Brexit

[Ash Wednesday]

I will say this, my husband and I, as immigrants, and he as an EU citizen, feel a lot less welcome here in the UK than we did in the past. In the past 8 years, this has become a lot more of a racist and xenophobic place. Certainly not all in the Brexit movement are that way, but there is a wing in it that has been growing.

And while the Church will go on, immigrants were a vital part of the growth and support of the Church in the UK. I'm not talking about 2nd or 3rd generation Italians living here, but newer immigrants that get blamed for everything and are now no longer wanted.

[PhuturePriest]

2 hours ago, Ash Wednesday said:

I will say this, my husband and I, as immigrants, and he as an EU citizen, feel a lot less welcome here in the UK than we did in the past. In the past 8 years, this has become a lot more of a racist and xenophobic place. Certainly not all in the Brexit movement are that way, but there is a wing in it that has been growing.

And while the Church will go on, immigrants were a vital part of the growth and support of the Church in the UK. I'm not talking about 2nd or 3rd generation Italians living here, but newer immigrants that get blamed for everything and are now no longer wanted.

From what I understand, there's a strong Polish population in Britain that fills a significant amount of pews on Sundays.

[Luigi]

I view the Brexit as the British people standing up to the British-government-combined-with-yet-another-layer-of-government that tells the people what to do rather than doing what the people tell them. 

It's the same problem we have in this country, except we don't have the super-layer of government that is the EU. 

Additionally, the people who put the EU together - or at least a number of the principles of the EU - didn't anticipate the unintended consequences of certain principles. The idea of free movement between countries is fine, if you're talking about college students doing a year abroad without having to apply for a visa and all that. But free movement between countries quickly led to large numbers of people moving from areas of weak economy to areas of strong economy, which creates more problems than it solves. And they let too many weak-economy countries join the EU, which means that the strong-economy countries have to shoulder more and more economic responsibility - more than they bargained for, and more than they feel they ought to have to shoulder.  

So immigration - from weak-economy to strong-economy areas, but also Mideast-refugees-to-Europe - is part of the equation, but only part. And I have to say that the really poorly behaved immigrants to Europe (which is not all of them) have themselves caused a great deal of the anti-immigrant sentiment among the local populations. If I saw people swarming the Chunnel trains to get to my country, and tearing down fences, and demanding a particular destination instead of being grateful to whichever country accepted them, I think I'd get my dander up,too. "What? It's not enough that we're helping you? You're upset that we're not helping enough, or fast enough, or to the standard you're hoping for?" 

The people have had enough. And their own governments, being completely out of touch with their own citizens, don't realize it. Cameron is resigning, and rightfully so - he (and a lot of other high-level professional government folk) is out of touch with the people, he doesn't represent the people effectively, and they've just told him so. 'Bye, Felicia!

[beatitude]

19 hours ago, Maggyie said:

The more I'm reading about it... it seems that the rich people living in urban areas like London were in favor of Remain and the working class voted for Leave. The explanation being that of course life is good if you are privileged, and you don't want anything to possibly change that. But if you are struggling to survive, threats about how "this will ruin the economy and your quality of life!" fall flat because the economy already is horrible for you and your quality of life already stinks.

There is a strong class dynamic in this, but the age dynamic is even stronger (roughly 75% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain, while 61% of those over 65 wanted to leave). Regarding the class aspect, the working class in Britain has really suffered through the austerity policies enacted by the current government, and to a certain degree its predecessor. The Leave campaign (which has no shortage of Eton-educated millionaires at his head) pinned the blame for this on immigrants and the financial cost of being in the EU. A viral advert from Leave said that the £350 million that currently goes to the EU on a weekly basis would be rerouted into the NHS if we left, making it sound as though we have a stark choice between EU membership and improving the health service. On the day the referendum result came out, they were already reneging on that, saying it had never been formally promised. I never expected such a promise to be kept, since the same politicians making these pledges are also fans of selling off the healthcare system to Richard Branson, but many voters really did seem to take it in good faith that this would happen. There is also a widespread and sincere belief that immigrants have caused all these problems and that leaving the EU will result in better immigration controls. Neither of these things is accurate (as Nada has pointed out, the British border is moving back to Dover, and France will have every right to send the refugees and migrants in Calais over with it) but they made for effective soundbites and lurid advertising posters in a way that technical speeches from senior economic researchers didn't.

