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Have the Right and Left Converged?
To my surprise, and somewhat to my puzzlement, the American right seems thrilled by Brexit. And so does the American left. For very similar reasons. Indeed, the reasoning seems so similar that it’s hard to tell the editorials apart: If you didn’t know the ideological leaning of the publication, you wouldn’t be able to guess. Broadly, both right and left think this represents a blow against globalization; the proper comeuppance for pointy-headed elites, academics, bankers, and journalists; a victory for people everywhere who think immigration is out of control; and a rebuke to European snobs. I think all of that’s incorrect — and both sides are wrong — but help me to understand what’s going on with the American right that it sounds the same, these days, as the left. Perhaps we’re not as polarized as we think?
For evidence that they sound the same, here are some recent opinion pieces about Brexit. Try to guess if the author is right- or left-leaning:
- The failure of the economic arguments to sway the vote may spell the end of economic rationalism which began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It may be that the vote against the EU was in part a protest vote against the long term changes in economic structure of the UK economy which has destroyed many working and middle class lives. … Insofar as the decision represents a retreat to economic nationalism and closed borders, it may highlight the diminishing appeal of globalisation. Free movement of goods and services, lowering of trade barriers and cheaper foreign labour has not benefitted everybody. Conservative American politician Pat Buchanan’s observation in Pittsburgh Post Gazette on 3 January 1994 remains uncomfortably accurate: “ … it is blue collar Americans whose jobs are lost when trade barriers fall, working class kids who bleed and die in Mogadishu … the best and brightest tend to escape the worst consequences of the policies they promote … This may explain … why national surveys show repeatedly that the best and wealthiest Americans are the staunchest internationalists on both security and economic issues … ”
- I am enjoying the tantrum of Britain’s elites as much as anyone. From listening to the BBC on the radio, it seems like Britain’s fanatically pro-EU elites are building an alternative universe where they ignore survey research that shows little support for a second referendum, and instead focus obsessively on anecdotal stories about Leave voters begging forgiveness from bankers and professors. Forgive them oh Chancellor Merkel, for they know not what they have done. …
- I’ve been watching the TV coverage to get my fill of MSM reaction. And what you say of [Gillian] Tett [of the Financial Times is typical of what Lambert rightly labels the credentialed class — that 5% (some would put it higher at 10 or even 20% but I think the real paid-up members of the credentialed class are in that bracket) who explain to the proletariat what the elites are doing and Why It Really Is In Your Best Interests — they are simply struck dumb. There’s something you don’t see every day.
- Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. Look at the map of those results, and that huge island of “in” voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced it has effectively fallen over …
- Yes, Brexit was a rejection of Thatcherism and the rest of the neoliberal twaddle … but that doesn’t mean Scotland would actually be better off in 2020 in the EU separate from UK. …
- Stafford, Cannock, Wolverhampton. Different towns, same message: “There’s no decent work”; “the politicians don’t care about us”; “we’ve been forgotten”; “betrayed”; “there’s too many immigrants, and we can’t compete with the wages they’ll work for”. Nobody used the word humiliation, but that’s the sense I got.
- The current panic reveals a clique of embedded London journalists. The debate, such as it is, has been entirely antagonistic, veering between scaremongering and sanctimony. Often I wonder who is being addressed. A lot of us are not. … When people say: “Why is my pay so low? Why can’t I get a doctor’s appointment? Why is there no school place?”, the answers cannot merely be abstract nouns such as “austerity” or “globalisation”. We may as well blame the weather.
- Brexit is an expression of English — more than British — nationalism and is part of a decades-long decline in British unity. But the England that wants out of Europe is the England of vanished industry in the north, rural poverty in the southwest and people clinging to middle-class lifestyles in the suburbs of once-great cities that feel increasingly alien to them. Scotland has shuttered factories of its own, of course, but frustration at that fueled Scottish nationalism. English nationalism was reinforced by resentment of Scottish nationalism. But it grew and took on a populist character in reaction to real problems that seemed to have been brushed aside by many leaders in all major political parties. Brexit is a rejection of “Cool Britannia,” the 1990s branding of a cosmopolitan, creative and united Britain as a part of a happy vision of globalization.
- The Remain campaign tried to tamp down this anger with lectures, talking down to the rubes in the backwoods and explaining how they didn’t know what was good for them. This has been pre-eminent rhetorical technique among globalization enthusiasts for decades: that they would fix everything if the public would only listen. What they have fixed is a transition of wealth into financial centers and corporate coffers, and a denuding of societal character in favor of a global monoculture …
- A restless, beaten-down public has drawn the first blood in a rebellion against a neoliberal economic orthodoxy committed to globalization that has sucked the life out of whole communities and blighted the future of a generation. …
- The nerve of the leader of one of the world’s oldest democracies to actually let the voting public decide the future of the nation. … Cameron surely would have been much smarter to follow the lead of the political elites in other countries and to ignore the rising hostility to a union that seems to be stifling progress rather than increasing prosperity for all. Instead, he committed the unforgivable sin of allowing democracy to function, a debate to be held, and voters to choose. In doing so, Cameron has opened a Pandora’s box of insurgency against the political elite in Europe.
