The economics-politics divide

Duncan Weldon made a good point recently when he tweeted that the “disconnect between British political discourse and opinion of mainstream economic opinion feels extreme.”

Whilst political discourse talks of balancing the government’s books, most economists (outside the IFS) point to negative borrowing costs and think it more important to look after the economy. Instead, whether left or right, we have other priorities: how might monetary policy better support the economy? How can we end the long stagnation in productivity? Why are house prices so high and what can we do about them? How can we best fight climate change? How might tax or planning policy better promote longer-term growth? How strong is the case for a national wealth fund, basic income or jobs guarantee? How should banks be regulated? Does inequality reduce growth and if so what can be done about it? Etc, etc.

These questions, though, are not reflected in Westminster politics. It’s as if economics doesn’t matter.

From one perspective, this is weird. Historically, politics has been dominated by economic issues: free trade vs protectionism in the early 20^th century; whether to be on the gold standard or not; how to achieve full employment; whether to nationalize or privatize; how much planning; how to control inflation; what to do about productivity; and so on. The low salience of serious economics is unusual in a historic context therefore.

What’s more, twelve years of flatlining real wages should have pushed economics up the agenda. We can afford to ignore the economy when it’s working well, but not when it isn’t.

Which poses the question. Why is there the disconnect Duncan notes? Here are some (non-exclusive possibilities):

 - The transmission mechanism from academic economics to policy is broken. This is partly a supply-side problem. Academics are more concerned with bureaucracy and writing unreadable, unread and unreplicable journal articles than they are with communicating good ideas to the public. And even if they were interested, they’d be ignored by the media.

 - The rise of retail politics. Politicians – with a few exceptions – aren’t much interested in ideas. They need salesmen, not economists (or sociologists or philosophers for that matter). Who needs intellectuals when you have focus groups?

 - Interests. Economic ideas gain political prominence if they promote, or at least don’t retard, the interests of powerful groups. Post-war full employment was feasible in part because Fordist capital needed mass markets of affluent workers. When, however, those affluent workers squeezed profits in the 70s, union-bashing became acceptable. So too did freer markets and lower taxes. Today, though, good economic ideas attack powerful interests. Landlords don’t want a land value tax. Bankers (or at least their bosses if not shareholders) don’t want higher capital requirements. And so on. It’s hard to imagine sensible economic policies which do not attack the interests of landlords or bankers. Sure, there’s still a section of capital whose interests are consonant with growth-promoting policies. But the message of Brexit is that this section is politically weak.

 - Realignment. There’s a widespread view, shared by the Labour party, Matthew Goodwin and Stephen Davies in his book, The Politics and Economics of Brexit, that we’ve seen a realignment of politics. The great divide is no longer about economics but culture: “somewhere” vs nowhere”, cosmopolitans vs nationalists”. Brexit might be the start of this new alignment not the end. If so, economics matters less for politics than it used to.

Which brings me to my beef. Isn’t it remarkable that, of all the times this realignment might have happened, it just happens to have come after years of capitalist stagnation?

Well, not so remarkable. It corroborates the finding made by Ben Friedman in 2006, that hard economic times breed nationalism and intolerance. Many of those who remark upon the new realignment are guilty of a gross incuriosity: the fail to ask: might political preferences be endogenous, the result of socio-economic trends?

Herein lies a massive difference between now and the 70s. Back then, the Tories reacted to economic crisis by developing a new economic agenda. Thatcher could plausibly tell a lot of people: “vote Tory and you’ll get richer”. Enough, anyway, to win general elections. Her epigones, however, cannot do this. They have no ideas for economic regeneration – though whether this is because of their own intellectual shortcomings or economic reality is an open question. Instead, all they have is the fanning of the flames of nationalism. There’s more than one way to achieve hegemony.

Comments

[Postkey]

" How can we end the long stagnation in productivity? "
According to Dr. Tim Morgan - never?
'The first principle is that all forms of economic output – literally all of the goods and services which comprise the ‘real’ economy – are products of energy.
Nothing of any economic value or utility can be supplied without using energy. . . .

