Here’s a story that I’ve taken from the interviewing work that I’m doing at the moment:
Last Thursday evening, I attended a meeting held by the Leeds Hands Off Our Homes housing campaign group in a small church hall in Middleton Park in Leeds. Issues discussed included the housing bill, the ongoing problems that local people had with the bedroom tax, the likely effects of a lowered the benefit cap, social housing selloffs, the shared accommodation housing benefit rate for younger people – a real range of topics. Housing problems, as we all know, affect a great many people in one way or another. The turnout wasn’t bad. Local troubles were discussed with concern.
So.
Representation.
Present and correct down the back for this event were two local councillors – Kim Groves and Judith Blake who is also leader. I’ll be the first to admit that I know little about these councillors and their work on the ground. They may be good on some level, so I suppose we should allow for that. What I can tell you for a fact is that the two of them did my head in at the church hall last Thursday night. I’m sure that I don’t exaggerate when I say that they were utterly useless, at least as far as offering hope and leadership on the housing topic went. It seemed that their chief concern was to convince meeting attendees not to blame Labour or the council for the housing crisis. It was Don’t Blame The Council this and Focus Your Anger On The Government that and (my personal favourite) Please Don’t Ask Us To Do Anything Illegal As Part Of Your Housing Campaign (someone gently suggested that the council might like to try a bit of non-compliance to fight government housing policy. This person spoke well and put his points politely, but neither of those things helped much. I find that they rarely do. Anyone who suggests a bit of genial civil disobedience to nervous councillors these days is quickly sidelined as the evening’s wacky radical. *Sighs*).
You see where I am heading with this. No leadership was offered by councillors. No inspiring speeches about seizing the day, or descending on parliament to give the government a knuckle sandwich on housing or cuts came down. Maybe they do that on other days. They didn’t on Thursday. Meeting attendees were actually told to be realistic about the council’s limits. Which was a buzzkill, to say the very least. Talking about limits is not a great way to lead or inspire. You could practically see people’s passions and hope congealing in their veins as this came out. I briefly entertained the idea of standing up and shouting You Labour Persons Have Got A Socialist Leader For Christ’s Sake – Isn’t Now Meant To Be The Hour!?, etc, but I didn’t do it. I felt a bit secondhand by this point. It all seemed a bit hard.
Anyway. After the meeting finished, I went to have a cup of tea at the nearby home of two local people who had attended the meeting – Irene (77) and her daughter Michelle (38). Dad Desmond was home as well. The family has lived in the same council home for over 40 years. We talked about a whole bunch of things – the problems that young local people have finding housing, trying to get work (Michelle signed on for some time, had some admin work, and is now a carer for her mother, who had a stroke a couple of years ago), irrational behaviour from the local jobcentre, government, the work the older couple had done as younger people (Desmond in the building trade, Irene in clothesmaking), of work not being constant, being laid off, the difficulties of finding decent, reasonably-paid, secure employment, the endless CVs that people send out and the failure of employers to respond to those CVs – all the things that are screwing up people’s lives today.
Partway through the evening, I asked people how they planned to vote in the upcoming EU referendum. All three faces lit up at this. Out!! everybody said. Everyone talked at once. People felt that an Out vote would give locals in the area a chance to redirect EU money into more housing. They felt it would see the re-emergence of real industry, like manufacturing. They said an Out vote would mean companies would come back under local control. It may also have been that people saw their Out vote as a chance to rough the status quo up – to hand out punishment to people who usually inflicted it on them, etc. This family certainly seemed to view an Out vote as a chance to have some influence in a world where nobody generally has any. They most certainly had a vision of the way things could be and they clearly felt that an Out vote would take them to it.
Whether it does or not hardly matters at the moment. The point is that people think it might and that they find that thought exciting. I could certainly see why people would think it was exciting in comparison with local council leaders say that there was five-eighths of stuff-all that anybody could do about anything at all. It is less a question of topic than hope. For what it’s worth, I am keen for a Remain vote myself. I’m an EU migrant (Irish) and would prefer things to stay as they are for obvious reasons. I also know, as everyone knows, that the chances of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove et al doing anything positive for anyone except themselves after a Leave vote are zero. Less than zero, even. Still. An instructive evening. There are times when it all seems very obvious.
Posting here will less frequent for the next few months while I work on a case studies project. There will be more from this article in that project. You can still get in touch here.
It’s interesting how Brexit is now being sold as a protest vote by right-wing Tories. As if they had nothing to do with the policies of their own government. It taps into the anger and resentment that so many people feel about the austerity agenda, the welfare policies, the attack on disabled people, the endless cutbacks and reductions. And the sense that we are moving to a changed, less compassionate society.