I am in an unusual position, in that I'm the first person from my family to graduate from high school, let alone go to university for a higher-level degree, so throughout this debate I've been part of two very different social circles - one represented by people like my brother, who has no qualifications and is firmly convinced that immigrants are taking all the jobs; and one represented by friends who are academics, who are worried about the consequences if a departure does go ahead, and who know that the Leave campaign's sums don't add up. My own area of academic specialism is humanitarian response, and I know for a fact that the UK is not being swamped with refugees who are grasping everything, contrary to the claims of the Leave camp, but I also know that many people in the Remain camp are disconnected from people like my brother and rarely come into contact with anyone in that circle. When Ed Gove was making populist speeches and saying things like "Britain has had enough of experts", the response of economists and other specialists in the Remain camp was just to get exasperated and wonder if in that case people would prefer amateur heart surgery. They had a point, but they did not communicate it effectively to a fearful working class.

To complicate the picture even more, in the hours following the referendum, some Leave voters (who had a pretty small minority over Remain - 51.9% voted to leave, 48.1% to stay) have been getting cold feet about the decision. There have been people saying they only voted how they did as a protest vote, not expecting Britain to actually leave but hoping there would be a big enough percentage of Leave voters to communicate a message to Downing Street; and other people saying they didn't realise the consequences of their vote, which is enough to make you want to throw tomatoes at the TV screen. That's really the sort of thing to research before you go to the polling station.

Quote

I will say this, my husband and I, as immigrants, and he as an EU citizen, feel a lot less welcome here in the UK than we did in the past. In the past 8 years, this has become a lot more of a racist and xenophobic place. Certainly not all in the Brexit movement are that way, but there is a wing in it that has been growing.

Ash, I'm so sorry you feel this way, and I hear you on the xenophobia. The climate in the UK has definitely changed in the past few years. A friend's little boy (Polish) came home from school heartbroken because other kids had been taunting him, shouting "Now you have to go home" and "We don't want you here." These are seven-year-olds and I don't think they even realise what they're saying, but it's still horrible for that child, who came home thinking he was going to get sent to another country. Those seven-year-olds also learnt this language from somewhere. Another friend was on a busy train and saw a fellow passenger give up his seat to an elderly Indian or Pakistani lady. Someone else shouted out, "You don't have to do that any more, we won!" He was loudly booed by everyone else in the carriage, but what worried my friend was that he felt empowered to shout it out in the first place. I was just comforting myself with the thought that at least the other passengers had booed, when Friend 3 gloomily interjected into the conversation: "Yeah, someone spraypainted a swastika in the street near my work the day before the referendum." There is a toxic undercurrent in this place. I'm glad this is all happening in the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because it is a strong reminder that we need His compassion. Words from the Benedictus - "to make known to His people their salvation...the loving-kindness of the heart of our God" - are on my mind this morning and I think as Catholics the best thing we can do is pray and offer kindness whenever we encounter these attitudes.

Quote

The people have had enough. And their own governments, being completely out of touch with their own citizens, don't realize it. Cameron is resigning, and rightfully so - he (and a lot of other high-level professional government folk) is out of touch with the people, he doesn't represent the people effectively, and they've just told him so. 'Bye, Felicia!

Actually Cameron has just thrown a spanner in the works of the whole thing. The expectation was that he would stay on as PM and would trigger Article 50, which would start the leaving process. He has declined to do that, saying that he doesn't feel he is the person to oversee the departure process. His refusal and resignation have bought Britain a few extra months, and in those few months between the departure of Cameron and the selection of a successor, the consequences of the referendum will be sinking in. It will be the responsibility of Cameron's successor to trigger Article 50, which is why Ed Gove and Boris Johnson are looking far from thrilled right now, and are suddenly saying things like there is no rush to leave the EU, this is the time for informal negotiations, we are not pulling up the drawbridge - a rather lukewarm set of statements compared to what they were coming out with during the campaign. Now they and other leaders of the Leave campaign are retracting their promises: Dan Hannan has just announced what the Remain camp has been saying all along, that even with Brexit, the number of immigrants will not fall. They are saying there are "no guarantees" that the money they pledged to the NHS will go to the NHS. Their soundbites were just that, soundbites, and there was never any substance to them. They looked good on billboards. If either Gove or Johnson gets the top job and fails to keep their promise and trigger Article 50, their careers are basically over. If they get the top job and do keep their promise, the damage will be staggering, and they know it. This is why they are suddenly not in any rush to fulfill the promises they campaigned on - they know they can't, and because they never truly expected to win (they only wanted to secure a premiership on the back of being the principled man who stood up to the establishment), they never gave much thought to the situation they now find themselves in. Cameron's legacy to them is a Gordian knot that will not be easy to unravel.

