s all there is to it.” sounds a bit smug. Not my intention.)
I think they are under the mistaken impression that painting their fingernails, along with their ridiculous tweets, has stemmed completely, the slavery traffic.
I wonder if they ever read the comments below these tweets? If they did, they might get some inkling of the derision in which they are held. If they had brains bigger than their blue fingernails they might realise the trouble they are storing up for themselves by alienating sections of the population who would otherwise be broadly supportive.
Clare ,
You hit the nail on head ( hate crime ) . During the victorious exit campaign Mr Farage pointed the gdp issue out but it was largely shouted down by the recital of “ Little Englander” which was a badge I was proud to wear .
Al beeb shows a sign of your / my theory – all those awful daytime programmes of moving to the country , France , coast , Australia , mars . Seems to always be white people . No one says why they are going though .
( I have to admit I’ve never knowing watched this trash and it’s only an impression ) .
As for the video – no sign of Kate adie, Myrie or any other overpaid auto q reader on this incident .
I think a good explanation is the Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. Not everyone’s favourite I know but his analysis of why ‘Populism’ is growing is telling.
Basically those right the top of the modern world , the top 0.01% , see them selves as global citizens and have no allegiance to any particular community or place , let alone country. He calls these folks Nowheres. They have enormous power and they have been able to convince a huge slice of the population that they too can share in this ‘glamorous ‘ life style and that they should have the liberal attitudes and values that go with it. I call these dupes ‘secondary Nowheres’ , people who try to ape the real Nowheres. Of course virtually none of those ‘ secondary nowheres’ has any chance at all of becoming a real nowhere. For instance I know several ardent secondary nowheres who have never lived more than ten miles from where they were born , who go abroad only on holiday, and when there never eat the local food and can’t speak a word of any language other than English. But they have followed the fashionable thing to do. Almost all of these folks voted Remain and call those of us who voted Leave , Little Englanders etc. They try consciously not to be patriotic and to show their disdain for the values of their homeland. They even believe the BBC , something which in my book requires immedite section under the mental health act. They have to advertise their nowhereness at every opportunity. They are thus easy prey for the BBC.
‘Somewheres’ are more firmly rooted in their locality and their country. They feel happy with the values of their country and upbringing and resist and resent any attempt to radically change those values and traditions. This does not mean, as The Nowhere elite constantly portrays them, that they are xenophobic or little Englanders, in fact they can have a much more cosmopolitan outlook and lifestyle than many of the secondary Nowheres, but they value their roots.
For the last thirty years or more the Nowhere elite have been in power and they have succeeded in imposing many of their values on the rest of us. The secondary Nowheres have lapped it up and begged for more anxious to parade their Nowhere credentials. The somewheres have finally had enough of seeing their values and traditions trashed. The Nowheres have over reached themselves . The outcome is that somewheres are beginning to vote for leaders who represent them and not the Nowheres. The Nowheres call this populism , the somewheres call it democracy.
But just because somewheres have woken up where their best interests lie , we should not assume that the domination of the Nowheres is over. The elite will fight long and hard to preserve their power. They have the MSM in their pockets, the civil service, the police and the judiciary plus thousands of bosses of public bodies. They can mobilise the millions of dupes they have created in the secondary Nowheres. They will fight dirty , they will fight across national boundaries. See how they are attacking Hungary and Poland from outside the country with threats from Brussels. Austria will soon receive similar treatment if it doesn’t tow the line. See how they can even hobble the POTUS. This will be a long and bloody struggle but at least the Nowheres are facing a real challenge for the first time.
Thanks for that summary. I have been thinking along similar lines myself. I think a lot of the opposition to Brexit is down to British snobbery and one-upmanship. The ‘secondary nowheres’ are I suspect often lower middle class, upwardly mobile people who see the EU and globalism as a step up the social ladder. They want to distance themselves from the ‘backward’ people they have come from (probably their parents’ generation) and show that they are ‘progressive’. They will have also have picked up a smattering of watered-down marxism at ‘Yooni’ which all helps.
To them the EU represents openness, tolerance, international-cooperation, culture, friendship etc. Sitting drinking wine in Tuscany and eating olives rather than drinking Watney’s Red Barrel and eating chips in Mablethorpe as their parents did.
Brexit, to them, threatens to hurl them back into a grey 1950s world of windswept caravan parks, sofas bought on HP and racist jokes on the television. They are terrified of it.
Television had ………. jokes?
Spike Milligan and paki dalek – youtube yesterday here
Cranmer,
Yes I agree the secondary nowheres dream of being real Nowheres and drinking wine in Tuscany or even on a yacht in Porto Fino harbour , and there is nothing wrong in dreaming , but of course they never will be able to do these things outside of their two week holiday. They have been sold an unrealisable dream but it comes at a high cost. That cost is the destruction of the community where they actually spend 50 weeks of the year, where their children live and where they work. THey haven’t yet understood this and the MSM and educational establishment are doing their best to make sure that they don’t until it is too late.
The Paris Statement is worth a read.
