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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32640 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.

It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.

It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.

The people have voted for lower migration at every election for as long as I've been alive. It has never once been delivered.

Sure, I'm not saying the elected representatives necessarily correctly deliver on the will of the people. Lord knows they rarely do in the US. I just think it's inaccurate to claim that the people living in the UK don't have the right to decide to let in a flood of migrants.

Have they? At the last election 14.3% of voters put their support behind the party who most credibly promised to stop immigration. Many more voted for the Tory and Labour parties, who have demonstrated no interest in doing so.

Every Conservative prime minister since Cameron said immigration is too high and promised to reduce it. Tony Blair said immigration was too high and promised to reduce it (in 2005!). Kier Starmer said the same. I think we agree that these parties lack credibility on the issue, but you can hardly argue that voting for politicians who promise to reduce immigration doesn't count as voting for lower immigration. Especially since UK Prime Ministers usually resign after they lose an election, which means that in each election, the voters are voting for a different potential government.

Plus, a general election is not a single issue referendum on immigration. It's voting for MPs under a massively undemocratic electoral system which essentially forces voters to choose between the two main parties. The fact that Reform didn't win a majority is in no way evidence that people support higher immigration.

I don't dispute that people in the UK want lower migration. But as you say, elections are not single issue referendums and tradeoffs need to be made. People also want lower taxes, more services, less debt, and free ponies. You can't get everything you want, and you have to discern who is going to make the tradeoffs you want.

A growing number of people are deciding "no, actually, I really do want lower migration at the expense of other priorities" and voting accordingly. But clearly it's not yet enough to force the UK parliament to give it to them.

That is because the people living there are the current stewards of the country. That doesn't mean self interest. Just like parents make the choices for a family doesn't mean that the choices purely reflect their needs.

In any society, democratic or not, it is only the current people, by definition, who get to make such decisions. Not the dead or the unborn (whether the right sort of unborn or not).

I don't understand how that disagrees with what I said?

It doesn't, it's an addition.

The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.

If the English lower classes don't want mass immigration, they have to find a way to stop it. Voting for people who pretend to care about it clearly doesn't work. Protesting in the streets about it or on twitter clearly doesn't work. The judiciary is firmly against them so that won't work either. And they are all disarmed so terrorism is not a realistic proposition.

I don't really see any recourse there. Looks to me like these people are fucked.

And they are all disarmed so terrorism is not a realistic proposition.

The UK has readily available petrochemicals.

Because they also want and vote for economic growth. And both parties internal projections show limiting immigration prevents economic growth and also that the economy is most people's driving issue.

It's a simple straight forward calculus. When we did (when I worked for the Tories) internal polls and asked people would they accept an overall lower standard of living in exchange for reduced immigration they said no. Overwhelmingly. Over and over and over again. Everywhere.

So the recourse is to start actually valuing lowering immigration over other factors. Just like the Tories flipped on lockdowns in record time they will do the same on immigration. They aren't attached to it for principled reasons. Simply practical.

Wouldn't this same logic hold for all sorts of other policies that did and continue to get enacted? I'm thinking of stuff like carbon taxes, tariffs, tax raises etc. It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.

It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.

Well it depends on what the voters think the trade off is. If the voters buy that carbon taxes will get them less pollution, then that may be a trade off they are willing to accept, to an extent. Especially if they believe the bulk of it will fall on say corporations rather than themselves. Likewise if you say to voters we will tax you more in exchange for better services or more NHS hospitals then that may be a trade off they will accept. Or not (see below).

And I am not saying that there is no ideological commitments that override what voters might think, but that even these are often subject to practical considerations. In general Labour prefer higher taxes to pay for more or better services. That is one of their ideological cores. But Blairite style neo-liberalism still won out because voters were simply fed up of the more blatant tax and spend policies combined with union problems through the 60's and 70s. Whereas even though the Tories generally ideologically prefer to cut taxes, Liz Trusses budget tax cuts were very unpopular to the extent that it ended her leadership.

If the Tories as a whole were anti-immigration at their core, then they may have been willing to risk economic issues and loss of voters in return (though big business is a significant bloc for them), but they aren't really. They just aren't really pro-immigration either ideologically, except in the neo-liberal sense that free trade and cheap workers are positive economically.

