
Tony Blair: Brexit’s Stunning Coup - leothekim
http://nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/tony-blair-brexits-stunning-coup.html
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YZF
It's obvious that open immigration was one of the main factors here. Something
the "stay in the EU" supporters didn't really seem to address beyond "if
you're against the free movement of people in Europe you're a racist". The US
was a supporter for UK to stay in the EU but at the same time you don't see it
opening its northern and southern borders for free movement of people. It's
significantly more locked down than Europe was before the EU.

Another factor is the sluggish global economy. People are looking at that as a
failure of globalization. Rightly or wrongly.

A random thought. Why should Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft,
NetFlix, Amazon, Tesla, all be separate companies? They could get together and
form, FTAGMNFAT Inc. They would share resources, IP, offices, etc. etc. Stop
fighting with each other...

I guess one reason we feel this is stupid(?) is that we believe that
competition encourages positive outcomes.

So how is this different when it comes to countries? Why is it inherently an
economic advantage for the UK to be part of a bigger block? We consider small
startups to be nimble and adaptive and big companies to be the opposite.

On one hand the anti-immigrant feelings reminds me of much darker days. On the
other it seems chaos would reign if all world borders were abolished tomorrow.
As an individual I like the idea of being able to live anywhere on this planet
but I'm not sure how that idea scales especially given more and more people
and seemingly less and less resources.

~~~
wbl
I live in California. If I want to move to NJ, I just pack my bags and go.
That's freedom of movement. If I want to sell something to New Hampshire, I
just do it. Why shouldn't France and Germany be the same way?

~~~
YZF
We're talking about freedom of movement between countries. A state is not a
country. Why shouldn't all countries be like states? We can all hum John
Lennon's Imagine there's no countries but I'm not sure how that actually
works. I'm sure you can at least see some difficulty there and definitely
there is a strong sentiment in parts of the US against this vision.

Why shouldn't Canada and the USA be the same? Why shouldn't Mexico, and
Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and Brazil, and the USA, and Canada be the same?

If you want to move to Montreal or Mexico City or Beijing you can't just pack
your bags and go. You can still sell something to all these places,
manufacture them in all these places, etc. At least generally speaking.

~~~
jsolson
You might ask some people in the American South about their views on States'
Rights.

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ern
At the risk of generalizing, most of us reading this are of above-average
intelligence, and have the ability to cope and thrive in a globalized world.
We probably have more in common with the global elites than we do with the
"lumpen proletariat", and most of us are probably nett beneficiaries of
immigration. But a bit of empathy is in order. It's telling that Blair points
out Eastern European EU migrants contribute more in taxes than they take out
in welfare payments, while ignoring the effect they have on wages.

The dominant education narrative in the last few decades in the West has been
envy of countries like China, Japan and Singapore, with (allegedly) superior
education systems. The subtext being that intellectual achievement is the
primary means of determining one's worth (or you will be "left behind"), with
no recognition that many people just aren't capable of meeting standards set
in cram schools on the other side of the planet. People who are not as capable
intellectually are being increasingly marginalized in the quest to drive wages
down for non-knowledge work. It's difficult to raise a family as a bus driver,
a plumber, a cleaner or a shop assistant if your wages are being undercut by
migrants, or (soon) by robots. It's tough to run a corner shop if you are
undercut by migrants who, due to the need to remit money, are driven to
sacrifice quality of life by keeping their shops open 24x7. The elites, by
virtue of being elites, have been able to con working people to vote against
their own interests for decades, and put open borders and free trade above all
else; and their arrogance has blinded them to the fact that the masses would
eventually cotton on to the game.

I am as horrified as anyone about the closing of minds and the rise of
populism in the West. But I'm not surprised by it.

~~~
airesQ
Too many compliments? Anyway.

If the worker cannot move to the factory, the factory moves to the worker.

That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.

Those problems need solutions. But I'm not convinced that getting rid of
migrants will improve things. For the most part it just changes the place
"where stuff happens".

We had this revolution in the UK, and yet unemployment is at record lows[1].
Aren't migrants taking jobs? (Not sure about earnings though.)

[1] - [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-
kingdom/unemployment-...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-
kingdom/unemployment-rate)

~~~
vinceguidry
> If the worker cannot move to the factory, the factory moves to the worker.

> That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.

Factories need far fewer workers nowadays, due to continual improvements in
technology. Globalization is already in retreat, but factory jobs are never
coming back.

Automation is not an all-or-nothing thing, in the long term jobs are lost, but
over the short term automation has the effect of making jobs shittier. Labor
becomes more and more fungible.

The only people willing to do such shitty work are going to be those intensely
motivated to do it, i.e. migrants. So they get scapegoated.

Welfare initiatives like basic income will be tried but won't really have a
huge impact on the squeezing of the middle class. Automation hasn't yet
provided enough of a surplus to really provide for middle class lifestyles and
won't for years. What it will do is take some of the pressure off of lower
class existence.

What we're going to see is greater geographical concentration of the classes.
The middle class is going to have to start doing what the lower class has long
gotten used to, moving to areas of greater opportunity.

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flyinglizard
You don't even have to read between the lines with this one. Brexit is a
precursor for what is about to come in the next decade; the globalism pendulum
is swinging back in full force.

