Arts in the UK post-Brexit

[DracoM]

What totally defeats me is that in UK, many of the areas that MOST benefitted from regular and substantial EU subsidies, and as a result of which major industries established in those areas - industries unsurprisingly now thinking of moving - voted leave.

Erm..........?

[Bryn]

What totally defeats me is that in UK, many of the areas that MOST benefitted from regular and substantial EU subsidies, and as a result of which major industries established in those areas - industries unsurprisingly now thinking of moving - voted leave.

Erm..........?

attrib. Albert Einstein: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

[teamsaint]

What totally defeats me is that in UK, many of the areas that MOST benefitted from regular and substantial EU subsidies, and as a result of which major industries established in those areas - industries unsurprisingly now thinking of moving - voted leave.

Erm..........?

Perhaps they just did’t think that the benefits of the subsidies outweighed what they perceive as the negative effects on their lives of membership.

There is a lot more going on in lives and economic situations than EU subsidies.

And EU subsidies dont necessarily fix things the way one might want. The transport infrastructure to Cornwall from the major economic hubs is still pretty woeful, just as an example.

[french frank]

This implies several things: that controlling immigration will not necessarily lead to an improvement in the lives of those suffering economic hardship, since their problems are not primarily related to immigration;

Agreed.

and that unless the EU, and the governments of its member states plus the UK post-Brexit, make correcting regional and class inequalities a top priority rather than the damned Project which they are always going on about, then the political volatility will eventually be so great as to threaten the integrity of Europe and the stability of nation states within it.

Have I missed something? I can't spot anything relating to the EU's free movement of people. Rather it reflects the view of the Leave voter who said he wanted us to leave the EU 'to keep the Muslims out of the country … the movement of people in Europe, fair enough'.

"Another key finding of the 60-page report, which links Hope Not Hate’s years of polling 43,000 people with data from other organisations, is that while overall attitudes to multiculturalism are softening, the opposite is happening with Islam.

It found that between 2011 and 2018, the proportion of people who believed immigration as a whole had been good for Britain rose from 40% to 60%.

On attitudes specifically to Islam, however, the report found that while these softened between 2011 and 2016, this process then reversed, something it put down the series of terror attacks in the UK in 2017 and media coverage of sexual grooming gangs in places such as Rotherham."

On inequality and poverty, I completely agree with you.

[Demetrius]

I suggest that, as the authors of the "Hope not Hate" report seem to conclude, the attitudes towards immigration are those which people "present" (in GP's parlance) when in reality the underlying issues are those of economic hardship and deprivation. The authors comment that "people in deprived communities often saw immigration as part of 'a broader story about dissatisfaction with their own lives'....Immigration has become a totemic emblem for the many grievances people feel in modern Britain". And I don't think this applies merely in Britain, but in many parts of Europe (perhaps also the USA). One can clearly see, again and again, that the areas where hostility to immigration is most pervasive, and hostility to the EU and pro-EU parties is also higher than average (and where the Leave vote was highest), are those where there is significant economic deprivation: here in the North and East of England, in declining coastal towns, in the Welsh valleys; and across Europe in southern Italy, Eastern Germany, North-eastern France, poorer parts of Sweden.

It is definitely a major factor. Another is unfamiliarity. It's much easier to see the 'bad' immigrant as the villain who is out to ruin your country if you don't know any, and much harder if it is the nice family next door with the children who like to call you Grandpa and come over for cookies. Which is why it is so dangerous to create separate neighborhoods. This part is more important than my flippant example suggests There are places in Western Germany that are not really much better off then Saxony in the east (the states NRW in particular), and yet the anti immigration party AfD is polling at 24 % in Saxony and at about 10-12 % in NRW. There has been little to no migration to Saxony apart from eastern
Europeans/Russians. This is the first time that people in my state are confronted with a significant number of people who do not look exactly like they look themselves. It is also about countryside and city populations.

This implies several things: that controlling immigration will not necessarily lead to an improvement in the lives of those suffering economic hardship, since their problems are not primarily related to immigration; and that unless the EU, and the governments of its member states plus the UK post-Brexit, make correcting regional and class inequalities a top priority rather than the damned Project which they are always going on about, then the political volatility will eventually be so great as to threaten the integrity of Europe and the stability of nation states within it. The recent trends are already serious: one of the largest member states of the EU has voted to leave, one of its original founder members, Italy, is now governed by a coalition essentially hostile to the EU, populist opposition parties are growing in strength as traditional centrist parties are becoming more enfeebled or in some cases endure electoral wipe-out. The status quo, economically and politically, is unsustainable and it seems idle to me to pretend that merely by trying to oppose the trends without offering significant remedial measures to correct the economic failings the rise of populism can be stopped and reversed.

