[Jake-UK]

The referendum has exposed divisions in UK society. The young and old are divided, the rich and poor are divided, England and Scotland are divided. Will these divisions lead to hatred? Will it lead to a situation similar to America where they have what are, in my opinion, two dangerous candidates for President - Trump and Clinton. Now, I'm no expert on American politics, but from what I can tell from this side of the Atlantic, this has happened due to a disconnect with the current government. In the UK, there is a real sense that the establishment is out of touch with working-class people.

Do you think it will lead to the rise of extremist politics in the UK?

[Dave]

Mass non-white immigration combined with a "progressive" monopoly on education and media is racializing politics in Western Europe in the same way they always have been in the United States.

Globalization and Thatcherism have destroyed the postwar consensus and restored the economic divide between haves and have-nots which prevailed before WW2.

This isn't just a phenomenon in America and the UK. It's common throughout the Western world. Politics everywhere are growing more poisonous and bitter.

I'm lucky to be one of the haves, but I am both a paternalist and take the long view. Thus I was delighted with Brexit, support Trump, and in fact support more or less all nationalist parties in Europe.

[yiostheoy]

The referendum has exposed divisions in UK society. The young and old are divided, the rich and poor are divided, England and Scotland are divided. Will these divisions lead to hatred? Will it lead to a situation similar to America where they have what are, in my opinion, two dangerous candidates for President - Trump and Clinton. Now, I'm no expert on American politics, but from what I can tell from this side of the Atlantic, this has happened due to a disconnect with the current government. In the UK, there is a real sense that the establishment is out of touch with working-class people.

Do you think it will lead to the rise of extremist politics in the UK?

You're obviously no expert on politics indeed, if you think Hillary is dangerous.

Hillary will more likely be just more pacifism like BHO was for the last 7 1/2 years.

Neither one of them could fight a war if their own life depended on it.

Trump however cannot wait to bomb the sh!t out of somebody.

Trump is completely inexperienced in government.

Trump is inept in personal judgment.

Trump is nothing more than a rich college frat boy playing frat boy stunts and talking like a frat boy at a drunken frat boyz party.

Pray that enough Americans turn out in support of Hillary that Trump The Chump does not get elected.

Because Trump is indeed dangerous to himself and to the rest of the world.

[Jake-UK]

I still stand by the comment I made about Hillary being dangerous. I never said she was more dangerous than Trump, but she is still dangerous nonetheless.

What I was actually asking is do you think the UK is heading for a similar scenario, not what you think of Trump or Clinton.

[Dave]

Isn't it already happening in the UK?

Tony Blair was the English equivalent of the Clintons in very main ways, although our Democratic Party never did embrace socialism. Corbyn is an analogue of Bernie Sanders.

As far as the Tories go their recent leaders are textbook "cuckservatives" and quite similar to American figures like Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. A major difference is that there is no religious opinion to cater to in the UK thus you lack figures like Ted Cruz.

The BNP and now UKIP are analogues of Trumpism (or further back, the National Front or even Enoch Powell) which in fact predate Trump. What's unique here is that other than some voices in the wilderness (Powell in the UK, Patrick Buchanan in America) this was rare in politics in both the UK and the USA unlike on the Continent.

And I've even seen some UKIP MEPs on Youtube engaging in lunatic monetary crankery (abolish central banks, get rid of fractional reserve banking, embrace the gold standard, etc.) of the sort that has been popular in America since our founding.

[yiostheoy]

I still stand by the comment I made about Hillary being dangerous. I never said she was more dangerous than Trump, but she is still dangerous nonetheless.

What I was actually asking is do you think the UK is heading for a similar scenario, not what you think of Trump or Clinton.

Slowly but surely the political philosopher Karl Marx is being proved right about class warfare.

Too bad his solution about workers uniting is a fallacy though.

The poor and middle classes in England have been afflicted by the EU for too long.

With the premature entry of Poland into the EU the breaking point has been finally reached.

This does not suggest that the mud slinging and class warfare of American politics (which has been the same for the past 240 years) will afflict the English anytime soon however. It actually has nothing to do with it.

I never dreamed that the next nation to break up after the USSR did in 1991 would be the UK.

But now it is clear that Scotland, N.Ireland, and England have nothing in common politically and will most certainly break up soon.

I am happy for Sinn Fein. Happy for the Scottish too. Funny thought how the Scottish will have needed TWO chance to break away instead of just one. They already blew their first chance.

[Dave]

Class war against the working class began in the UK with Margaret Thatcher.

Poland entered the EU twelve year ago.

Both Yugoslavia (with further divisions of Serbia) and Syria broke up after the USSR did. The Ukraine has now broken up as well.

[Jake-UK]

Slowly but surely the political philosopher Karl Marx is being proved right about class warfare.

Too bad his solution about workers uniting is a fallacy though.

The poor and middle classes in England have been afflicted by the EU for too long.

With the premature entry of Poland into the EU the breaking point has been finally reached.

This does not suggest that the mud slinging and class warfare of American politics (which has been the same for the past 240 years) will afflict the English anytime soon however. It actually has nothing to do with it.

I never dreamed that the next nation to break up after the USSR did in 1991 would be the UK.

But now it is clear that Scotland, N.Ireland, and England have nothing in common politically and will most certainly break up soon.

I am happy for Sinn Fein. Happy for the Scottish too. Funny thought how the Scottish will have needed TWO chance to break away instead of just one. They already blew their first chance.

I now think the Scottish will have another independence referendum and they will probably vote for independence. However, I'm not too sure on the Northern Irish because 56% of the vote to remain is hardly overwhelming.