Tell me which quotes sound like they came from rock-ribbed American conservatives and which sound like they came straight off Noam Chomsky’s website.
After that, tell me what you think it means that it’s so hard to tell. Is it possible that the American right and the American left have found an issue about which they agree completely?
Do you think these views actually have anything to do with Britain or Europe? Or is the whole thing just a giant political Rorschach test?
Published in General
Why can’t Britain find alternative markets? Why not a free trade agreement with Canada, Australia and New Zealand?
How about India? India has a billion customers and traditional ties to Britain.
Why can’t the US start a free trade agreement with Britain? We could even, hilariously, rope them into NAFTA – make it the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.
Trade will occur with or without EU membership and an independent Britain would have the ability to strike 167 (presuming they had to make one with the EU alone and not EU member states individually) trade deals advantageous to Britain.
They ruled a quarter of the world once and that was without being an EU member; I don’t believe they’re unequal to this challenge.
Claire,
This is quite absurd. Germany already has indicated that it will make an individual trade agreement with Britain. The single market is worthless. The major players that are exporting to Britain will also do the same. The EU has failed miserably to make trade deals outside of Europe. Britain will make deals with China, India, Asia, South America without the EU. America without the yoke of its inept left wing leadership will automatically make an excellent deal with Britain. Also, with the Kenyan neurotic out of the White House, the military alliance will be very tight again.
If the EU tries to stand in the way it takes the risk of total break up. France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland.. are on the brink. Even the Germans themselves are furious over Merkel’s migrants. From the safety of the rubber stamp parliament in Brussels, the Eurocrats can believe they are invulnerable. However, the cat is out of the bag, and nobody is buying it anymore. It is the EU who’s GNP growth will be flat and it is the Euro that will collapse.
My advice is to buy British Pounds right now. They won’t ever be cheaper.
Regards,
Jim
It was my understanding that the EU sells more stuff to the UK than flows in the opposite direction.
Link.
Even he’s expressed interest in a trade deal with the UK, as did the schoolboy to our north.
This whole idea that the UK will be punished severely for its impudence is ridiculous. One does not cut oneself off from the world’s fifth largest economy out of spite.
No, it hasn’t. India, not the EU, is the source of protectionist obstacles to an FTA, and this will be true (if not much more so) for an independent UK. China is now the EU’s second-largest trading partner after the US and the EU is China’s biggest trading partner. The EU just opened significant trade talks with Indonesia; it’s got FTAs with Singapore, Vietnam, and South Korea; it’s about to sign with ASEAN; it’s negotiating with Japan; and, obviously, the TTIP negotiations will have to wait until we have an election, but after that, one hopes, it will be signed — and nothing will be signed before that, whether the UK is in the EU or not. We’ve got the world hostage to our domestic politics.
— sixth, since the referendum.
Overtaken by your chosen allegiant, Fwance. So, with your French bonafides in place, how can you bemoan the rise of France?
Either you see this as a real issue or you don’t. If Britain loses and France gains, then shouldn’t you be dancing for joy? Or maybe it’s just a blip, and you see right through it. Your patriotic fervor for France calls you, does it not?
Ball, wit is educated insolence–you need more work.
Claire, no one else seems to be biting on your list. When are we going to get the scorecard?
Sorry, but patent nonsense is difficult to refute in detail. And when a member or anybody else here goes down the path of “you have a lot of nerve questioning me because…” well then the person has in fact become the argument. So I submit that I’m exercising restraint here. In courtroom circles, there’s a popular concept that one “opens the door” to otherwise non-germane lines of question.
Don’t keep lawyering things, Ball. People look to you when you’re the better man, not when you can find justification.
Yes, the notion that the fall from fifth to sixth is ominous is on the face of it absurd–so’s your remark about who wins & who loses, as though they were related.
Let’s do something else. Why not have a Ricochet bet–winner has to toast the loser. Is a year a good time? If the British economy over the next year & over the next to years doesn’t get any worse or gets better, those of us who think Brexit is not economic doom–apparently a quite vocal majority of commenters!–get to have our sense proclaimed. Miss Berlinski will no doubt write free verse of a brief story, that our renown live endlessly.
But if she turns out to be right, you have to say sorry in some way that’s amenable to you.
Of course, we can have a first round in six months, so that there’s some reason to keep paying attention, so to speak.
Nobody needs to put money on the matter, but we can all have a Ricochet bet. Reputations will rise & fall, but as a whole, we get to have fun together!
So spread the news, let’s gather all comers & takers & let’s make sure we have some fun with this!
Pretty soon, I reckon.
I think short term economic bets are too susceptible to freak accidents – ten years would be better.
Texas may be independent by then, to listen to some of the Texans! Ricochet may be running America, if you’re reading our own hard-boiled troubadour. No, two years is it. With points for six months & twelve & eighteen!
Pick your battles. Don’t pick mine.
You don’t a good thing when you see it…
Well, so it is, folks. Ball’s out o’the running, it’s my table now.
