Reply to post: Re: Brexit

Worst-case Brexit could kill 92,000 science, tech jobs across UK – report

Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

Re: Brexit

A right wing coup. In slow motion.

Discuss.

Which of the big left-wing parties opposed it? As I recall at election time both Tory & Labour were officially remain-ish, the centrist LibDems were very strong remainers.

After the vote, both mainstream parties became "will of the people" leavers, LibDems haven't changed. Not much sign of a right-wing bias there. Last year's election fiasco didn't even produce the initially-expected Tory landslide.

Of the smaller parties, the Marxist Sinn Féin were anti-EU by policy, but now support remain (unless Leave gets the Irish border deleted. Hypocisy, much?). UKIP are a single-issue party, and having achieved their aim they unsurprisingly imploded. No-one needs them now.

If anything this isn't a right/left issue, but a populist one.

It is interesting to compare the general EU situation with the UK one. None of the mainstream parties across the EU is publically anti-EU, but opinion polls show a substantial and increasing disillusionment with the EU (and particularly the Euro) in many countries, Germany being the exception. Who do eurosceptics cast their vote for? In the UK they had UKIP, elsewhere only the rather nasty right-wing extremist parties like the FN (France), AfD (Germany), PVV (Netherlands), all of whom have seen significant (and worrying) rises in support recently. The UK is perhaps fortunate that it had UKIP to absorb this dissatisfaction, and hasn't seen a significant growth in support for parties like BNP or Britain First, which again suggests that this is a populist issue, not a right/left one.

There are left-wing populist parties as well, of course, like Syriza in Greece, La France Insoumise in France, and also allegedly centrist ones like the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy. None of them is especially pro-EU (or pro-Euro) either, and they do get some of the eurosceptic votes in their countries.

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