Since immigrants are seldom the reason for the problems they are blamed for, will indeed not resolve much. I would be wary of thinking of the current situation as an Europa/world-wide wave of populism based on the same problems. The specific reasons for the rise of populist parties in certain countries vary widely. Example: the populist Movement behind Trump is deeply connected to radical evangelicalism and thus to anti-gay and anti-atheist sentiments. The AfD in Germany is strongest in the areas with the highest concentration of atheists, and their two person leadership includes a lesbian.

[french frank]

Since immigrants are seldom the reason for the problems they are blamed for, will indeed not resolve much. I would be wary of thinking of the current situation as an Europa/world-wide wave of populism based on the same problems. The specific reasons for the rise of populist parties in certain countries vary widely. Example: the populist Movement behind Trump is deeply connected to radical evangelicalism and thus to anti-gay and anti-atheist sentiments. The AfD in Germany is strongest in the areas with the highest concentration of atheists, and their two person leadership includes a lesbian.

One might include the current situation in Brazil: "Mr Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old congressman, has led a populist campaign which has seen him openly defend Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, call for his political opponents to be killed, promise to relax gun-laws, and attack feminism.

But his pitch as the anti-establishment candidate has won over voters frustrated with political corruption and violent crime."

It may well be that there are economic inequalities there too - but why? Brazil is part of the BRICS grouping where one might have assumed that the situation had the potential (at least) to improve.

[Lat-Literal]

In brief response to a couple of earlier posts, this, I think, would be the true updated British Social Democrat position - http://www.lorddavidowen.co.uk/. I do not necessarily agree with all of it. I don't even like the man but I always find him to be of intellectual interest and he is one of the people from across the spectrum who I tend to listen to so as to have my own views challenged. And this would be just one of umpteen articles explaining the Kellner outlook - https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a8541576.html. That may or may not have been influenced by his wife, the Blairite Baroness Ashton, who is certainly no further to the left than Mrs May and is probably to the right of her as is, in my humble opinion, Mr Blair.

[Serial_Apologist]

There are other reasons that point to alternative ecomonic solutions. According to an article in today's Grauniad, Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick, and even the IMF says so:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/economic-lies-neoliberalism-taxpayers?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbdid=IwAR3-RKRAsBaRG2QWiy6pnKfpjrMM46CkCj9vSwPpnfhJgbgNtP019abBo8g

The main problem facing any alternative solution would, rather as in the case of recyclables mixed in with unrecyclable rubbish, be extricating pensions savings and other "innocent" investments out of the mass of circulating currency made up of "quantitative easing" - which printing money regardless of its real value for speculating on the international stock and money markets in reality always amounts to - and somehow ringfencing it so that those ordinary folks who add fears of what will happen to their little pot in the long run to those about immigration and the EU have nothing to fear.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Please can we keep on topic - "Arts in the UK post-Brexit". Veering off into general Brexit talk will not help to keep the tread going.

[Serial_Apologist]

Please can we keep on topic - "Arts in the UK post-Brexit". Veering off into general Brexit talk will not help to keep the tread going.

Where the funding comes from can't somehow be hived off from the thread topic, though.

[Bryn]

Please can we keep on topic - "Arts in the UK post-Brexit". Veering off into general Brexit talk will not help to keep the tread going.

Is that a sly reference to the Irish dimension?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is that a sly reference to the Irish dimension?

[Serial_Apologist]

Is that a sly reference to the Irish dimension?

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

YB Yeats

[Lat-Literal]

We don't really know, do we, why certain international artists can't get visas. Womad performances have often be put in jeopardy because of it. The organisers currently blame Brexit. Yet Brexit hasn't happened and the artists identified are from outside the EU. Elsewhere post Brexit I doubt that in the classical sphere non EU Gustavo Dudamel will have any more problems with visas than EU pop artist Sinead O'Connor, ie none. I wonder if an issue might be that whatever the genre there are tours. X, not very well known, is from Argentina. She wants to hop from Germany to France onto Britain but the last bit might be difficult unless she does France back to Argentina onto Britain. But I'm speculating. Not one of us knows.

Informal sensible arrangements should surely in the main be doable with the political will.

[oddoneout]

I rather think the thread topic has run its course, due to lack of further material. Lacking facts or government policy statement(in itself more than a little worrying at this late stage) there can only be speculation as to what the effect of Brexit on the arts will be. However, in view of the apparent disinclination of the current administration to acknowledge that the arts deserve a place in the life and function of this country it is perhaps safe to say that the arts, post-Brexit(whatever form or not it takes) will not be better off than they are now. I certainly cannot see any possibility that withdrawn/unavailable EU funding will be replaced by UK funding.