If you want a succinct answer to this question, it is that ECoE (the Energy Cost of Energy) is rising, relentlessly and exponentially. The exponential rate of increase in ECoE means that this cannot be cancelled out by linear increases in the aggregate amount of total or gross (pre-ECoE) energy that we can access. The resultant squeeze on surplus energy has been compounded by increasing numbers of people seeking to share the prosperity that this surplus provides.
As a result, prior growth in prosperity per person has gone into reverse. People have been getting poorer in most Western advanced economies (AEs) since the early 2000s. With the same fate now starting to overtake emerging market (EM) countries too, global prosperity has turned down. One way of describing this process is “de-growth”. '
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/

[Stuart Pembery]

We’re all Somewhere now. That trope lasted a year. It’s dead in the water now.

[ltr]

As a result, prior growth in prosperity per person has gone into reverse. People have been getting poorer in most Western advanced economies (AEs) since the early 2000s. With the same fate now starting to overtake emerging market (EM) countries too, global prosperity has turned down. One way of describing this process is “de-growth”.

[ The data show this is nonsense, but evidently data which I have and posted make no difference. Well then, de-grow. ]

[Blissex]

«Back then, the Tories reacted to economic crisis by developing a new economic agenda. Thatcher could plausibly tell a lot of people: “vote Tory and you’ll get richer”. Enough, anyway, to win general elections.»

But M Thatcher did not achieve economic regeneration, and neither did her successors: the rate of growth of *average* GDP per head halved. But that is an *average*; misused by "ltr", who also looks at gross income and not net of costs like tax and rent and pension, as living standards are what matters, not headline numbers; for example because of fast housing cost inflation a lot of families today live in much smaller accomodation, as the average size of newly built housing has shrunk at the same time the price has risen.

That is an average of the significant minority for whose living standards «“vote Tory and you’ll get richer”. Enough, anyway, to win general elections» did work, a middle range with living standards that got only a bit better or stagnated, and a large minority for whom things have gotten worse. In the USA reaganism was even worse for most but the "deserving wealth creators" of property and finance and other extractive sectors.

«Her epigones, however, cannot do this. They have no ideas for economic regeneration»

M Thatcher and her successors achieved mostly economic redistribution, not regeneration. The question for her epigones is for how long they can continue to redistribute upwards to reward their constituencies and lobbies for their votes and "sponsorships".

My impression is that the upwards redistributive pressure can continue for a quite a while yet, and then when England returns to 1850s or 1750s conditions (lots of tenements/rookeries, many casual labourers queueing outside mills for the morning call, most young people being house servants on board and bed plus a small allowance) it can stay like that for a long time.

Whether it will depends on politics and how effective pushback is, and so far the winners from upwards redistribution have run rings around the losers.

[Blissex]

«a middle range with living standards that got only a bit better or stagnated, and a large minority for whom things have gotten worse.»

BTW as to things I know directly at some point I as meeting socially several people I know in the prosperous south who work in a sector that has been doing well, with "professional" salaries in the top 5%-10%, and a good degree of status and job security.

During a discussion like this I asked around gross (including most benefits like pension contributions) nominal salaries in 2000 (when they were mostly in their late 20s/early 30s) and 2020 (so late 40s/early 50s, career peak), and the average *nominal* rate of compound increase over those 20 years had been 2.5%.

That is well below actual inflation; when compared to stuff they want to buy and on which they tend to spend a good chunk of their salaries, like housing, education for their offspring, pensions, dental work, foreign travel, legal advice, their living standards have fallen substantially. Falls in price of telephone calls and electronics or clothes have not mattered because they spend a small percentage of their income on them.

The only ones who were smug and comfy were those (a small majority) who had bought or inherited already property (or properties and in some cases shares) 20 years ago or even 10 years ago; some remarked that they had made much more from property (or share) capital gains than the cumulative increases in their nominal wages over those 20 or 10 years, and some seemed to have made more in capital gains than the cumulative wages they had received in that period.

My comment on that was that if these people in such good circumstances had it so, except the "investors", those much further down the income scale must have had it even worse.

[Scurra]

>

I would contend that this is the result of the 80s revolution as well when universities ceased to be academic institutions and became fully commercial entities. Once upon a time, a university was the place that "neurodivergent" folk could find a refuge; that is no longer the case.

This is all part of the argument that progress stalled somewhere around then as well. Sure, our technology has got faster and smaller, but almost all of it is based on stuff that we had in the 70s (even if only in prototype form.)
Once government and academic became extensions of corporations, that progress largely stopped because there was no need for it.

[Dipper]

Easy. Politics is about Power. If your political arguments are primarily based around economics, then you are assuming the power arrangements that exist, so your politics is about preserving the current power arrangements.