[Archaeology cat]

17 hours ago, Ash Wednesday said:

I will say this, my husband and I, as immigrants, and he as an EU citizen, feel a lot less welcome here in the UK than we did in the past. In the past 8 years, this has become a lot more of a racist and xenophobic place. Certainly not all in the Brexit movement are that way, but there is a wing in it that has been growing.

And while the Church will go on, immigrants were a vital part of the growth and support of the Church in the UK. I'm not talking about 2nd or 3rd generation Italians living here, but newer immigrants that get blamed for everything and are now no longer wanted.

Yes. Our parish in Toxteth "looked like the United Nations," to quote a parishioner there. Most of the younger families with kids were immigrants. We met Kieran's godparents (immigrants from the Gambia) there. We met friends (immigrants from Zimbabwe and Pakistan) there. With no immigrants at that parish, it would be almost all over 60s. 

Our other parish was more vibrant, but it was rather an anomaly and had to close anyway because it was staffed by monks from Ampleforth and they haven't enough vocations to continue staffing it.

[PhuturePriest]

11 hours ago, Luigi said:

 

(Sorry about quoting you, Luigi, I accidentally clicked "quote" and I can't get rid of it.)

An interesting perspective on the whole Brexit issue:

http://reginamag.com/brexit-matters-catholics/

Quote

I do think Catholics should have a more nuanced view, and here’s why: Last summer I was invited to a closed-door event, a weekend with some of Europe’s most illustrious aristocrats. All Catholics. All highly educated. And ALL very worried about what was happening in Europe under the EU. I attended ‘on background’ promising not to write about what I heard there for attribution. And I have not done so.

These people from the ancient ruling families of France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain were very worried about the EU’s assault on the family. After the EU specifically rejected the idea that it had Christian roots, many of these people became genuinely alarmed. Since then, they have been monitoring the myriad of regulatory ‘fixes’ — especially concerning education — which demonstrated that the EU’s self-styled ‘masters’ were aiming at shaping a society where ‘the family’ simply didn’t exist.

And it has worked. Basically, wherever the EU has reached, the birthrate has plummeted, and the Faith is all but dead.

 

[beatitude]

An article suggesting the author sat in on a secret cabal of Catholic aristocrats ("The ancient ruling families"? Who might those be?) who identified a dark plot in the EU to destroy the family and make the birthrate go down is interesting only in the sense that tin foil hats are interesting. Nothing in that article is attributed to a source by name, it's just "our sources in the UK tell us that many racial minorities voted to leave the EU." So the author isn't even in the UK, and a bit of digging shows that she's an American who is fixated on the idea that Syrian refugees are all part of a cunning ploy to "colonize" Europe, among other things. What are these special super-sekrit sources she has that contradict the available data?

PP, I respect you, but I think you have a highly romanticised view of England and its monarchy, possibly enough to make it seem likely that Catholic aristocrats really do meet secretly in their Jacobean dress to thwart the machinations of the government. There have been no Catholic aristocrats in power in most European countries for over a century, often longer, so even if such a cabal does exist (unlikely) their opinion is not necessarily any better informed than any other person's on the street. The author is basically suggesting that these unknown figures are worth listening to because they are descended from "ancient" families who were powerful centuries ago, and they share her religious faith. The Dominican brothers at my local priory are also Catholic, and they're horrified at this result - does the fact that they're Catholic give their opinion any extra weight with her, or do they need to demonstrate descent from the Stuarts before it does? Why should your bloodline make your political opinions any more informed?

