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Comment by jasoncartwright | Hacker News Reader

Brexit divided and continues to cause paralysis. Soft, hard, or no-deal? Simplistic binary vote specified no mechanism, destination, or future relationship. Leave and remain have completely incompatible visions for post-Brexit Britain.

Along with (IMHO) a polycrisis of far-right immigration agitation, post-COVID stagnation, high energy costs, NHS/social care strain, housing/planning hell, lack of infrastructure investment.

We're not in a great place and, to your point, there is no clear way out.

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> Leave and remain have completely incompatible visions for post-Brexit Britain.

This would have been less of a problem if Leave had itself been a single position, rather than as it turned out to be several different positions that all started off in the same vague direction but pulled apart almost immediately, with those involved all insisting the rest of them "weren't proper Brexit" or were "secret Remainers", ignoring all the times Temainers said "What? Them? They aren't Remainers!" unless said Remainers pointed out this division at which point all these supposed "secret Remainers" who wanted something that wasn't "proper Brexit" suddenly were totes Leavers what are you talking about.

But yeah, polycrisis, and it's not just the UK, but the UK seems to have it worse than most because Brexit added to it.

> a polycrisis of far-right immigration agitation

I think an important issue in the UK political landscape and public is the polarisation that makes people label immigration a "far-right agitation".

Immigration is a serious and key issue, which impacts everything else, too. As long as the left of centre denies that it is an issue at all (because only "far right" people have a problem with it, apparently) Nigel Farage and the like will only keep increasing their share of the vote. The other aspect of Reform UK's rise is that the Conservatives only paid lip service to the issue so lost the support of many on the right and were destroyed at the last general election (still very visible in the polls).

Perhaps this, like Brexit before, also highlights another issue in the UK/England, which is that London tends to live in its own bubble.

Xenophobia is a tool of demagogues, not a rational policy.

So while it's an issue, it's not even in the top ten of of the UK's most important practical issues.

And the racism it generates - including Brexit, and currently the collapse of income from foreign students, which was a huge earner for the university sector - does huge and lasting harm.

It's a political shiny penny used for distraction, not a realistic solution to anything. And the people who make careers out of promoting it are provably cynical, corrupt, incompetent, and disinterested in solving real problems.

The problem with this argument is that for essentially my entire lifetime, the UK population has wanted less migration. And what they have got instead is gross migration running at 1 million per year. If they are just fundamentally wrong on this and have been for 50 years, it seems like democracy is a bad idea. Alternatively, if you feel you have to accept democracy, then maybe it would be good to give people what they consistently say they want on this issue.

No we haven't.

You're tied up in centuries of empire-building consequences and think "no brown people please" is a legitimate point of view?

I think one of the most basic features of any "cooperative venture for mutual advantage" (as Rawls called the state) is who's going to be in the club. If that shouldn't be under democratic control, what should be?

Also, I don't know why you think opposition to migration is driven by anti-brown-people racism. That opposition grew quite a lot when migration was coming mostly from Eastern Europe. I'd expect concerns over jobs, housing, public services etc. to be more important - I'm not claiming that those are correct, though I don't think they are illegitimate.

Lastly, I am not sure why the empire is relevant. Is the story that because Britain had an empire, it's morally obligated to accept immigration? That could be true for e.g. Hong Kong or Ugandan Indians, but I'm not sure it need be true for all time and everywhere.

> And what they have got instead is gross migration running at 1 million per year.

LEGAL migration of 1 million per year. For one year only during Boris Johnson's term. Mostly it's in the 100,000s.

Most migration is legal. People crossing the channel in boats is minuscule in comparison (tens of thousands). And, whilst people crossing the channel in small boats is certainly a problem (for their lives, if nothing else), it is not something that should be taking up so much political air. It's a side issue in the big scheme of things.

Governments should certainly have more strategic plans for dealing with the legal migrants, like infrastructure building, and if they're unable to deliver the infrastructure, limit the legal migration. But the rest of it is often driven by political opportunists and bigots.

Yes most immigration is legal, so a policy choice. That's exactly why the Conservatives lost the last general election as voters shunned them and voted Reform UK. Why? Because for years they say they wanted lower immigration but actually did the opposite.

Arguably even illegal immigration is a policy choice at this point considering the clear reluctance of the government to do much about it. So this has a big symbolic and political impact.

This public growing skepticism about immigration while successive governments have made the choice to support it is fuelling the Reform vote.

This isn't unique to the UK, we see the same pretty much across Europe.

> That's exactly why the Conservatives lost the last general election

No, it isn’t. Rampant corruption, parties at No.10, Liz Truss, and then inflation because of the Ukraine war causing a cost of living and cost of energy crisis. You know, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

If it was about immigration, why did Labour get in, when they were accused of “opening the floodgates” to European migration in the past?

