Judis finds a UK Judis with equally bogus analysis. The idea that the Tories were running on a communitarian Christian social democratic platform is on par with the theory that Trump voters wanted to punish the Democrats for failing to support labor unions.
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Ha! I also would not characterize the Republicans as the party of the working class.
The United States used to have free college. The United States did not allow insurance for profit. Neither concepts are âfar left.â Advocating for economic justice and renewable energy progress in a society that has extreme wealth inequality should be expected, not insulted. This author is a neoliberal apologist, and seems to be a white supremacist/xenophobe. Many Trump voters DID want to punish Democrats for selling out to corporate interestsâfor growing the cities and letting âfly overâ country rust. When was the last time Democrats talked about Education? Why are Democrats defending outdated, polluted energy sources, when new ones create new jobs? If Democrats donât understand how lost theyâve become, and led by lobbyists, they should step aside and let the people with new ideas lead.
I think he means âunattractiveâ in an electoral and leadership sense rather than physical appearance FWIW.
Not a great choice of words, but I donât believe thereâs intent there.
They are cursed with Blairites, we are cursed with Clintonites. Once those curses are lifted the Tories and the Republicans can be defeated.
The Tories had actually gone for a more egalitarian position on elder care in which older people who could afford to do so would have to expose at least some of the part of their property wealth if they were hospitalized for a long term.
This is the Great Trauma of the Tories. Ever since Churchill, they have been looking over their shoulders that the UK would go ahead and finally implement a land-value tax (a term so odious to the Cons that Cameron could not bring himself to say it in public). It has not just been a Tory bugaboo, either. Blair steered clear of it. Now, finally, Labour is rethinking the issue and we may yet see Churchillâs âbest worst taxâ implemented. Denmark, which was afraid of foreign real estate buyers (Germans), bit the bullet in 1961 â much to their benefit. And unlike gloomy predictions, real estate prices did not crash. There is no âGreen Zoneâ for oligarchs and oil sheikhs like you have in London. There is no credit downgrade of your country. There is no insane real estate market. Moreover, passing an LVT would remedy some of the divided UK problem. Denmarkâs non-Western immigration has been extremely expensive and many live on welfare and never bother to learn Danish, which has resulted in a similar backlash as in the UK. However, with massive capital outflows from China and Russia, the UKâs common law property traditions add another layer that makes the country ripe for exploitation. For years, it has been the preferred destination for Russian oligarchs and their families.
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Multinational corporations and politicians mostly from the right in US and UK designed the the globalization system that some whites in the west are said to be rebelling against and blaming brown and black immigrants. The same people who voted for Trump have been voting overwhelmingly for GOP that primarily serves the interests of corporations like the massive tax cuts for the rich they are now trying to push. Even if there was no immigration, corporations would still find a way of cheapening unskilled and semi-unskilled labor as they are doing with automation and outsourcing because they can manipulate and even buy politicians. The world has always been changing and it is changing almost every where and that is something you can stop unless you want to turn your country to North Korea.
As Goodhart points out, many citizens of England found it galling that rulings affecting England were being made by a committee of bureaucrats in Brussels, made up often of people who had been exiled there by their governments because they were not first-rank in their home countries. The galled reaction is understandable in England, a country where representative, democratic government, by and for the people has been a developing goal for centuries.
Well then, what about the Scots and the Irish? Although they have a certain amount of autonomy, they too have the galling feeling that important things affecting them are being decided by faceless civil servants and posh politicians in London. The biggest example of this for them is the Brexit vote itself.
Both the Scots and the Irish object to the way the English voted to throw them under the bus while celebrating a restoration in ye olde English supremacy over the UK. The Scotsâ government is now working to keep Scotland in the EU in some way. Or: they can have a second referendum, one aiming to stay in the EU while leaving the UK, something they have just as much right to do as the English did in forcing a Brexit referendum.
While Eire, i.e. the independent part of Ireland, will remain in the EU, Ulster (Northern, âEnglishâ Ireland) does not want to be pushed by London into a position of having to erect English trade barriers against Eire while being forced to obey non-EU, London-based rulings which they do not want.
In Mr. Goodhartâs terms, the Scotsâ Somewhere-people and the Scotsâ Anywhere-people may just get together and tell the English to take their Brexit and shove it somewhere, or anywhere but not down the Scotsâ throats. And could a reborn English semi-colonial, nostalgic death-wish - MNIEA - make Northern Ireland English Again (and NOT EU) - could this not lead a good many Ulstermen and women to prefer a closer union with EU-member Eire rather than subjugation to an English imperialism now resurrected from the grave of history? More guerrilla war in Ireland? Time will tell, if not Mme May and Mr. Corbin. Shades of Oliver Cromwell, the historical Lord Protector of England, and âpacifierâ of Ireland, who famously told his troops, âPut your faith in God and keep your powder dry.â
âIn your country, the traditional party of property and the middle class, the Republican Party, is becoming the working class party and the Democrats are becoming the party of the progressive middle class and the minorities.â
I am not young by any stretch of the imagination but this stikes me as old thinking. A lot of these words donât mean what the once did. To me anyway.
In any case, I think the second part is truer than the first. Republican voters may be more working class i.e. poor, I guess, but the republican politicians themselves and their (real) platform?
I agree with everything you said. I spent most of my life in New York City and the last 30 years in rural Pennsylvania. I qualify as an anywhere and a somewhere.
My family was lower middle class. My father was a salesman and my mother a housewife. I never lacked for any of the basic necessities and I was the only one who went to collegeâand the only one who bought a house. I was smart, ambitious and never lacked for a job. Those were the good old daysâŚ
In rural PA, decent jobs are scarce and if you donât have a car or truck, you are dead meat. Almost no one has the money needed for a down payment on a car so they pay outrageous car loans or buy clunkers. It used to be cheap to live out here; now very few can pay the school and property taxes or even the electric billâand this is still a depressed area. Iâd say 90% of the people are Republicans and have no idea what the hell is really going on, only that they donât like it.
Personally, between global warming and the stupidity and denial of Americans, I believe there is no solutionâso just hunker down and try to ride out the storm.