As for the author's sneer at Remain voters who are worried about what she calls "raaaacism" - perhaps she's too busy hanging out at secret meetings with secret Catholic aristocrats who have secret knowledge of the EU and secret knowledge that contradicts the info we have to notice the racially motivated attack on the Polish Cultural Association in London, the business cards that have been distributed with "Polish vermin get out" printed on them, and all the other incidents that police are investigating today. This is saddening, and worrying. I'm ashamed of what's been going on here recently, and it seems every time I talk to someone there's a new story - another friend has just told me that in her daughter's school the name of a Romanian child was scrawled on a bathroom mirror in lipstick, with 'go home' written underneath. My friend was almost in tears. Our worries are legitimate.

A conspiracy theory that bases all its claims on "I heard this in secret, from people I can't name", written by a random American blogger who evidently is in thrall to the idea of aristocracy, is not a good source of political information. A possible translation is that she heard a bunch of rich people complaining about the EU, and they happened to be Catholic, as I said. But as her claims are sourceless, we can't know.

[little2add]

 It's it's really none of our business (America) Obama and   Catsup Carry should keep their nose out of another countries affairs

[Maggyie]

On June 26, 2016 at 8:19 AM, beatitude said:

There is a strong class dynamic in this, but the age dynamic is even stronger (roughly 75% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain, while 61% of those over 65 wanted to leave). Regarding the class aspect, the working class in Britain has really suffered through the austerity policies enacted by the current government, and to a certain degree its predecessor. The Leave campaign (which has no shortage of Eton-educated millionaires at his head) pinned the blame for this on immigrants and the financial cost of being in the EU. A viral advert from Leave said that the £350 million that currently goes to the EU on a weekly basis would be rerouted into the NHS if we left, making it sound as though we have a stark choice between EU membership and improving the health service. On the day the referendum result came out, they were already reneging on that, saying it had never been formally promised. I never expected such a promise to be kept, since the same politicians making these pledges are also fans of selling off the healthcare system to Richard Branson, but many voters really did seem to take it in good faith that this would happen. There is also a widespread and sincere belief that immigrants have caused all these problems and that leaving the EU will result in better immigration controls. Neither of these things is accurate (as Nada has pointed out, the British border is moving back to Dover, and France will have every right to send the refugees and migrants in Calais over with it) but they made for effective soundbites and lurid advertising posters in a way that technical speeches from senior economic researchers didn't.

I am in an unusual position, in that I'm the first person from my family to graduate from high school, let alone go to university for a higher-level degree, so throughout this debate I've been part of two very different social circles - one represented by people like my brother, who has no qualifications and is firmly convinced that immigrants are taking all the jobs; and one represented by friends who are academics, who are worried about the consequences if a departure does go ahead, and who know that the Leave campaign's sums don't add up. My own area of academic specialism is humanitarian response, and I know for a fact that the UK is not being swamped with refugees who are grasping everything, contrary to the claims of the Leave camp, but I also know that many people in the Remain camp are disconnected from people like my brother and rarely come into contact with anyone in that circle. When Ed Gove was making populist speeches and saying things like "Britain has had enough of experts", the response of economists and other specialists in the Remain camp was just to get exasperated and wonder if in that case people would prefer amateur heart surgery. They had a point, but they did not communicate it effectively to a fearful working class.

To complicate the picture even more, in the hours following the referendum, some Leave voters (who had a pretty small minority over Remain - 51.9% voted to leave, 48.1% to stay) have been getting cold feet about the decision. There have been people saying they only voted how they did as a protest vote, not expecting Britain to actually leave but hoping there would be a big enough percentage of Leave voters to communicate a message to Downing Street; and other people saying they didn't realise the consequences of their vote, which is enough to make you want to throw tomatoes at the TV screen. That's really the sort of thing to research before you go to the polling station.

