Brexit - The Final Reckoning

David Lammy and Diane Abbott have come out with blatant racist comments but have got away with it because they happen to be black...Momentum have a racist agenda and they are driving the Labour party.

I agree that both The Conservative Party and The Labour Party are bring led by political pygmies. But leaders of parties come and go, what remains are the real issues facing society on the UK.
Almost none of these issues are being addressed. In the last two years there has been utter political paralysis in the UK whilst the extremists in the Tory Party hold their own leadership to ransom and Corbyn and his acolytes experiment with wishy washy "back to core values" without ever defining an actual, properly constructed, policy.
In this vacuum what Hugo asserts is correct. Vague absolutist statements become believed as fact, blame culture spreads like a chronic infectious disease, blame immigrants, blame the EU, blame the left, blame the right, lunatics an racists emerge from the shadows to express their views as truth because nobody stands up to them.
You read it on minor, tiny, forums like this one.
What the EU referendum exposed is the deep divisions in society in the UK, driven in the main by the horribly unequal spread of the huge economic gains made as globalisation of trade and ever greater capital movements took hold. Try telling someone living in Stockton on Tees ( as an example) that UK GDP has grown by this or that % when the harsh realities are so much different in their day to day lives. One good example of this is Fintech. So far in 2018 the UK has attracted $16billion in investment, more than Europe, and even more than the USA. Great, right? It is, but it's all gone, in the main, to London and the South East. Since 2012 London has seen a 14% rise in employment, dwarfing the rest of the UK. (Fact check: Study by Sheffield Hallam).
Now, for ardent internationalists like me I would contend, correctly, that this due in no small part to the mature capital markets of a cross border nature, the ability to attract and keep human talent from the talent pool that is the EU, and effective rule of commercial law in the UK.
All of which is of course threatened if we tear up our treaty with the EU.
However, this will not affect Stockton on Tees. So they vote, "So what, tell the EU to eff off". In normal circumstances we would have a choice of voting in a party that says remain in the EU, steady as she goes, and let's distribute the accrued wealth more evenly. Just like 1997 to 2008.
But no, what do we actually have? A government since 2010 that has single handedly made the situation worse for Stockton on Tees. You know the list of acts they have done. All on the mantle of ideological austerity.
Now, as always happens, that Government has screwed itself. The rump of the South East, which grows the economy and pays the taxes is up in arms over Brexit. The north, from The Wash upwards are up in arms over feelings of betrayal and demand a hard leave (in the main).
So we could end up with an economic catastrophe with none of the underlying issues addressed, and we no longer have the economic capacity to address them.
In that scenario Hugo is right. Cue political extremism. It's frighteningly close.

As a statement Stuart, I completely agree.

My feedback from friends who are nationals of other EU countries is that they are more likely to see themselves as European and happy to do so. The lack of "connection" with their national governments just highlights the issues with national democratic institutions. It's exactly the same in the UK. I would argue that UK nationals have no more an understanding of the workings of the EU than any other country. What we do have is virulent anti EU press, which is just quoted verbatim by Brexiteers. Exactly in the manner Stuart has indicated in his post.

Fair challenge. If I read the Guardian I expect to read a "liberal" social viewpoint. If I read the Times I look forward to very decent economic analysis. So yes, perhaps Stuart is right, I read both of those and it probably reinforces my own viewpoints. But, they are both well written and tend to use analysis based in the real world. Now can you, or anyone,, say that of the Sun, Daily Mail or Express?
That they are anti EU is not the point, they are just crap. As such "Virulent" is the correct term.

I listened to a really interesting interview with David Icke yesterday. Yes, I know...but he was really interesting.

He was talking about social media as exactly what Stuart says.

He also made some really good points about what we are allowed and not allowed to say in society now. How language and thought are policed on both sides.

People in power can't have a proper discussion about race, gender, equality, Brexit, trade, religion, human rights etc.

Its simply controlled and diluted to either sound bites, passed as fake news, derailed into submission by #metoo type things or just whitewashed out of existence.

We literally have not had this poorly informed, poorly educated and so well controlled population in 100s of years.

It's truly worrying.

Link to the interview.

No aliens, no lizards and no turquoise.

Promise.

Edit. I should say that I don't agree with everything he says but I did find him thought provoking.

I don't think anybody has had a problem with Europeans coming to the UK and working. 

Really? Immigration was not a major theme? Control of our borders, etc.