It must be very comforting for ‘African Americans’, (as opposed to Americans), to pop ‘back’ to Africa and feel at home. Ditto for ‘British Asians’, (the real British don’t have labels, they just are), as they cheer on Pakistan at the cricket and dress and eat just as ‘at home’. They even get their own ‘Asian Network’ here just in case they feel homesick.
Where is the Europeans ‘Israel’? Why of all the people in the world are they alone denied a Heimat?
Jim,
Thanks for the link. Excellent read.
In 2017 populism is only the expression of democracy hitherto denied.
Do British people do any ” menial” jobs now ? I have to ask because years ago that was the main set of people I dealt with . Some resented it , others made the best of it and could actually enjoy their days work . Some people who could have retired still carried on working on these ” menial” jobs not for the money , but because they wanted to , for their own individual reasons .
Now of course they are all replaced , without one Union raising the least bit concern . Food factories and the like which have stood for fifty , hundred or more years are either gone or worked by foreigners , with British upper managers to oversee . Where are the original British card carrying union members ? How have the unions protected them ?
Notice how your postmen are English ( Scotish , Welsh ) in your town but your Amazon couriers are from everywhere , how long will that last ?
Nibor,
We have had a Polish postie for a couple of years. He is very diligent , polite and speaks pretty good English. But it is another example of the trend you highlight.
I have just spent a long weekend in the Glencoe area and it struck me how every member of the hotel I was staying in was foreign. And it’s the same wherever I’ve stayed in the UK. This got me to wondering what has happened to the locals who would previously have worked in these establishments. What are they doing instead to earn a living? They can’t all be on benefits or permanently at uni.
Mr Deschain, I noticed that even ten years ago when I was up in Fort William for a while.
My guess is the former locals have a. gone to ‘yooni’ and are now living in poky flats in English slums, trying to keep up the fiction of having ‘done well for themselves’ with some sort of cubicle-slavery white collar job where most of their money goes on paying off student debt and mortgages, and/or b. there just aren’t as many locals as there used to be because nobody’s having children anymore, or if they are, they’re the sort of people to whom the idea of working instead of a free ride on benefits is a puzzling conundrum.
“They can’t all be on benefits or permanently at uni.”
O, yes they can!
The BBC have been quick to call the people who voted Brexit all the usual meaningless names such as ‘racists’ or ‘Xenophobes’ etc but very very slow to point out that none of the charade need have happened if ‘We just haven’t got a clue what to do’ was on the ball and followed EU law for a change.
We have learned now from Europe that the benefits being given to groups such as Eastern Europeans who do not find work, or don’t want to find work, could have been stopped after three months, yet even after learning they could have done this, they are continuing to hand out our money like Lady Bountiful.
You wouldn’t perhaps mind so much if the looney Tunes crew we call the Tories were decent with our own people, but they have attacked the most vulnerable groups such as the disabled and the elderly cutting or even stopping their benefits.
A 2% swing would have meant the Brexit vote went the other way. and it’s my view that the governments meanness with it’s own people and over generosity with the migrants which lost Camerloon the vote.
A nasty man too full of hate for the British working class for his own good!
At the next election I will be voting Labour because it’s probably the only way to get rid of the dire (Dis)May whose policies are more or less just the same as Labour anyway, save for a love of money. Besides all that if the put the taxes up on high earners a lot of luvvies are going to be dreadfully impoverished or forced to move abroad when we shall see them as the hypocrites they really are
Thoughtful,
You must vote as you wish as will I. But I would never vote Labour and I am even more anti Labour now Corbyn and his Marxist gang are in charge. One thing that you can be sure of is that under Labour we will have another bout of mass migration as we did under Blair and that minorities will be given further privileges over white people. If you worry about the fate of the British working class you should consider the impact on them in twenty years time when Corbyn’s goons allow another several million Muslims into the country. Voting Labour is a vote to consign Britain to an Islamic future .
Corbyn’s Goons? What do you think Theresa May is currently doing ? Did you know she is planning to incorporate Sharia law into British law and asked Mona Siddiqqi of the Prince Alwaleed centre at Edinburgh University to look into the best way it can be done?
Are you aware she supressed an official report into the Saudi sponsoring of terrorism in the UK?
Between her & Camoron, can you name a single piece of Political Correctness oppressive legislation the Tories have reversed? If the Tories believe that the Labour party is so fantastic then I might as well vote for the real thing because I know the Tories are just seat warmers without any clue passion or idea what to do with the country. The only thing they love is money and their hatred for the white working class shines through everything they do. They’re probably worse than Labour are now anyway. At least Labour won’t attack the disabled and the pensioners while paying benefits claimants in the Yemen who don’t even exist !
May and the Tories are poor and lean to the left as they say but Corbyn is certain to be much much worse.it is a question of which party will be least bad and the Tories will certainly not be as bad as Corbyn will be on immigration.
May shows signs of understanding the strength of feeling within the British electorate and appears willing to go to the hard Brexit route if forced.
Corbyn will say whatever he thinks will get him elected and will be an unmitigated disaster for the UK not so much for his views, which change with the political wind but for the crew of diehard communists who really pull the strings who will be wafted into power alongside him.