Ash, I'm so sorry you feel this way, and I hear you on the xenophobia. The climate in the UK has definitely changed in the past few years. A friend's little boy (Polish) came home from school heartbroken because other kids had been taunting him, shouting "Now you have to go home" and "We don't want you here." These are seven-year-olds and I don't think they even realise what they're saying, but it's still horrible for that child, who came home thinking he was going to get sent to another country. Those seven-year-olds also learnt this language from somewhere. Another friend was on a busy train and saw a fellow passenger give up his seat to an elderly Indian or Pakistani lady. Someone else shouted out, "You don't have to do that any more, we won!" He was loudly booed by everyone else in the carriage, but what worried my friend was that he felt empowered to shout it out in the first place. I was just comforting myself with the thought that at least the other passengers had booed, when Friend 3 gloomily interjected into the conversation: "Yeah, someone spraypainted a swastika in the street near my work the day before the referendum." There is a toxic undercurrent in this place. I'm glad this is all happening in the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because it is a strong reminder that we need His compassion. Words from the Benedictus - "to make known to His people their salvation...the loving-kindness of the heart of our God" - are on my mind this morning and I think as Catholics the best thing we can do is pray and offer kindness whenever we encounter these attitudes.

Actually Cameron has just thrown a spanner in the works of the whole thing. The expectation was that he would stay on as PM and would trigger Article 50, which would start the leaving process. He has declined to do that, saying that he doesn't feel he is the person to oversee the departure process. His refusal and resignation have bought Britain a few extra months, and in those few months between the departure of Cameron and the selection of a successor, the consequences of the referendum will be sinking in. It will be the responsibility of Cameron's successor to trigger Article 50, which is why Ed Gove and Boris Johnson are looking far from thrilled right now, and are suddenly saying things like there is no rush to leave the EU, this is the time for informal negotiations, we are not pulling up the drawbridge - a rather lukewarm set of statements compared to what they were coming out with during the campaign. Now they and other leaders of the Leave campaign are retracting their promises: Dan Hannan has just announced what the Remain camp has been saying all along, that even with Brexit, the number of immigrants will not fall. They are saying there are "no guarantees" that the money they pledged to the NHS will go to the NHS. Their soundbites were just that, soundbites, and there was never any substance to them. They looked good on billboards. If either Gove or Johnson gets the top job and fails to keep their promise and trigger Article 50, their careers are basically over. If they get the top job and do keep their promise, the damage will be staggering, and they know it. This is why they are suddenly not in any rush to fulfill the promises they campaigned on - they know they can't, and because they never truly expected to win (they only wanted to secure a premiership on the back of being the principled man who stood up to the establishment), they never gave much thought to the situation they now find themselves in. Cameron's legacy to them is a Gordian knot that will not be easy to unravel.

It's true from a percentage standpoint it was close. But in reality there's more than a million vote difference. 16.1 million to 17.4 million. Really not close at all. 

[Anomaly]

Even unsophisticated people are a complicated mixture of motives.   My wife's relatives in England have been complaining for years about the disintegration of English culture.  England, as a European hub of culture and trade for centuries, has always been exposed and incorporated other cultures.  Chicken Tika Masala is a prime example of Britishizing another culture.   The feeling seems to have been that it's different now.  

My American opinion is the Brexit gave a focus and face to the general malaise to "overlord foreigners in Brusells foisting needy immigrants in them".   Of course, there are always politicians ready and willing to take advantage of any polarizing opinion and the flames were fanned.   

I don't think England faces near the scale if immigrants the US does.  But today's welfare states have accustomed citizens and residents to expect their governments to take care of them and save them from hardship.  It's not done by just printing money or taking back from the greedy wealthy.   When there are difficulties and shortcomings in the public welfare systems, of course people want to point fingers at others who may be undeservedly taking from a limited pool of resources that they did not contribute to.  

But I'm just an American with a limited pool of English citizens that discuss this with me.  But I think it's generally the same as the dissatisfaction that has made Trump and Sanders so popular here.   Too many people are expecting too much from the government.   It's either greedy immigrants or greedy rich that are causing any difficulties.  Today's political opportunists are happy to work with that, and seem to be quite successful in many countries.  

