UK General Election

Re the anti-liberal elite sentiment, some of it is language.  There's a passage in J D Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (haven't read but the excerpt was quoted in an article) where he describes having to go to court as a child because his mother was being tried for a crime and found that most of the other undertrials spoke like his family whereas the judge and the lawyers had 'TV accents'.  Likewise, it may be that those living in the UK heartland despise RP accents.  Metropolitan people speaking in a refined way seems to come across as talking down to those from the heartland.  In times past, liberals were still connected enough to the heartland culture to not appear alien.  Best example is M K Gandhi who had practiced as a lawyer in South Africa but was able to also connect to the Indian masses by the millions and like no other Indian leader since.  I cannot comment on how it is in the US or UK but I have noticed here in India that upper/upper-middle class urbanites often struggle to speak Hindi or say some other Indian language in a way that the working class would relate to.  It's too polished and anglicised; for instance TV journalists who hail from Northern India (where Hindi is the most widely used language) struggle to speak a full sentence without using an English word. This may seem trivial on the face of it but it seems there is a lot of baggage attached to language and how it is used in the cities vis a vis the heartland.  With social values also moving in a progressive direction much more rapidly in the cities, the gap has only widened.  Mainstream Hindi cinema has gone from mocking gay people to celebrating them in just the space of 10-12 years.  But has society also really moved that fast?  I am afraid not.  Whether or not it leads to Brexit/Trump, I think it will continue to create problems for the next few/several years.

Edited by rogerthat - June 17 2017 at 01:13

rogerthat wrote: Re the anti-liberal elite sentiment, some of it is language.  There's a passage in J D Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (haven't read but the excerpt was quoted in an article) where he describes having to go to court as a child because his mother was being tried for a crime and found that most of the other undertrials spoke like his family whereas the judge and the lawyers had 'TV accents'.  Likewise, it may be that those living in the UK heartland despise RP accents.  Metropolitan people speaking in a refined way seems to come across as talking down to those from the heartland.  In times past, liberals were still connected enough to the heartland culture to not appear alien.  Best example is M K Gandhi who had practiced as a lawyer in South Africa but was able to also connect to the Indian masses by the millions and like no other Indian leader since.  I cannot comment on how it is in the US or UK but I have noticed here in India that upper/upper-middle class urbanites often struggle to speak Hindi or say some other Indian language in a way that the working class would relate to.  It's too polished and anglicised; for instance TV journalists who hail from Northern India (where Hindi is the most widely used language) struggle to speak a full sentence without using an English word. This may seem trivial on the face of it but it seems there is a lot of baggage attached to language and how it is used in the cities vis a vis the heartland.  With social values also moving in a progressive direction much more rapidly in the cities, the gap has only widened.  Mainstream Hindi cinema has gone from mocking gay people to celebrating him in just the space of 10-12 years.  But has society also really moved that fast?  I am afraid not.  Whether or not it leads to Brexit/Trump, I think it will continue to create problems for the next few/several years.

That's interesting and perhaps has parallels with the so-called class system in the UK (which isn't a system at all of course) The demarcation isn't quite as clear-cut between cities v heartland/regions as you describe it in India. The working class origins of English people is often betrayed by their pronunciation habits. Their dropping of the 'h' at the beginning of a word e.g. 'if it's got an 'aitch in it' and substituting an 'f' or a 'v' for 'th' e.g. 'I live in norf London' and 'we were just like bruvvers' is heard very strongly from London cockneys for instance. Similarly, it took until the 1980's before 'regional' accents became acceptable on the BBC from its employees. I do agree strongly that language is most definitely not a trivial matter when it comes to measuring social mobility, stratification or status. Case in point: the England football team was manged by Sir Alf Ramsay for 11 years. Alf spoke in a voice that sounded like Terry Thomas impersonating Noel Coward as if the latter had graduated from Sandhurst. In reality, he was the dirt poor son of a labourer from Dagenham in Essex and started life with an accent like Ray Winstone before a spell in the army and elocution lessons had him resembling a plummy Sergeant Major. That said, we appear to have veered off topic a tad...


Edited by ExittheLemming - June 17 2017 at 01:20

The urban/rural divide seems most pronounced in the US. It's a night and day difference. 

I think the backlash against the liberalista is quite funny, and thinking about it, was also inevitable. If you want someone to blame for Brexit/Trump etc then look no further than the likes of Tony Blair. The liberalista had a choice; to make their peoples wealthier by globally reforming taxation and wealth distribution, but failed to do so and instead, stated perilous wars, and squandered trillions bailing out their friends in the banks, while all the while pretending to be the caring, sharing pro gay rights liberals they actually were not!

People got f***ed off with them, and went back to base tribal politcs of far right and loony left. As the worlds slides towards facsism and probable world war, the history books - if there are any - will recount the patterns and parallels in economic and political conditions in the run up to the last two world wars and there will be a great debate about how unbelievable it was tha no one saw it all coming.

Quinino wrote: ^ I'm afraid you (probably) are quite right

There is no probably about it. Andy articulates very well the precise problem, and I have been saying much the same for a very long time.