There are some things the parties care a lot about they are willing to risk losing votes over to an extent (though the shift to the economic right under Blair and back again under Corbyn, and then back again again under Starmer) shows that even some of the pretty fundamental beliefs are up for grabs if they are unpopular enough. But they definitely are not going to risk votes/the economy for things they don't really care about.

I don't buy it.

Immigration is something the blue tribe just wants.

The blue tribe didn't start from the position of, how do we improve the economy, and then searched around and found immigration as a good policy for promoting economic growth. The blue wanted immigration and looked around for ways to justify it. Sure, they also believe the justification(trust the science), but the justifications are not to convince themselves, they are to convince those damn red-tribers.

They really want to live in a 'diverse' world, with ethnic restaurants, and friends who speak English with an accent, who have weird fun customs, different clothing, and different skin tones.

They are absolutely attached to it.

We are talking about the UK here, while there is an urban/rural divide it isn't as significant politically. London/Home Counties vs North/Midlands is probably more salient, although that is also complicated by coastal malaise as well. Alongside Upper/middle/working class divisions of course.

I can assure you the English Tories I worked with 10-25 years ago did not fit the blue tribe stereotypes you are mentioning here.

I can assure you the English Tories I worked with 10-25 years ago did not fit the blue tribe stereotypes you are mentioning here.

This should not be surprising, since the Blue/Red tribe paradigm is attempting to explain subcultural divisions amongst White Americans. Applying it to the British seems wrong-headed.

I can admit that I might be stretching the meaning of Blue and Red too far, but I like to think that I am actually getting to the heart of the division. I think it is mostly a college/political elite vs prole/working class divide, and that this divide is very similar across all countries under US cultural hegemony and has become increasingly similar over the last fifty years or so, such that it is coherent to talk about the working class proles of the UK as being 'red tribe', and the political elite as being 'blue tribe'.

In this particular instance my position is that the blue tribe or college/political elite are generally multicultural. My read is that globalism was in full swing across basically all of the west by the 90s, such that the political elite across the west were broadly in favor of increased immigration and multiculturalism. I think if you went to the best universities in Germany, France, the UK the US in 1995 and grabbed a hundred random students from each graduating class, and asked them how they felt about multiculturalism, you would get back 80%+ favorability with little between country variation. Maybe I am wildly off base, I do not actually have a survey to back this up, it is just how I feel, having spent time in all these counties during this time period. As well as my general read on the cultural output of these counties during this time period.

Yeah that is my point. There is certainly some overlap, in some places, but it is going to confuse you more than it is going to explain if you try and translate it across one to one.

I can buy that blue tribe is driven by an ideologically motivated positive outgroup bias.

But it isn't just blue tribe or it would have ended when they lost elections. What about the Tories? What about the business owners?

Blue tribe does not cleave easily along political parties. It is the culture of the college educated elite, and generally holds across western nations. The soccer hooligan and the NASCAR redneck have more in common with each other than either does with the Yale Conservative or the Oxford Liberal, and vice versa. The college educated elite like diversity and want to live in a multicultural world, they want to go to the sushi restaurant with their black friend and watch the India vs Pakistan cricket match while drinking a microbrew. It's their culture.

Which is exactly why it does not change much with lost elections.

Uh, I thought there wasn’t really an English red tribe, although some of the upper crust was assimilated into the blues?

Why are we importing American cultural divisions that don’t exist over there to impose on a straightforwardsly age-and-class based set of objections?

I think these “tribes” will turn out to be even stronger categories than politics. Harvard might skew 80-20 in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, 90-10 in terms of liberals vs. conservatives, but maybe 99-1 in terms of Blues vs. Reds.

I have quoted the deep lore.

I think Harvard culture is basically interchangeable with Oxford culture, such that the college elite of both countries are culturally very similar. Which is why I called the political elite of the UK, blue-tribe. I see globalists multiculturalism as a pretty ubiquitous cultural affectation of western college elites.

Sure, I think it's at least reasonable(if possibly debatable) to call the British elite blue-tribe. My argument was that most of the British isles don't have a red tribe.