Once the battle is won, for this process is very much a battle, and we have left the political conscript EU, then we can re-assess where May sits going forward. For now, she is for Brexit and should have our full support.
Remember, Labour opened the door to mass immigration in the first place and will do so again.
Brilliant video Alan. Why can’t the citizens of our country have the same passion and patriotism?
I really admire the Poles.
We saved them from invasion in the past – maybe, just maybe they could now return the favour.
Right on cue !
If anyone is wondering just what a threat the (Dis)May government pose to this country then just take a look at this article on Conservative Woman:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/laura-perrins-tories-enemy-within/
“Let’s face it, the Conservative party are neo-Statists and have done more damage to conservatism in this country than Labour ever could. The current leader of the party believes actual conservatism – small government, strong families and the free market – is nasty. She actually said this, yet we are all to go merrily along backing this wretched party no matter what, as we did in the last election – much to my regret.
The Conservatives love big government. There has been no reduction in quangos – they have quangos lobbying their own government, for goodness’ sake. They use the school system to try to solve every social problem: FGM, toothbrushing, sex education, pornography, drugs, healthy eating, on and on it goes. The national debt could hit £2trillion in the next ten years.
And that’s before we get to social conservatism. They have dumped that completely because it was much more important to be ‘modern’, whatever that means. Their proudest moment was to redefine marriage, and now they seek to redefine what it is to be a man or a woman. Nothing, it seems, is beyond their power. With the stroke of a pen, the Tories believe they can magically turn men into women and vice versa. They have even instructed the UN to ditch the term ‘pregnant woman’ and use ‘pregnant people’ instead. This is misogyny. This is the Tory party.”
Thoughtful,
The article in Conservative women argues for a strong right turn not a hard left turn.
Yes it does, but there is no way this is going to be achieved with the present Conservative party in the centre Left, the only way to force a swing to the right is to sweep them all away by a Corbyn vote which the article also states. His government would probably only last a couple of years anyway.
To not vote Corbyn is to vote for continued political oppression from May and her goons !
Thoughtful, you vote Corbyn if you like but this voter is not for turning – plus I like to sleep at night.
The current situation was completely predictable. A racing certainty in fact but so wilfully ignorant of the past is our elite that it could not see that a backlash was inevitable.
No settled society has ever ever voluntarily given up it’s land to others. Only by force has this happened. But our intellectual ( I use the word ironically) elite preferred to ignore reality and unleash a policy which has bought Europe to it’s present state .
The Visegrad countries with the addition now of Austria have no intention of following Western Europe .
If this breaks the EU then it will be the fault of Brussels not the old East. The German policy of allowing unrestricted immigration into Europe cannot be rationally explained. Leave that to the future but it has succeeded in fueling what the BBC/Guardian miscall populism.
The Nowhere elite will lose. It is as useless as the Ancien Regime of 1789. Will it fight dirty? You can be sure of it . In some ways we should hope that we are denied Brexit for that will concentrate minds and bring forward the inevitable conflict of ideas about a a nation and a people and what exactly that is.
Yes they have brainwashed an entire generation of young people but that makes it all the more vital that we make sure our children and grandchildren understand the concept of a people and the contract between generations this entails. I took my grandson across some of our ancient landscapes today. Old Wessex where our ancestors have lived for maybe thousands of years and hopefully planted in him the notion that he is from Somewhere and in a long line of Somewheres. This is so important and must be done. It will not take many of us to change this country. As Oliver Cromwell said – give me a few good men
Well said Dave. You are right, it is the duty of the older generation to plant the seeds of somewhereism in the younger generations.
I stayed at a hotel a while ago in one of our major cities, and this very nice young, British, University-educated (Law if I recall) barmaid served me my night cap and we got chatting, and she lead the conversation into politics. I could hardly believe my ears. In short, extreme left, despised all British people, despised our culture and history, totally in favour of open borders, unlimited immigration. The only plus side was that she couldn’t wait to leave.
She was beyond redemption, at least beyond my arguments and questions, but a product of our education system. A true person of Nowhere. … Well at least for now, until she experiences some other cultures.
“despised our culture”
I’d be interested to know – did she actually know anything about our culture, and had she actively participated in it? Did she have any real knowledge of any other culture, or was the world like one of those serve yourself salad bars that used to be popular at Beefeater restaurants? A bit of this, a bit of that, according to whatever you fancy at the moment.
In my experience, these people are actually shallow, lazy and interested in everything and nothing.
Clare,
This young lady had worked abroad with a charity during one Uni summer break. She was all mouth and no ears as far as I could tell. Her information was concrete and her way forward crystal clear.
The encounter disturbed me somewhat, as I reflected on the system which created such an ultra left wing person. The years of ‘grooming’ which caused her to ‘Absolutely despise all British people’ if II recall her words correctly.
… I resolved to upgrade arsenal of anti-left arguments statistics and sound bites.
Not BBC Bias but since the subject is Polish this might be an appropriate place to post…..