Richey Edwards wrote: JJLehto wrote: SNP taken quite a hit apparently to both labour and tories. Can anyone explain why? I thought they owned Scotland basically. Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but as a Scotsman I thought I would answer your question. Until 2007 the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was ran by Labour, and until the 2015 General Election Labour used to always win the majority of the Scottish seats for the Westminster government. In fact, there was a commonly used saying in Scotland that Labour could pin a red rosette on a monkey and would still get elected here. However, Labour gradually stagnated in power and were eventually ousted by the pro-independence Scottish National Party in 2007. The SNP were re-elected for a second term in 2011, and their 2011 manifesto included a promise to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence during their second term in office if they were re-elected. The referendum eventually took place in 2014, with No winning with 55% of the vote. The 2015 General Election saw the SNP win 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland, effectively wiping out Labour in Scotland. Many saw this as a reaction to the independence referendum result, and an indication of a hunger for  a second referendum in the future. Some saw it as an indication that the SNP had replaced Labour as the party of the working class in Scotland, with many citing the fact that Labour and the Conservatives were not really different from each other at the time. At the 2017 General Election, Labour won back some seats from the SNP and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats also took seats from the SNP, reducing the number of SNP seats from 56 to 35.   In my opinion, the SNP campaign during the 2017 election was very weak. I never really saw any campaigning going on, which was strange as the constituency where I live is formerly a Labour stronghold but was controlled by the SNP between 2015 and 2017 but is now a Conservative seat. I think that the SNP took it for granted that they would repeat their success of 2015 and underestimated the opposition to their proposal to hold a second independence referendum. Also, the "Corbyn effect" attracted left-wing voters from the SNP to Labour and many people who oppose a second independence referendum voted tactically in the election to ensure that pro-independence candidates were defeated by candidates from pro-UK parties. I hope I've explained that alright. If you have any questions about anything else just ask.

JJLehto wrote: Blacksword wrote: I think the backlash against the liberalista is quite funny, and thinking about it, was also inevitable. If you want someone to blame for Brexit/Trump etc then look no further than the likes of Tony Blair. The liberalista had a choice; to make their peoples wealthier by globally reforming taxation and wealth distribution, but failed to do so and instead, stated perilous wars, and squandered trillions bailing out their friends in the banks, while all the while pretending to be the caring, sharing pro gay rights liberals they actually were not! People got f***ed off with them, and went back to base tribal politcs of far right and loony left. As the worlds slides towards facsism and probable world war, the history books - if there are any - will recount the patterns and parallels in economic and political conditions in the run up to the last two world wars and there will be a great debate about how unbelievable it was tha no one saw it all coming. It's happening all over. I know all across Europe their leftist parties have drifted to the center and in general all their parties are occupying a vaguely centrist realm and taking mostly the same positions.   With both left and right options being taken away, and the feeling that politics doesnt work for you...this is just plain ol history. You called it there. This all, quite literally, happened before.  Same here in the US (well in our case the left party drifted center and the right party has venture into nihilistic-ally right) and without a true liberal option, and with conservatives who feel they are being left behind (aka things change and they are grasping for the old ways) yeah makes sense we get Sanders and Trump. Though even the Republicans now are becoming anti trade in rhetoric and talk about jobs and wages and etc  Basically left and right, globally, are rejecting the FriedmanThatcherReagan revolution. BUT all us silly angsty lefties whining about labor and globalization and inequality and "hey maybe this isnt working out quite like yall say" were mocked and ignored all those years.  Shame is this all indeed has happened before...

Indeed, although another way of looking at it is that actually it IS working, because it's architechts are wealthier than ever. Maybe it was always only supposed to work for the speculators.

The banking crisis consolidated wealth in the hands of the very few, inflicted austerity on the poor, and started the taking down of the middle classes. The endgame; one serf class and a ruling elite.

There has been no progress in the Brexit talks as far as I'm aware.

No one really knows what the government wants from Brexit, or the opposition, to be fair, because they've never made it clear, and probably don't really know themselves. One thing is for sure, the UK doesn't have any trump cards to play.

The referendum was the biggest political miscalculation in history. Asking the people to vote on someting they haven't got the first clue about is clearly insane. David Cameron was banking on a remain landslide, but was clearly very out of touch with the zeitgeist.

JJLehto wrote: Sincere question: is there likely to be ANY brexit progress?  I kind of imagined there being so much infighting and external fighting and its such a big thing with so many details and with politics in the way, I could see by the end the UK just leaves with literally no plan on either side hammered out. Will the UK even leave?? I'm actually wondering if there's any chance in the end yall just dont do it.  It does seem that that no one has any idea yeah. I got the feeling, and you seem to confirm this, that no one (even supporters) actually expected Yes to win, so never bothered. So now literally everyone is caught with their pants down running around trying to figure it out on the fly. I have indeed read that even Labour seems to have no idea what they want with Corbyn being vague and taking the "I just want jobs for the UK regardless of what we do" which I am for but thats certainly not a very concrete plan. What a mess.  That's for sure, everyone everywhere has missed the zeitgeist it seems, and people are clearly not equipped to make these populist decisions. And that's not a slight at the UK, look at our mess. When there is a backlash against intellectualism....I reckon that's what is gunna happen. People can gripe about elites and the power and etc and sure there's some validity but it's mostly bullsh*t, and the result is all this mess. Yikes.

I've no idea how it will turn out, in terms of a deal, but it will take many years to finalise, and I would expect years of economic uncertainty, and unless there's a labour victory at the next election in the UK, I would also expect our domestic politics to move ever further to the right without the EU's protection.

As there is an obnoxious and nasty arrogance on the right, their is also authoritarian sanctimosity and pomposity on the liberal left which has pushed people this way, and they can't even see it.