What voters have been doing for a while now is maximising their power. A wish for a greater control over a smaller entity. In that sense, the primary political debate is one of sovereignty not economic policy. The rise fo Scottish Nationalism is a clear example of this.

[Dipper]

@ Scurra

The EU. It is communism with a human face. The regulatory zeal has placed a preservation order on the economy of the end of the 20th century. Large companies love it because they administer the bureaucratic state on behalf of the EU and are ring-fenced in return. Surprise surprise, every year it is zero economic growth.

[Blissex]

«The EU. It is communism with a human face.»

That is rather "imaginative" claim, but a lot of people would say "if only!" :-).

[Blissex]

«This is all part of the argument that progress stalled somewhere around then as well.»

As to *economic progress*, only in the "first world".

The economics progress of the past 150 years has been based on two waves of adoption of cheaper, better fuels than farm produce (hay, cereals, ...). The first was the wave of switching from produce to coal, much cheaper and more energy dense, the second from coal to oil, even cheaper and even more energy dense.
Each wave had worked in two ways, expanding adoption, from a minority of uses to pervasive in the economy, and improving efficiency, from somewhat wasteful to fairly close to economically optimal. Adoption and improvement at first at quick and they taper in rate, and in the "first world" oil adoption is pretty pervasive already, and most big improvement have been made.

In non-"first world" economies there is still quite a bit of scope for expanded adoption of oil at least, and latecomers can immediately adopt the most efficient uses of oil. In practice countries become richer, if they are managed moderately well, in direct proportion to how much they have switched to coal or oil.

Then there are less "big wave" things, for example in "anglo american" political systems thatcherism has halved the growth rate of per-capita GDP in order to fight trade unions and wage increases, by creating a permanent semi-recession in the labour markets.

Unfortunately there has been no discovery/invention of an even cheaper, more energy dense fuel (electricity is not really a fuel) than oil.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2011.0568
http://euanmearns.com/energy-and-man-part-3/

[Blissex]

«These questions, though, are not reflected in Westminster politics. It’s as if economics doesn’t matter.»
«Economic ideas gain political prominence if they promote, or at least don’t retard, the interests of powerful groups.»

In other words what matters is not "economics" but the political economy of the constituencies that matter. Because the policies to favour those constituencies have been at the center of "Westminster politics" and very successful.
Not a huge discovery, but our blogger seems to have become more realistic as to rational policy making.

«The great divide is no longer about economics but culture: “somewhere” vs nowhere”, cosmopolitans vs nationalists”.»

That's just performative propaganda by those who want to cancel "proletarian" class politics and replace it with "whig" identity politics that both divides the proletarians/"servant classes", makes the low-income majority of the "servant classes" the "real" exploiters (with the claim that it is working class white males whose privileges exploit/oppress working-class women, ethnic and sexual minorities), and even if successful costs the master classes very little,

[Blissex]

«https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2011.0568
http://euanmearns.com/energy-and-man-part-3/»

Some of the contemporaries were also well aware of the critical role of cheaper, more energy dense coal replacing farm produce as the main fuel:

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-coal-question

[ltr]

Herein lies a massive difference between now and the 70s. Back then, the Tories reacted to economic crisis by developing a new economic agenda. Thatcher could plausibly tell a lot of people: “vote Tory and you’ll get richer”. Enough, anyway, to win general elections. Her epigones, however, cannot do this. They have no ideas for economic regeneration – though whether this is because of their own intellectual shortcomings or economic reality is an open question. Instead, all they have is the fanning of the flames of nationalism. There’s more than one way to achieve hegemony.

[ Brilliant passage. ]

[Cttw]

Is this just demographics. Given the average age of voters, esp Tory voters, does the economy matter to them?

[ltr]

August 1, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases ( 303,952)
Deaths ( 46,193)

Notice the ratio of deaths to coronavirus cases of 15.2% for the United Kingdom.

[ What of substance does matter in the politics of the UK? ]

[Dipper]

@ ltr

'Notice the ratio of deaths to coronavirus cases of 15.2% for the United Kingdom'

You realise that this number is completely nonsense don't you? There is no agreed measure of the number of cases, or even what a case is. It is simply a reflection of testing and definition. It imparts absolutely no information whatsoever of any value or significance.

[Ralph Musgrave]

Chris claims in respect of the political right, that “…all they have is the fanning of the flames of nationalism.” Well that’s better than encouraging the gang rape of vulnerable under-age girls, which is what the Labour Party is into.