You could have been writing about my Council and elected mayor (Leicester City) in the first few paragraphs Kate. These are exactly the same arguments we hear from Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby, his Deputy Mayor responsible for Housing Andy Connelly and, or, any officers. It is as if a script for all Progress Cllrs has been written and memorised?
Leadership at a local level has almost disappeared, it is a case of pass the buck to the Government, we can do nothing; in which case I ask why are they there? The money spent on these puppets would go some way to address the ongoing Cuts they’re putting on the shoulders of the most vulnerable – stopping the top-slicing of personal budgets would be a place to start!
Maybe some dithering councillors are waiting for knighthoods, and others are protecting theirs?
I am reminded of a debate in LB Camden over a school’s imposition of ‘the university walk’, requiring pupils to walk with both hands behind their backs. Parent backlash as pupils must spend day walking with their hands behind their backs.
You are all correct.
These people are leaving action awful bloody late if you ask me
I’m an EU migrant (Irish) and would prefer things to stay as they are for obvious reasons.
why? As an Irish citizen you have all the rights of a UK citizen. Nothing to do with the EU.
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Open Britain Head Mark Kieran on the Malign and Disastrous Effects of Brexit
By beastrabban on June 23, 2024
https://beastrabban.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/open-britain-head-mark-kieran-on-the-malign-and-disastrous-effects-of-brexit/
“Today marks eight years since Britain’s fateful vote to leave the EU. So, what has Brexit brought us?
Well, we can easily see what it DIDN’T bring us. It didn’t bring a boost to our economy (quite the opposite). It didn’t bring a reduction in migration (again, quite the opposite). It didn’t deliver a rich revenue stream for our NHS. And it didn’t make life better for those in our poorest communities.
What it DID bring was political polarisation, social media manipulation, unscrupulous campaign finance and more dishonest politicians. All these forces, that continue to undermine our political system, were thrown into sharp relief on the 23 June 2016.
Perhaps the most significant thing the Brexit referendum revealed was the irreconcilable divisions within the Conservative Party, divisions which have persisted and which are at the root of the total implosion we’re witnessing now. The lines crossed by radicalised Brexiteers during and after the referendum destroyed the trust and integrity on which our political system has traditionally relied and made reconciliation with the moderate One Nation wing impossible.
Cambridge Analytica showed us the raw power of amoral, data-driven ad campaigns. The marriage of big tech and psychoanalytics, wheeled out for an early test run in 2016, would fundamentally change the nature of political campaigns around the world. It’s a simple model: use social media platforms to find out what messaging motivates people to act, and then serve it up to them regularly and in huge quantity…even if it’s untrue.
Dirty cash became a significant player in our political system. It filled the coffers of the various Leave campaigns, much of it from billionaires of the American right and Russian oligarchs. Political donations – and the electoral victories they purchased – were wielded as a geopolitical weapon, as well as a means to further enrich an international elite.
Brexit also introduced a blatant dishonesty that was to remain a fixture of British politics for years to come. (There has always been an element of dishonesty in politics but Brexit turbocharged it.) £350 million for the NHS on the side of a bus. Different Leave campaigns all promising different things (despite the vote being a simple yes or a no). Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson claiming we needed to leave the EU because Turkey was joining. (Eight years later, Turkey STILL isn’t a member of the EU.)
Brexit was not a fluke or an aberration. It was the canary in the coal-mine, an early warning of the political chaos awaiting us in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It was a clear sign that our politics was malfunctioning badly…that we had a broken system delivering broken results.
Now, it’s almost routine for politicians to tell blatant lies in order to secure our votes. It’s seen as normal that the wealthiest in our society (and abroad) get direct access to government ministers while ordinary people are left without a voice at the table. Most people barely bat an eyelid at the utter bilge that oozes from our disreputable media or the dirty tricks of big tech. Brexit marked the beginning of this post-truth, post-fairness democracy.
Most worryingly of all is that, eight years on, we haven’t addressed any of those underlying problems. Westminster continues to fester. The populists and the charlatans are more emboldened now than ever.
We need to use this anniversary of Brexit as a reminder that system change is needed, desperately and urgently. None of this is to say that we should seek to relitigate the Brexit referendum or waste valuable time and energy seeking to turn back the clock. Simply, this is about addressing the failures that brought us here so that disasters of the magnitude of Brexit – or even worse – cannot happen in the future.”
Mark Kieran
CEO, Open Britain