~~~
themartorana
Relax. Britain was EU minus the Euro and the schengen. They gave up pure
sovereignty without buying into the true core of the EU, which boils down to
economics.

I get it. If the UK didn't buy into the Euro (and retained fiat currency) and
didn't buy into the schengen, what exactly were they getting from EU
membership minus encroachment on sovereignty?

Edit: since joining the EU, Britain has known nothing but austerity. Whether
or not that had anything to do with EU membership, you can see how it was
blamed, yes?

~~~
v1tyaz
Access to the European single market and a large supply of skilled labour.

~~~
themartorana
Existing trade agreements covered exports and remote labor has always been on
the table.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Maybe this is getting blown up by the media, but I've seen a lot of tech
people in the UK on HN and elsewhere looking (sometimes desperately) for other
opportunities. Even if future agreements don't make it harder for them to
remain and work in the UK on paper, it may still cause a lot of skilled labor
to leave the UK purely due to perception.

That's assuming that it remains just as easy to do so, which seems unlikely
given immigration was part of what was driving the leave vote. Even if it is
still easier in absolute terms for someone in the EU to work in the UK than
the US, the lowered differential could have pretty negative effects on the
market for high-demand jobs.

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DominikR
Sorry, but what did Merkel expect what would happen after she invited everyone
from Africa and the Middle East to immigrate to the EU?

She didn't ask her population if they support this, let alone the other
countries within the EU.

What kind of democracy is this where one person can decide on her own how the
future of a continent will look like?

The funny thing is that she actually still wants to force mass migration to
the EU down our throats, even after this disastrous result in the UK. Seems
like our elite is absolutely incapable of learning.

This is why the EU will fail.

~~~
_delirium
The UK already secured an opt-out from EU refugee resettlement, so if that was
the objection, wasn't it already solved?

~~~
obmelvin
A lot of the people for the leave movement were from less educated
demographics who don't think like you or I do.

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quadrangle
The comments on the article seemed surprisingly good.

Anyway, if you build a global system, it will only be sustainable if it
actually serves the interest of the general public. A global capitalist system
that serves moneyed interests and screws over the middle class and working
class is one that will be volatile and upended at times, and some of that will
be in entirely misguided directions.

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wavefunction
Only stunning if you're totally invested in the status quo and can't conceive
of any alternative reality where the people who haven't benefited from your
schemes finally call you to task.

I'm sorry but 2016 is the year the establishment got it very wrong and didn't
learn its lessons. Yeah, it's not over yet.

~~~
ptaipale
That is so true, and the same thing seems to go on even after the vote.

If I had had a vote in Britain, I would have voted Remain, but I'm not
surprised at all by the result and I even see many upsides in it although
difficult times are surely ahead for all of EU because of this. But perhaps
difficult times are what is needed to find a new direction - is this a project
for United States of Europe, or a common market for European nations?

Most major politicians as well as major media outlets - from NY Times to
HuffPo to most European government broadcasters - have been painting a picture
where the leavers are stupid, uneducated, old, xenophobic racists for
expressing their concerns about continued integration towards a federal
European government, instead of a common market, and ever-rejoiced
multiculturalism in form of immigration that should be unrestricted.

What are you going to get out of that? You'll get angry people. Angry people
who still have a vote, however much you dislike their having a vote. You won't
get people who embarrassedly rue their previous opinions and nicely behave the
way you want. Rather to the contrary: the campaign on the Remain side - as so
many other campaigns - that tries to strengthen the feeling of solidarity in
their own bubble simply miscalculated, and it backfired big time.

I suspect that the isolation of people, created by social media - Facebook
friend selection, Twitter mobs etc - has strengthened a phenomenon where
people cannot understand others who have different problems and different
opinions from their own.

This could be a result of many, many people de-friending others for just
having a different political opinion.

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rayiner
Interesting word choice. "Coup" for something voted on by direct referendum
with 70% turnout.

~~~
dragonwriter
The phrase "stunning coup" for a major, usually unexpected, success for the
party pulling it off (and often an upsetting one for opponents) is common and
does not derive from the use of "coup" as short for the phrase " _coup d
'etat_".

So it's not surprising at all.

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mmaunder
"The lasting effect, however, may be political, and with global implications.
If the economic shocks continue, then the British experiment will serve as a
warning. But if they abate, then populist movements in other countries will
gain momentum."

Either they lose or we all lose.

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aaron695
"If the economic shocks continue, then the British experiment will serve as a
warning. But if they abate, then populist movements in other countries will
gain momentum.

> But if they abate

Ummm that means economically it's all ok, just a bit or nervousness on the
markets. Sooooo they made a ok decision but not yours so it's bad?

If there's some sort of morality outside of economics then he should have
spelt it out. Britain can still allow immigrants so not sure what this is
supposed to mean.

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johncolanduoni
Not that I think it should be decided any other way, but I'm curious what the
error bars would look like for the vote. 51.9 to 48.1 is pretty damn close. I
would find it kind of funny if the p-value for data backing such an important
decision was too low for a scientific paper on just the possibility.

Though with over 70% participation it's probably still sufficient even for
those standards.

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gabrielc
A lot of racist comments here.

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branchless
How did this happen? Blair let the banks own britain. Incomes have been
decemated by land prices. Blair set this in train.

Get back to jp morgan for some more cash you filthy liar, Blair.