After Naz Shah’s revolting suggestion that the victims of grooming should keep quiet for the sake of diversity, far from being sacked, she was promoted.

[Dipper]

@ Ralph Musgrave

'After Naz Shah’s ... she was promoted. '

And after Priya Gopal's tweet the 'White Lives Don't Matter' and worse she was promoted to professor.

[Paulc156]

Actually after previous episodes of 20thC 'fanning the flames of nationalism' in Europe and beyond, the consequences were far more devastating than those remarked on just above...

[George Carty]

"Unfortunately there has been no discovery/invention of an even cheaper, more energy dense fuel (electricity is not really a fuel) than oil."

Actually we do have fuels (uranium and thorium) thousands of times more energy-dense than oil: why haven't they supplanted oil just as oil supplanted coal?

One reason is that nuclear fuels emit deadly radiation in their operation, which means that nuclear reactors must be surrounded by many tons of shielding material. This means that small, lightweight engines (as needed by all transport vehicles except for the largest ocean-going ships) cannot use nuclear energy.

The other problem is a wide-ranging campaign of fear that has been lavishly funded by the rentiers who currently benefit from the domination of oil (and gas, which largely comes from the same wells as oil). Oil and gas deposits are far more geographically concentrated than coal deposits and thus offer far more lucrative opportunities for rent extraction.

The anti-nuclear-power movement really began in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the Rockefeller Foundation suborned geneticist Hermann Muller.

https://atomicinsights.com/why-was-h-j-muller-an-effective-tool-in-effort-to-exaggerate-danger-of-radiation/

[Dipper]

@ Paulc156

"Actually after previous episodes of 20thC 'fanning the flames of nationalism' in Europe and beyond, the consequences were far more devastating than those remarked on just above..."

And who is fanning the flames of nationalism? It's BLM, making individuals rights dependent on their race and ethnicity. It's Harriet Harman Labour bringing in laws that made your rights dependent on your race and ethnicity.

Dinosaurs like me were brought up on equality, that all people were equal regardless of race, religion, and ethnicity. Apparently now that makes me a hard-right fascist. Leftwing is thinking that someone is a bad person because they are white.

[Boyo]

Is the culture war flak to deflect conversation about good economic policy? Get everyone raging about cancel culture, stop them asking about a land value tax.

[Paulc156]

@Dipper
It sounds like you're adopting a massive bit of projection with this pearl "Leftwing is thinking that someone is a bad person because they are white"
You doth protest too much, methinks.

[Blissex]

«It sounds like you're adopting a massive bit of projection with this pearl "Leftwing is thinking that someone is a bad person because they are white"»

Let's say that I have very little intellectual respect for some of his opinions (which pretty rarely reach the status of arguments), which sometimes are so weird to seem to me hallucinations with only a tenuous connection to (much overhyped admittedly) "reality", e.g. here also "The EU. It is communism with a human face." as previously remarked.

The tenuous connection with reality of "The EU. It is communism with a human face." is that all organizations have a degree of "sovietism", which is far from being "communism", whether actually-existing or "real". "The Economist" in a moment of high hypocrisy defined "soviet" as "run for the primary benefit of management" and many organizations are so run and are strictly capitalist, e.g. pretty much the whole of the UK financial sector. My guess at his mental processes is that he starts from the emotional premise that "commmunism" is "bad", the "EU" is "bad", both have some degree of "sovietism", therefore the EUSSR is communism, even if so far without the obvious gulags, so "with a human face".

In my view "Leftwing is thinking that someone is a bad person because they are white" is also an hallucination with a tenuous connection to reality, because it is actually right-wing thinking, of the whig type, aimed at replacing left-wing economic/class based politics with right-wing ("centrist") identity based politics because the latter are "individuating" and blame oppression and immiseration not on "the markets" that are presume impersonally fair but on discrimination by male white coworkers and their oppressive trade unions (a claim that has a tenuous connection to reality too).

My guess as to why he is hallucinating (like many admittedly) that is "left-wing" is that also has another tenuous connection to reality as many formerly left-wing organizations have been infiltrated by whig entrysts advocating a switch to right-wing identity politics that blame "white privilege" as a replacement for "upper class power", but if I were to imagine his mental processes I would think they look like: "left-wing" is "bad", fundamentally I believe in toryism so feel that blaming culturally-conservative whites is "bad", whigs are to the "left" of toryism and I am unable to consider the difference between whiggism and leftism, or between cultural and economic progressivism, so blaming "privileged whites" is "left-wing".

