What a difference a weekend makes
Published 7.11.2016The big news this Monday morning is that Britain has a new Prime Minister (PM), and much more quickly than anticipated. The reason for the quickened pace of change is that her remaining competition (the back stabber Gove having been eliminated), Andrea Leadsom, torpedoed her own campaign this weekend with a statement about how she'd be better than Theresa May as PM because she's a mother and May is not.
In 2016, at least in the United Kingdom (UK) Tory Party, politicians pay a price when they make stupid statements or do stupid things. Boris Johnson isn't going to be the next PM because Gove realized that there wasn't any substance behind his buffoonery and so took him out. Gove isn't going to be the next PM because you can't stab people in the back and then expect them to trust you. And finally, this past weekend, we have Leadsom, who stupidly chose to invoke that age old animosity between mothers and working women.
In the end, Leadsom claimed she was dropping out to speed the process, and a quicker change should remove at least some of the uncertainty surrounding the UK's future. Perhaps Leadsom just did the math and realized that there wasn't a path to victory— at least not one that included women who weren't mothers who vote.
Across the Pond Contrast
In the US elections, of course, there doesn't seem to be the usual price to pay for stupidity, verbal or otherwise. Donald Trump mocks a disabled person, regularly trades in racist tweets, and is seemingly clueless when it comes to actual policy but pays no price within his party. Clinton's choice to use a private email server for her official government work was stupid and then some. But for her party, singular issue was whether or not she was indicted. She was not, and so her campaign moves on.Continuing Post Mortem
Analysts continue to consider the Brexit vote and why it passed. However, most seem to say that It was immigration "that done it." The Leave message was simple and visceral, the Remain side was divided and trying to make economic arguments that by definition relied on guessing the future.Apparently they unhappiness in the country and the anger came as a surprise. This part of the story might be true in the US too. Plus the press didn’t like the deal that Cameron negotiated with the EU that was supposed to frame the Remain side’s advantage, which meant that they provided endless negative coverage of it. In addition, Boris Johnson’s ambitions made him an opportunist and created endless political gossip, which the press prefers to focus on. The Leave lies received a lot of coverage, but not a lot of fact checking. Cameron couldn’t effectively refute the lies.
Labor's Corbyn basically switched sides midstream and stopped trying to help Remain win, which is why he is currently facing a challenge to his leadership.
In this accounting, the lies about 350 million pounds going to the EU instead of the NHS helped the Leave campaign too. A total and complete lie, but the people bought it. Not sure why it couldn’t be refuted. Again, the underlying treatise is that emotions ruled, and angry people voted their anger.
EU had it coming? Basically, this viewpoint (from a Brit expat who’s lived outside Britain long enough that he can’t vote in its elections any more) is that the EU (and Germany) have been too harsh and bossy and need to change their ways. Many commentators don’t see this as possible. Austerity is what he points to. That and the stagnation (especially for the youth) in so many countries of the EU.
He also points to the fact that the EU is still a collection of distinct populations. Everyone is a German or Greek, no one is “European.”
The middle classes, the cultured elite, love the idea that they are taking part in a historic project that will bring peace and prosperity to the Continent, put an end to war, take steps to defend the environment, protect Europeans from superpower ambitions and multinational depredations, etc., etc. I love this idea, too. Like so many others, I take comfort in this noble enterprise.
But when the project does not bring prosperity, when it does not do enough to protect the environment, when its protectionist trading policies systematically damage the economies of the third world, I, like everyone else, don’t want to think about it; we prefer to close our eyes. This is not the narrative we like to believe we live in.
And finally, the optics industry is wondering what the effects will be. Firms are worried about how Brexit will affect their access to the larger European market. They are also worried about how it will affect their ability to influence standards. Brexit is already changing business plans, and companies are drawing up contingency plans to move headquarters from England. No one knows what’s going to happen, but industry hates uncertainty.
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