We can abandon the category. I'm just skeptical that one particular cultural preference -"liking diversity" - can explain everyone moving in one direction on this.

Even if we say there is no real "red tribe" surely some elites just don't give a fuck? If it was just ideological you'd also expect people like Johnson to exploit the anti-immigration sentiments of the populace to great acclaim and glory. Yet they start that way and either don't do anything or make it worse.

Especially since they can get more than enough people for their class while cutting down on the huge numbers.

both parties internal projections show limiting immigration prevents economic growth

Those projections showing that immigration would benefit economic growth have played out so well, haven't they? I guess economists can still appeal to "but imagine how much worse it would be," but I can't imagine that's a winner either.

I guess economists can still appeal to "but imagine how much worse it would be," but I can't imagine that's a winner either.

Well there is a reason that those supporting Brexit had to make sure to blast how it wouldn't impact the economy. Even though it probably has. Which just made politicians even more scared of cutting off immigration ironically.

When we did (when I worked for the Tories) internal polls and asked people would they accept an overall lower standard of living in exchange for reduced immigration they said no.

That's a bit of a rigged poll, though. You let people project their worst fears into "lower standard of living", and the only thing economists can actually back is "GDP line not go uppy anymoar".

Well I am paraphrasing form a whole bunch of polls and focus groups and the like over near 20 years. It is true you could reduce how much people valued the economy over immigration by rewording the questions and because the Tory part has internal splits on immigration, we often had different polls with different skewed wordings. But on all of them even worded to try and side with immigration as much as possible, people always valued essentially "line go up" over reducing immigration.

Even in focus groups where you might run through various scenarios in detail, and in some cases where we trying to see under what circumstances people might give different answers, it was pretty much always "It's the economy, stupid".

Now part of that might be because the Conservatives are seen as the party of being good with the economy. Or were at least, so Labour might get a little more leeway with their supporters. But they also have a much smaller (though still existent!) anti-immigration faction, so they aren't even looking at the question as hard in the first place. And of course some of their supporters are very pro-immigration. So it will have to be the Conservative party if anyone I would suggest. Though some of their anti-immigration faction has boiled off into UKIP and then Reform nowadays, so the internal faction balances has likely shifted.

But essentially if Tory modelling indicated they would win more votes than they would lose from cracking down on immigration, then they are likely to flip. There are few pro-immigration idealogues within the party. Though the farming lobby comes close I suppose, for many of the same reasons as in the US. Low-paid Eastern European labor helps British farms be competitive.

Even in focus groups where you might run through various scenarios in detail, and in some cases where we trying to see under what circumstances people might give different answers, it was pretty much always "It's the economy, stupid".

Well, since you don't remember the exact wording, the whole conversation is kind of moot, but coming back to a generic "it's the economy stupid" is an unconvincing argument. Sure, if you tell people they can either choose high unemployment or high immigration, they might go with high immigration, but that's not a particularly supportable claim. If you talk about "the economy" in generic terms, they might fill-in the blanks with things that matter to them the most.

I'm just telling you the internal situation. And they were getting the same results before me and after me, and even when we were reporting anti-immigration ministers, over literal decades with different questions polls and groups.

Whether they are right or wrong, that is what they believe, so that is the attack vector that has most chance of success in my view.

I think the thing anti-immigration hardliners don't realize is most people don't care about the issue as deeply as they do. Looking at the most recent UK elections, there's about 15% of the voting population that's truly and deeply anti-immigration.

There may be majorities super majorities for various anti-migration actions, but people's actual feelings on them are actually, 'sure, why not' to 'not really caring one way or the other, but it seems better' then not thinking about it again, and other issues may easily shift their view on said issue.

So, the fact polling shows a majority of people may say they want draconian immigration measures is sort of like the polling my left-wing friends sometimes point too as proof people want a wide raft of progressive economic stuff, but then don't vote for the candidate supporting said things, either in the primary or the general.

That's because they may agree, but they care less about those issues than issue y or z.

Like, I'm a left-wing social democrat who cares deeply about a lot of things, but I also realize I'm a weirdo who cares more than 95% of the US does about any specific issue, so I understand issue polling is at best, hazy.

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