Perhaps it is me who is hallucinating during these hot days. :-)

[ltr]

August 1, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases ( 303,952)
Deaths ( 46,193)

Notice the ratio of deaths to coronavirus cases of 15.2% for the United Kingdom.

[ I am told this is all nonsense and I suppose this may even be nonsense, but since I am not bright enough to recognize such as being nonsense I find this terrifying and politically disqualifying for the Tory government. ]

[ltr]

August 1, 2020

Coronavirus (Deaths per million)

UK ( 680)
US ( 477)
France ( 464)
Mexico ( 368)

Canada ( 237)
Germany ( 110)
India ( 27)
China ( 3)

The ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 15.2%, 16.1% and 11.0% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.

[ltr]

August 2, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 304,695)
Deaths   ( 46,201)

Deaths per million ( 680)

[Blissex]

«Actually we do have fuels (uranium and thorium) thousands of times more energy-dense than oil: why haven't they supplanted oil just as oil supplanted coal? One reason is that nuclear fuels emit deadly radiation in their operation, which means that nuclear reactors must be surrounded by many tons of shielding material.»

That would in theory work well not just for "the largest ocean-going ships" but also for land-based electricity generation, and anyhow there have been proposal to use even on land smaller ship-style reactors to reduce financial risk etc. (by Rolls-Royce for example who build the UK ship/submarine power plants). That argument BTW is a bit specious because the type of compact power plant needed for ships or submarines is rather less optimal for land based power generation.

I think that car or at least truck sized nuclear power plants would be feasible, but who wants to put uranium pellets on every road and what happens in case of accidents? Spills of flammable fuels are bad enough. And even for ships, consider how easy has been for somali pirates to grab ships, for example.

That is, the bigger argument is financial: all the infrastructure needed around that energy-dense fuels makes its use not that much cheaper and that ultimately is because while coal and oil and their by-products also somewhat poisonous and dangerous, current nuclear fuels and their by-products, for generator types which are indirectly or directly derived from marine nuclear plants (like most) are extremely poisonous (the dangers of explosion are quite small).

Dealing with that therefore is not just very expensive, but also very risky, and in part this leads to very few places accepting nuclear generators, which leads to them having to be huge, and financially very risky.

[Blissex]

«Well that’s better than encouraging the gang rape of vulnerable under-age girls, which is what the Labour Party is into. After Naz Shah’s revolting suggestion that the victims of grooming should keep quiet for the sake of diversity,»

And my impression is that according to Keir Starmer of New New Labour, the Labour party was also institutionally into racism and antisemitism and inciting racial hatred, which seems a bit incompatible with the claim that Labour loved misogynist diversity so much that that it would throw teenage women under the bus.
Unless the suggestion is that the racist antisemitism claimed by the "Panorama" programme is the result of anti-white racial hatred. :-)

[Blissex]

«The anti-nuclear-power movement really began in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the Rockefeller Foundation suborned geneticist Hermann Muller.»

The nuclear lobby is also very powerful and well funded, and supported well by the military-industrial complex too, and in their rivalry with the fossils fuels industry they pulled few punches. Also the basic claim that (high energy) radiation is "bad" is pretty sound, even just exposure to ultraviolet sun rays does bad things (skins cancers).
Coal and oil and their by-products or additives (e.g. lead) are also quite poisonous, but many nuclear fuels and their by-products are really on a different level, and while that can be handled, it is *very* expensive.

Fortunate are, and increasingly will be, the countries like Norway or Iceland with immense amounts of hydro or thermal electricity.

[Blissex]

«In my view "Leftwing is thinking that someone is a bad person because they are white" is also an hallucination with a tenuous connection to reality, because it is actually right-wing thinking,»

Note that this means that I personally agree that "someone is a bad person because they are white" is close to a widespread opinion on the "whig" right, because the argument is that "male white privilege" is not just bad but supremely bad, every male white person has "male white privilege", thus the small minority of male white person who succeeded is bad because "objectively" they owe part of most of that "male white privilege", and the vast majority of male white person who fails to succeed is "bad" because "objectively" they are losers despite having the huge advantage of "male white privilege".

