GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Brexit: passed by the working classes?

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It seems so.

As Britain voted to leave the European Union last week, the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage said, “The election was won in my view in the Midlands and the North and it was the old Labour vote that came to us…” This morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid puts some numbers on it:

In terms of socio-economic groups, 57% of ABs (upper/middle class – professional/managers etc) voted remain, 49% of C1s (lower middle class – supervisory/clerical or junior management/administrative), 36% of C2s (skilled working class) and 36% of DEs (Ds – semi & unskilled manual workers; Es – casual/lowest grade worker or state pensioner).

By implication, the ones who didn’t vote for Remain, voted for Leave. In other words, over 60% of rank-and-file British workers voted for the Leave campaign. (Note: ZH provides no link to the original. If you have a link to the original, please post it in the comments.)

We could take this interesting tidbit, if it’s true, in any number of directions.

  • Among workers, is this a rise of protectionism? Or is it a rise of appropriate national pride and common sense?
  • Is the recent day or two of market turmoil really just the ruling classes throwing a temper tantrum?
  • What should be made of all these leftists saying that Brexit passed because of old people, conservatives and racists? Are left-wingers name-calling their own base? The Party apparatchiks are mad at their base? Is the spat temporary, or something deeper?

UPDATE: Can there be any doubt that the EU hates democratic accountability? (Being accountable to the People it presumes to govern) One of its various Presidents, Martin Schultz, has now said:

“The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate”.

I saw that coming.

A new day for Britain

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Congratulations to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland for voting to leave the European Union. It seems real because it has prompted Cameron to resign.

The EU began in 1957 as the European Economic Community, originally a free-trade zone for western Europe. And that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, over the decades (and especially after it became the European Union in 1993), the EU devolved into an intensively oppressive bureaucracy that imposes endless, krazy regulations on its member states and, for practical purposes, voids democracy in them.

Britain should gain a brighter economic future from the separation. The “Remain” campaign, of course, tried to claim the opposite. Britain does massive trade with the rest of the EU, and the “Remain” campaign tried to scare voters that the trade will be lost. Which is ridiculous; the EU itself needs its British trade, and the example of Switzerland (not to mention China or the U.S.) proves that independent countries can do massive trade with the EU.

But it’s not just the economics: Separating from the EU (if that is now put into practice) should mean that Britain has regained an important part of its sovereignty and its democracy.

On a personal note: This event is a pleasant surprise for me. Despite the “Leave” campaign’s leading in many British polls, I was sure that the British-EU elites would manipulate the election so that “Remain” had to win. (Manipulate the voters and/or the voting, the counting, etc.)

In other words, I was sure that British democracy was already dead. Today’s news reminds me, in a happy way, that I don’t know everything. Just to put sprinkles on the ice cream, it’s also a well-deserved slap in President Obama’s face.

UPDATE:

UP-UPDATE: Cyril’s comment inspired me to adorn the post thusly:

keep calm and f--k socialism, on a Union Jack background

The UKIP: Shades of the Tea Party

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First off, in the UK, a left-wing politician gets surprisingly candid about immigration’s importance:

Stella Creasy, the Labour & Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, said that Britain either needs immigration or a massive baby boom in order to support the growing number of pensioners, or else “our ability to sustain our economy” will collapse. She added that this would leave the NHS in crisis.

In an interview with Progress magazine, Ms Creasy said: “There are now more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 16 in Britain, so unless women like me have a lot of children very quickly, our ability to sustain our economy, to sustain our public services [will come under threat].”

Perhaps her horror at the thought of women “like her” needing to have children feeds into the horror that UK establishment parties feel about the rise of the UK Independence Party?

She said that this made UKIP leader Nigel Farage “deeply unpatriotic” as his party has campaigned for an end to mass immigration. UKIP are “basically talking about managing the decline of Britain” she said.

And it is true that UKIP voters believe that Britain needs tighter border controls. But does that make them “deeply unpatriotic”? Perhaps over-the-top name-calling is a tactic of the Left in the UK, as well as in America.

In reality, the UKIP stands in a libertarian-Thatcherite tradition; hardly unpatriotic, and not even very anti-immigrant. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has explicitly said “We’re not going to join in with extremist-nationalist groups” in the European Parliament. To the extent that Farage is required to ally with parties from other countries, he prefers Beppe Grillo, the comedian who leads Italy’s anti-establishment 5-Star movement.

“I met Beppe Grillo last week … I am hoping we can do a deal with him and our group will sit bang in the middle politically of that parliament with a strong Europsceptic agenda,” Farage told the BBC in an interview…

Farage repeated previous comments that he would not work with France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who this week struck a deal with four other Eurosceptic parties. “They come from a different political family,” he said. “We want nothing to do with that party at all.”

Which brings us to the point. To its great shame, the UK’s Conservative Party *is* now going to work with parties that it calls “unacceptable”, against Farage and the UKIP. Because the Conservative establishment is that frightened of Farage’s upstart movement, or of any effective challenge to Big Government.

I am reminded of nothing so much as how the Republican establishment treats the Tea Party (i.e., stab them in the back whenever possible, and even if it means betraying principles). It’s a sad moment for the once-great party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.