Comment by Jefff8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jefff8 | Hacker News Reader

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There are several prevailing schools of thought:

- True hard-core Brexiteers really do care about sovereignty. They are nationalists.They want nobody but themselves to have any element of control. If that means the destruction of the economy, they are fine with that, like nationalists everywhere.

- The Conservative party has been interested in the idea of the UK as Singapore-upon-Thames. Partly this is about reducing the role of the state (and thus taxes, one might think) and partly about re-introducing a vibrant manufacturing economy. Many of the people who punted this idea are also Brexiteers. Being a member of the EU was a barrier to establishing a low-wage economy that can compete with the East. They view the EU as outdated because it's a rule-based organisation. There are rules on social standards, product safety, animal health and a huge array of other matters. These people will tolerate temporary economic setbacks (ten years?) in the pursuit of jam in the future.

- Opportunists. People who are motivated by power, and will be wherever there's the opportunity to be in control. They will sacrifice anybody else in its pursuit.

I don’t understand how the UK becomes a manufacturing economy without drastically lowering the standard of living.

And the Singapore on Thames from a regulatory perspective is a non starter. If someone is looking to operate out of a Singapore like nation why would they choose the UK? The only reason would be proximity to the EU but the EU will almost certainly erect massive barriers if the UK did anything of the sort. And so would the US. The US would almost certainly not allow the UK to undercut its already low standards.

Any other major country would be better served by simply locating yourself in Singapore or Dubai or the myriad SEZ’s countries the world over are setting up.

I think there's also a mechanism of the extremist positions driving politics. E.g. Brexiteers that e.g. opposed the trend towards further centralization in the EU wanted out of some of the political influence sphere, but were in favor of e.g. strong alignment on industry and goods (I think Grayling at some point said that he "didn't campaign for Brexit for the right to produce motors slightly differently"). But May didn't get that done (and put herself in a bad spot in many ways by putting out statements then having to walk them back), and lost out to more hardliner positions. And the opposition was also quite useless in helping a closely-aligned Brexit along (or even having a clear position at all, since it was also split between positions). Some argue that if the energy that went into trying to re- or undo the referendum had gone into getting a closer-aligned Brexit done during Mays time, that could have happened. But it didn't, and everyone looked bad while Boris promised whatever he wanted.

UK has higher standards for livestock than EU, esp. related to well being and roaming space; which is partly why it is very difficult for UK farmers to compete with almost anywhere else. I think you mischaracterize the disparity of standards in that particular space. I don’t comment on your other points.

If the Conservatives think Singapore's state plays a small role, they must be thinking about some mythical Singapore, because the real one is pretty authoritarian (although it seems to act for the public good) and fairly involved. Also, I think it is easier to have "good" government of a city-state size with a homogeneous population than for something an order of magnitude more people and with a non-homogenous population.

Based on my British Brexit friend, I suggest another school of thought: concern for sovereignty but not nationalist. The EU rules requiring free movement result in people from poorer countries willing to work for lower wages depress wages for British people. Also, the free movement is essentially unlimited immigration and the society can't absorb as many immigrants as have been coming.

> If the Conservatives think Singapore's state plays a small role, they must be thinking about some mythical Singapore

These elites speak in abstract terms, typically of things they never actually experienced or seriously analysed. They largely dabble in ideology, mostly to cover the immediate interests of themselves and their cronies.

Thanks for putting those points in a very coherent framework. Looked at it this way, it's quite an asymmetric gamble.

why do there need to be "schools of thought" about the opposition when people could just ask them? Seems to me to be another instance of the political echo-chambers around contentious issues like Brexit. We'd have much better political perspectives if both sides talked to each other instead of theorising about the other side in their own bubbles.

Ironic given that Corbyn was also Eurosceptic - Brexit was a bipartisan issue with pro/con arguments on both sides of the aisle.

I think it's more "schools of thought" inside the pro-Brexit groups? (although missing any pro-closely-aligned-Brexit groups, since those got pretty pushed out the solution space in the last years)

If that's meant to be the schools of thought for pro-Brexit groups, it's sorely lacking. Though it goes unsurprisingly under-reported, there were many different reasons I heard when talking to people about their support for Brexit, ranging from critiques of EU's fundamentally neoliberal nature, to its bureaucratic inefficiency, to issues of decentralisation of power, issues of tall hierarchies being too one-size-fits-all, the EU's future if the federalist factions take power, and so on. And that's just the handful of people I spoke to at the time, plus some casual listening to campaigners.

Even the idea that Brexit was driven by nationalism, while at least partially true, doesn't really dive into what nationalism means in this context - it's usually just used as a no-no word.

> doesn't really dive into what nationalism means in this context

Because, when you get into the heart of the matter, it boils down to racist anti-immigration sentiment, and nobody really wants to talk about that.

that's the caricature form, yes, in the same way that communism is just gulags and breadlines. But there are nationalist sentiments like "I value my country's unique culture" that have nothing to do with xenophobia. Or "we should control who comes into the country to ensure we get the right kind of labour skills we need".

Funnily enough, if you want to talk racist anti-immigration sentiment - in my parents' lifetime that was the stock-and-trade of the Labour working class, despite being staunchly socialist (which as an ideology is inherently international). Ideology often doesn't make much sense.

> Singapore-upon-Thames

what does this mean?

There is the idea of Singapore as a small plucky low-tax, small-government country that's extremely high growth and well-off by being at "the gates to Asia" as a trade and manufacturing hub.

And the idea is that an independent UK could be the same for the (slow, inflexible) EU. Which ignores that Singapore actually has high government investments in industries and does the hub role so well because it has good trade integration with its neighbors. Which the UK had in the EU, but could only expect to keep in a Brexit that strongly aligns it with EU policy (which would stop it from giving too much preferential treatment to its own industries etc)

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