Referendum Reprise

What the papers and players said! The first weekend, although it took me a month to write it.

  1. Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they’d had enough.
  2. Awesome or have I just started to listen. Brilliant powerful writing, showing a journey frommacro-economic and industrial policy via triangulation to powerlessness and growing anger. He doesn’t make a lot of it, but the MPs expenses affair, condoned bythe government and the press hounding of the MPs, (⅔ were 100% compliant)undermine the trust that electors have. In the case of Labour’s lost voters, it was the electoral strategy of triangulation.
  3. Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain.
  4. The only way Labour can unite these culturally different groups (and geographic areas) — so clearly dramatised by the local-level results — is economic radicalism. Redistribution, well-funded public services, a revived private sector and vibrant local democracy is a common interest across both groups.
  5. Brexit means out, don't see why myself, again an early article before the running away and before we realise that we don't know how to leave..
  6. Having won the architects of the victory begin to run away from their promises, Farage runs away on funding
  7. Nigel Farage admits £350 million EU Payments not guaranteed to go to NHS
  8. Hannan runs away from "Free Movement", saying it was about "Sovereignty"
  9. Daniel Hannan MEP Newsnight Brexit Freedom of movement
  10. And Boris proposes that the UK remains in the EEA, at the time either not knowing,or knowing that EEA membership is all the rules, with no say.
  11. David Hare sums up the collapse of the Brexiteers
  12. Not a warranted headline, the CS CEO, an ex-politician from Cote d'Ivoire, can't understand how the poor, about whom he knows more than the average banker, in Britain voted against the EU.
  13. Helen Lewis and Steven Bush, at the New Statesman catalogue the retreats and downfall of Farage and particularly Johnson
  14. I ask what can be learned, is this an opportunity to build a better relationship. Can we define a new reciprocal subsidiarity agreement, guaranteeing local government autonomy and existence, the re-establishment of a regional/industrial fund, moves towards a common welfare policy, which in the UK would involve more direct contributions, a minimum wage to reduce in work benefits, minimum wage also to prohibit immigrants under cutting local labour, the minimum wage would need to be nearer the old wages councils with different levels for different jobs.
  15. All this would require renegotiating the European Stabilisation agreement. But it's not impossible. Lets hope for the future.
  16. The Offices of the Commission of the EU
    The Offices of the Commission of the EU