The BNP and now UKIP are analogues of Trumpism (or further back, the National Front or even Enoch Powell) which in fact predate Trump. What's unique here is that other than some voices in the wilderness (Powell in the UK, Patrick Buchanan in America) this was rare in politics in both the UK and the USA unlike on the Continent.

I must say that the BNP did badly at the 2015 general election. UKIP did well though, as they were the third largest party on vote share. I think that Trump is a bit more extreme than UKIP, but there are similarites that is for sure.

[Dave]

@Jake-UK,
The BNP is done with in my opinion. The moment the party ended was when Nick Griffin appeared on the BBC's Question Time, where he proved himself to be a weak man with his ridiculous attempts to ingratiate himself with people who clearly hated him. Supposedly he has done a very poor job as a party leader and promoted toadies.

UKIP and Farage are certainly more moderate than Trump, but none the less it is a nationalist movement. Trump for his part is more moderate than his predecessor Pat Buchanan (or in the UK, Enoch Powell) and many of the nationalists on the Continent.

The UK and the USA are of course different countries but we face a similar set of problems. Combined with our similar institutions, shared history, and shared language it's quite likely that we'd evolve similar political movements today. The world today is also Americanized in a way that it was not in the past, even if this process began as early as the 1920s. Even just a generation ago the major white countries, even if we exclude the Russian sphere, were far more different in culture and attitude than they are today.

[Thompson_NCL]

People are talking up the divisions, but isn't that what we have every time we vote? There is nothing exceptional in terms of Brexit. The old have always been slightly more conservative, the working class slightly more leftist etc. I don't really say any parallels between Britain and the US politically, beyond both having large groups of disaffected voters. But that is true of the continent also.

[Heisenberg]

The division in British society will only lead to "hatred" if people continue to ignore each other. The "remain" campaign was a classic example of how ignoring your opponents entirely will eventually backfire on you. Even now, after losing the vote, remainers are utterly perplexed and baffled by the result. They have made no attempt to understand why it went against them, or to engage rationally with "leave" voters. Instead, they resort to predictable personal insults and trying to find ways of annulling the vote.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

Indeed. I'm seeing a lot of chatter about possible attempts for a "second referendum" to nullify the first. To be honest, I'm probably as surprised as anyone else that the exit vote even happened: you would have thought an attempt to rig the vote would be made. I find it difficult to accept the notion that the elites in London will allow the people's vote to steer the country away from the EU (why wouldn't they hold a second vote like Ireland did with the Lisbon treaty?); a lot of the news stories about "Regrexit" have the tone of trying to sway public opinion in the event of a second vote.

[Heisenberg]

Well, a second vote has always been a possibility. Contrary to their behaviour in the "leave" campaign, neither Boris Johnson nor Michael Gove has any sort of history of calling for Britain to withdraw from the European Union, or even as "Eurosceptics". Johnson's announcement of support for "leave" in the Telegraph made it clear that he wanted a "better deal" with the EU. I wouldn't be at all surprised with a second round of negotiations followed by another referendum - this time with a huge "remain" majority. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I may have even predicted this a few months ago on this forum.

The stuff about people regretting their votes has been massively overplayed by the media, who for the most part are very strongly pro-EU. I simply refuse to believe that people didn't expect short-term trouble in the financial markets after a "leave" vote, or that the (temporary) fall in the GBP/USD exchange rate is enough for people to wish they'd voted differently on an issue of such fundamental importance.

[Donna]

I'm curious how serious this second referendum business is or if it's just noise created by activists.

[Potemkin]

I'm curious how serious this second referendum business is or if it's just noise created by activists.

So far it's just noise, but if the British Parliament (most of whose MPs are solidly pro-Remain) refuses to ratify the results of the first referendum, as it has the legal and constitutional right to do, then a second referendum would become almost inevitable.

[yiostheoy]

So far it's just noise, but if the British Parliament (most of whose MPs are solidly pro-Remain) refuses to ratify the results of the first referendum, as it has the legal and constitutional right to do, then a second referendum would become almost inevitable.

So is there really a provision in the UK Constitution that says the Parliament must ratify the people's referendums? That sounds like pure nonsense to me even if true.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

The American political system is a two party system and while there are similarities in the UK political system in that it favours two parties, it is not to the same extent. Therefore, since many people, Labour and Tory voters alike, have an alternative in UKIP, it makes it less likely that someone like Trump would be able to become the leader of the Tories. Voting behaviour in the UK is already more like in Continental Europe, it's just not as apparent as in some other European countries because of FPTP.

[Decky]

You're obviously no expert on politics indeed, if you think Hillary is dangerous.

Hillary will more likely be just more pacifism like BHO was for the last 7 1/2 years.

Obama a pacifist? That is a good one. Mr Bush 3.0 himself the king of drone strikes a pacifist.

[Potemkin]

So is there really a provision in the UK Constitution that says the Parliament must ratify the people's referendums? That sounds like pure nonsense to me even if true.

The British people are not sovereign, Y. It doesn't matter a damn what the British people think about something, what matters is what Parliament thinks about it. Only Parliament has the power to pass new laws or to change treaties. The Brexit referendum, in and of itself, has no legal force and no legal effect. Only when Parliament ratifies it will it become law and become irreversible. Having said that, there are political consequences - if Parliament refuses to ratify the results of the Brexit referendum, there would be irresistible political pressure on them to hold a second referendum on the topic. If the result of the referendum favoured Remain, then Britain would stay in the EU, and the result of first referendum would be null and void. But if the result of the second referendum also favoured Brexit, then even Parliament would be powerless to stop Britain leaving the EU.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

I hope Britain won't go down the route of voting until you get the "correct result".