I want estimates. Who thinks the British money-maker is going to get spanked-that’s how she likes it…–who think it’s sitting pretty!
Who expects significant changes, up or down, in six, twelve, eighteen, & twenty-four months?
You’ll get your own Berlinski poem! This is serious stuff. Stand up & be counted, then sit down & wait & see.
Last year, I bet a member now no longer with us that Mr. Elon Musk’s enterprises will do very well & she was talking bankruptcy nonsense. I’m feeling good about my predictions. How serious are we about Rule Britannia & all that?
By the way, when I said, our own troubadour, this is what I meant–Ball ain’t the only hardboiled character on the premises.
Read, enjoy, & make the man deservedly famous!
On this basis, you should have no confidence.
Musk has no business except on the gumint teat. Tesla and SolarCity will both fail, and hard. There are fundamental reasons why they cannot compete. The only open question is when.
Yup. Musk is accomplishing neat things, and I should hope so — we’re paying for it.
How about Space X?
That appears to be the case. Musk’s enterprises rely heavily on government regulation to remain solvent. That doesn’t mean he can’t change his business model when circumstances are a-changin’. I wouldn’t bet that way, though.
With regard to how the UK will fare now that Brexit is a fait accompli, I think bets either way are risky and uncertain. I disagree with Claire in that leaving the EU is in my view correct in principle and can be beneficial to all involved in practice. But it depends heavily on what the UK and the EU do as separate entities. An independent UK is perfectly capable of completely mucking up the opportunity its voters have presented.
Also disagreeing with Claire, I think an independent Scotland would be good for all involved, and markedly increase chances for economic success. It would make honest men and women of the Scots, and it would unload a socialist deadweight from England.
Shame, seeing how Scotland played such an important part in making the modern world.
Nothing can make honest men & women of the Scots!
Man, Titus, you are a quick draw!
Not necessarily; that’s now a matter of negotiation, not of Brussels diktat. Perhaps there will be no practical difference, but now the outcome will be from negotiations between equals. Equals not only politically, but because the EU–in the form of critically important individual member nations and critical industries in each of those individual nations–needs British trade as much as the Brits need the EU’s trade. And that last is, up to a point, a declining value asset: there are untapped potentials in the form of the British Commonwealth member nations, trade with which is far from maxed out; and the not only untapped, but actively held back these last few years, potential of greatly increased trade with a post-Obama US.
Of course there will be a major disruption in the near term (and the market movements of the pound and the stock and bond markets are not at all indicators of that disruption). To the extent the Leaves have not prepared for this is on them, but that failure is not relevant to the value of leaving the EU; that only makes the near-term outcome more or less harsh. On the other side of this bout of creative destruction is the potential for vast growth.
It never did–and neither have had any of the other nations in the EU. See Denmark, which was required to have two referenda on ratifying the Treaty of Maastricht before the right answer was given; Ireland, which had to hold two referenda on the Treaty of Nice before the population gave the right answer–and again on the Treaty of Lisbon, the people had to keep voting until they gave the right answer.
Notice, too, all those Treaties that aggregate into the EU: the peoples of nation after nation kept voting down the original EU Constitution, so that the Know Betters decided governments would make the decisions, anyway, via acceptances of those Treaties in which the people had no say.
See, also, the carefully byzantine relationships among the seven (!) governing bodies of the EU, some of which are deliberately not responsive to the populations of the individual member nations, and some of which cannot even propose legislation, much less vote on it.
Finally, let’s not forget that Great Britain, in particular, always has been the EU’s redheaded step-child. Its joining of the original body that became the EU was vetoed–twice. Proximately by France, but with the willing acquiescence of the other members of that original body.
Eric Hines
Claire:What freedom in particular do you think Brussels detests and squelches?
There seems to be a gigantic gulf of knowledge between those who dealt on a regular basis with regulatory bureaucracy and those who haven’t and this is reflected in their attitudes of how benevolent such bureaucracies are.
When faced with a largely unaccountable bureaucracy such as the EU has, the situation is almost always the same. Lord Acton’s dictum applies in almost every case:
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I am a architect by profession, practicing for decades with partial ownerships in several other businesses including a technology start-up.
In my practice over the last twenty years in California, I have seen over half my client’s project die in regulatory hell for no good apparent reason. So I know of what I speak. I have had literally thousands of encounters with bureaucrats, many of which were unbelievably disgusting. Now as bad as California’s bureaucracies are, I still believe they are more accountable and reasonable then that of the EU. I can only imagine how bad it is to deal with those seriously disturbed clowns at the EU who want seemingly to control every facet of every individual’s day forever.
Who’s he sold rides to besides the government? And how do we know he got market prices from the government or that the hardware providing those rides weren’t government subsidized?
Eric Hines
Yes. This.
I am a bureaucrat. I dole out property rights to applicants at my discretion. I am appealable, but I can increase costs dramatically depending upon my actions. I will never suffer a penalty for increasing an applicant’s costs.
I am not speaking hypothetically.
Ironstar? Deathstar, amirite!, I believe, is the apposite riposte-
I try not to be. Largely, though, yes.