[PhuturePriest]

On 6/26/2016 at 2:34 PM, beatitude said:

An article suggesting the author sat in on a secret cabal of Catholic aristocrats ("The ancient ruling families"? Who might those be?) who identified a dark plot in the EU to destroy the family and make the birthrate go down is interesting only in the sense that tin foil hats are interesting. Nothing in that article is attributed to a source by name, it's just "our sources in the UK tell us that many racial minorities voted to leave the EU." So the author isn't even in the UK, and a bit of digging shows that she's an American who is fixated on the idea that Syrian refugees are all part of a cunning ploy to "colonize" Europe, among other things. What are these special super-sekrit sources she has that contradict the available data?

PP, I respect you, but I think you have a highly romanticised view of England and its monarchy, possibly enough to make it seem likely that Catholic aristocrats really do meet secretly in their Jacobean dress to thwart the machinations of the government. There have been no Catholic aristocrats in power in most European countries for over a century, often longer, so even if such a cabal does exist (unlikely) their opinion is not necessarily any better informed than any other person's on the street. The author is basically suggesting that these unknown figures are worth listening to because they are descended from "ancient" families who were powerful centuries ago, and they share her religious faith. The Dominican brothers at my local priory are also Catholic, and they're horrified at this result - does the fact that they're Catholic give their opinion any extra weight with her, or do they need to demonstrate descent from the Stuarts before it does? Why should your bloodline make your political opinions any more informed?

As for the author's sneer at Remain voters who are worried about what she calls "raaaacism" - perhaps she's too busy hanging out at secret meetings with secret Catholic aristocrats who have secret knowledge of the EU and secret knowledge that contradicts the info we have to notice the racially motivated attack on the Polish Cultural Association in London, the business cards that have been distributed with "Polish vermin get out" printed on them, and all the other incidents that police are investigating today. This is saddening, and worrying. I'm ashamed of what's been going on here recently, and it seems every time I talk to someone there's a new story - another friend has just told me that in her daughter's school the name of a Romanian child was scrawled on a bathroom mirror in lipstick, with 'go home' written underneath. My friend was almost in tears. Our worries are legitimate.

A conspiracy theory that bases all its claims on "I heard this in secret, from people I can't name", written by a random American blogger who evidently is in thrall to the idea of aristocracy, is not a good source of political information. A possible translation is that she heard a bunch of rich people complaining about the EU, and they happened to be Catholic, as I said. But as her claims are sourceless, we can't know.

I don't think Catholic aristocrats meet in secret. I thought the points about the EU being incredibly invasive and anti-Catholic were important to note. I apologize for not making that distinction.

[Guest]

Pope Francis and Brexit:

http://cathnews.com/cn-perspectives/25786-the-post-brexit-challenge
 

Quote

 

Excerpt: "Give more independence, give greater freedom to the countries of the (European) Union. Think of another form of union, be creative," the Pope told journalists, adding that "something is not working in this massive Union."

The Pope is not a leaver, but a reformer. The crisis in the EU did not mean "we throw out the baby with the bath water," he went on to say. But he pointed to the rise of secessionist movements across the continent as symptomatic of a deeper malaise that must urgently be addressed.

He has identified that malaise in two major speeches that now, in the light of Brexit, seem sadly prophetic.

As Pope Francis warned in his 2014 address in Strasbourg: "In recent years, as the European Union has expanded, there has been growing mistrust on the part of citizens towards institutions considered to be aloof, engaged in laying down rules perceived as insensitive to individual peoples, if not downright harmful."

 

.........Mmmm.......

 

[Benedictus]

On 24/06/2016 at 4:56 AM, Amppax said:

So that just happened. Thoughts? 

@Ash Wednesday @Benedictus if I'm remembering correctly, y'all both live in the UK, what are your thoughts? 

@PhuturePriest because you wish you were, what are yours? 

 

I managed to vote -  wasn't sure I could as I can't vote in local or assembly elections when I'm overseas -  but I voted to remain. Most of my family in the UK voted leave though.

I didn't buy lots of the hype and soundbites. There were even some saying the EU is undemocratic, which isn't totally true. But lets not forget that the UK parliament has a second legislature that isn't democratically elected. They failed to see the irony.  

The outcome -  meh. Life will go on and they'll work out a deal. In the long run it could turn out a good thing and encourage the EU to reform much faster than its been willing. 

 

Edited July 30, 2016 by Benedictus