It may be your biggest issue, it’s not the country’s.

> This public growing skepticism

You spelt “manipulation” wrong. This is raw unfettered populist manipulation. Sure, immigration comes with costs (also benefits), but it’s the rhetoric that’s made this a hot topic, not anything of substance.

This country is a nation of immigrants. And whilst immigration should be managed properly, it is nowhere near the top of the list of things the government should be prioritising. But they’ll have to, wasting time and resources, to hold back this tide of nonsense.

Labour got in because people voted for Reform instead of the Tories for the reasons you mention but also because of the handling of immigration (remember it was just after largest net immigration on records) so Tories dropped and first-past-the-post did the rest. Corbyn got more votes nationally than Starmer.

Brexit, Torie implosion, Reform polling in first place or just about... clearly it isn't "my issue".

Your comment, and others, illustrates my original comment about some people absolutely refusing to acknowledge that immigration is a major issue, for some reason and even resorting to conspiracy theories.

(The UK has only seen mass immigration since after WWII, by the way)

> The UK has only seen mass immigration since after WWII, by the way

Pretty sure we have been invaded by: Vikings, Romans, Germanic tribes which gave us our name, Normans, Beaker folk, Huguenots, and our Empire past literally led to us giving out British passports after WW2 to get immigration from the former colonies to help us rebuild after the devastation of the war.

We are all likely the offspring of immigrants, there are likely very few ‘original’ Celtic bloodlines. Whatever the fuck ‘original’ means when it comes to being born in a place, like it matters.

I am not refusing to acknowledge the issue of migration. But if people like you were really serious about it, you would be talking about global causes of the migration: war, poverty, climate change. But let’s face it, most people are not interested in that, they’re interested in having fewer brown people in their line of sight.

There are pretty much no other visible artefacts of migration in daily life.

But weren't biggest sources of the "Boriswave" increase in immigration people fleeing Ukraine and Hong Kong, and an increase in skilled worker and care worker visas needed as a result of the loss of EU freedom of movement?

Helping people from Ukraine and Hong Kong is overwhelmingly popular. Loss of freedom of movement is much less so, but was an inevitable result of the Brexit vote. And the surge of Xenophobia in the past couple of years has come despite a huge drop in immigration.

It's almost as if it were being driven by demagoguery rather than anything to do with policy choices or delivery.

I did say "gross migration", right? That was about a million in the most recent data, IIRC. Net migration was about 250K, sure, and about a million in the Boriswave.

> Immigration is a serious and key issue, which impacts everything else, too.

No, other things are serious and key issues, and immigration is the scapegoat that gives people someone to blame for their problems, distracting from actual solutions that don't fit in a one-sentence slogan the way the non-solution "kick out all the Xes" does. This has been an electoral tactic of right-wing populists for a long, long time.

It's just amazing how simple people can be when things like economic inequality, lack of affordable healthcare and housing, climate change, social security, public services etc. can all be labeled as leftist (and thus bad) issues, and focus turned just to immigration (which itself is also a complex topic).

"I'd vote for the left, but they do nothing about the brown people." I wish these people just stayed at home on the voting day.

Labour pivoted way to the right on immigration and it didn't get them any more votes. There's nothing they can do to get that part of the electorate and it's a waste of time to try to cater to them.

Hmm, their manifesto said "A fair and properly managed immigration system"... That's the absolute minimum lip service and a platitude, not any sort of pivot, which they cannot do considering the various power groups within the party.

Since then it's really only foreign students who have had issues, so the group that probably makes the least sense to 'hit' (although there was abuse of the system that needed to be addressed)but the easiest politically, again because it's the least resistance path within party and party supports while allowing to say that they are acting.

There is no "far right" in the UK -- it's a label that is used to smear people to excuse state failure.

* Right - Conservatives

* Hard right - Reform

* Far right - Restore

Restore are a far right party. Luckily they get about the same number of votes as the old far right parties, like the BNP.

Don't be silly, just because there are three right-wing parties, it doesn't mean they map onto that range.

The label "far right" is just used to smear people, rather than something that represents a real group in Britain.

I’m not being “silly”, each party is more extreme than the last. Rupert Lowe is an ethno-nationalist who clearly believes in ethnic cleansing (through forced deportation, at least) and is clearly a fascist with deep religious intolerance (against Islam and Judaism). Farage although he occasionally comes out with troubling rhetoric, and is clearly racist, I don’t think he’d go full Nazi; and the Conservatives, although they have moved further right in the past decade, are still fundamentally centre right.

* Conservatives “centre right” to “right wing” [1]:

* Reform: “far right” [2], but they have tempered their original far-right rhetoric and are clearly positioning themselves as hard-right these days.

* Restore: “far right” [3]

I don’t know why you think this is odd. Political parties tend to carve out their niche on the political spectrum.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_(UK)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restore_Britain

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