Things like coming an affluent or struggling family, going to public or private schools, having a "respectable" or "common" accent and manners, having influential family connections or not, living in a difficult or posh neighbourhood, being based in a "pushed behind" area or a "successful" one, are then left in the background.

[Ralph Musgrave]

Paulc156, Contrary to your suggestions, the fact that previous episodes of “fanning the flames of nationalism” led to two world wars does not prove that nationalism is inherently wrong, or that there is anything wrong with a limited amount of “fanning”.

Going to a football match, supporting your national team and waving your national flag is OK by me – not that it’s something I do.

Nor, by the same token, can you argue that explosions are wrong because they can lead to horrific events like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Without explosive materials, it would be near impossible to operated quarries.

[Dipper]

@ Blissex, Paulc156 ' a massive bit of projection' , 'hallucinations with only a tenuous connection'

well ... I think it is reasonable in an argument to probe the extremes to find where the limits of rationality are. And whilst Blissex does a great job of long detailed replies, that's not my style.

Clearly the EU is not the reincarnation of The Warsaw Pact, but the technocratic managerialist approach shows a belief in planing as the route to prosperity that is closer to the former Soviet Union than the USA. And without reference, I would guess the biggest companies in the EU at the turn of the millennium are still the biggest ones now, and hardly any of the biggest companies in the US (or China) a the turn of the century are still the biggest ones now.

Identity Politics is clearly left-wing politics. It plays no p[art in Johnson style Toryism.

[Blissex]

«Identity Politics is clearly left-wing politics. It plays no p[art in Johnson style Toryism.»

Oh please: "english identity" politics is central to that type of toryism, along with "northern english identity" politics as a subtype. It is Johnson style conservatives that are keenest to argue that identity politics related to brexit has replaced class based politics. Is that "left-wing"?

As to non-Johnson style conservativism, identity politics played a central part of D Cameron's "modernized" thatcherism, or was he "left-wing" too?

Looking at an amusing statement at to "identity politics" here from the other "blond menace" :-):

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/20/liberal-tory-member-erg-dare-splitters-call-extremist/
«When I entered the House of Commons, I voted for equality so that men could have sex with men at the same age as men could legally have sex with women: 16. I lost that vote back in the early 90s, but the age was dropped to 18 from 21. Eventually, equality was reached. I have consistently voted liberally on gay issues including gay marriage, on the age of abortion and alongside the Labour MP, Paul Flynn who recently passed away, on drug use. I describe myself on social media as “socially liberal”.»

That is Michael Fabricant of all people, is he "left-wing" too?

[Blissex]

«Identity Politics is clearly left-wing politics. It plays no p[art in Johnson style Toryism.»
«Oh please: "english identity" politics is central to that type of toryism»

And not just “Johnson style Toryism“, as some time ago you wrote, I think approvingly:

«turn to the Tories to prevent a Labour-SNP coalition allowing Scotland to plunder the English tax base.»

That has some appearance of class politics ("socialist scroungers" vs. "right thinking people"), but that to me seems also or mostly very much scottish vs. (southern) english identity politics. so I am starting to think that you are "left-wing" too :-).

[Blissex]

My imagination is that there was a process like "My instinct is that left-wing is bad, I feel that identity politics is left-wing so it must be bad, my instinct is that Brexit is good because of protecting english identity, and I feel that Johnson is good because he supports brexit, so neither Brexit nor nor Johnson can be associated with identity politics, because it is bad". :-)

Regardless of my florid imagination I feel that your opinions are sincere, not knowing propaganda, but sometimes they seem to me a bit like exploring the outer reaches of plausibility.

[Robert Mitchell]

"It corroborates the finding made by Ben Friedman in 2006, that hard economic times breed nationalism and intolerance."

Are you saying Ralph Musgrave would become a softie if the economy were only doing a bit better?

[ltr]

August 3, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 305,623)
Deaths   ( 46,210)

Deaths per million   ( 680)

[ltr]

August 3, 2020

Coronavirus   (Deaths per million)

UK   ( 680)
US   ( 479)
France   ( 464)
Mexico   ( 370)

Canada   ( 237)
Germany   ( 110)
India   ( 28)
China   ( 3)

[Dipper]

'my instinct is that Brexit is good because of protecting english identity'

No. The Brexit Party had candidates of many races, as do the Tories. The SNP has non-Scottish in origin politiicans too. Having a view on the best unit of democratic accountability is not the same as being an ethno-nationalist.