Understanding Brexit: "View from Wales: Town showered with EU cash votes to leave EU"

[auntpurl]

I strongly urge anyone who is still laboring under the misapprehension that there was organised, rational, considered thought behind the majority of Leave voters' decision to read this article:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale?CMP=fb_gu

“What’s the EU ever done for us?” Zak Kelly, 21, asks me this standing next to a brand new complex of buildings and facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in Canary Wharf. It’s not Canary Wharf, though, it’s Ebbw Vale, a former steel town of 18,000 people in the heart of the Welsh valleys, where 62% of the population – the highest proportion in Wales – voted Leave.

To go there – along a new dual carriageway – and stand next to the town’s new sixth form and training college, a glass and steel architectural showpiece next to its new leisure centre, a few hundred yards away from a new train station, is to stare into the abyss of the UK’s failed Remain campaign.

Even Kelly, who has just finished a training session on a brand new football pitch, backtracks slightly after asking that question. “Well, I know … they built all this,” he says, and motions his head at the impressive facilities that are all around us. “But we put in more money than we get out, don’t we?”

snip

“There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.”

Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.”

It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out. A town that has been showered with EU cash that no longer wants to be part of the EU. A town that holds some of the clues, perhaps, in understanding quite how spectacularly the Remain message failed to land. There’s a sense of injustice that is far greater than the sum of the facts, and the political landscape has fractured and split. Zak Kelly says that many of his friends, in what is Nye Bevan’s old constituency, voted Ukip.

Adding definitions for Americans:
dual carriageway: highway
sixth form: high school, basically
training college: like a vocational college
football: soccer
UKIP: fascists

[TubbersUK]

1. K & R n/t

[Bad Thoughts]

2. Thanks to Brexit, London will get all the funds

The irony is that the EU wsd best at making sure peripheral communities were not left behind.

[OnDoutside]

4. Yes the European Regional Development Fund helped a lot of places like this. Sort of what Bill

Clinton plans to do if Hillary is elected.

[OnDoutside]

3. Some of these places in the Welsh Valleys would give West Virginia a run for its money. Some towns

have had 80% unemployment and many live a life on the dole. The heart was ripped out of them when the mines were closed under the Thatcher government in the 80s and never recovered. It's not right to criticise them for this decision, when there are a lot more educated and wealthier people elsewhere who got caught up in some bygone age nostalgia, and voted Leave.

[Rex]

5. Thatcher and Reagan really fucked up this planet. It is amazing how damaging those two were.

People still suffer from their fucked up conservative policies.

[OnDoutside]

8. Yes but the unions don't get a pass on criticism either. Some of the intransigence to change was

partly responsible to the response. In Germany, the unions worked with management to regenerate, and they saw the benefits of it. That said, Thatcher's response to the unions was to shut entire industries down, and just walked away to leave entire towns rot. Many of those areas are now breeding grounds for far right nationalism. The Clinton plan to put Bill in charge of redevelopment of those US areas left behind, is an excellent idea. I hope it happens.

[Rex]

9. People forget how nice it is to have a pension, until they don't give out pensions anymore.

Reagan did the same thing to the airline industry. I will never understand conservative logic - have to burn down the city in order to save it. Same thing happens in Red states where the governor is a regressive republican type - creates huge breeding grounds for far right nationalism.

[OnDoutside]

10. I think the Polarisation of politics in Western society is pushing all this to a head. Something is

going to give unless new leaders in the centre emerge.

[Igel]

14. Perhaps.

But a lot of it is heart over mind: I'm pissed off so I'm going to kick because I want people to know I'm pissed off.

Then they find they destroyed something they relied on. It felt good at the time, but they didn't really take their vote seriously. They didn't vote the issue, they voted some other issue. They sometimes don't even realize that they've substituted one question for another. (This is a common form of shoddy thinking.)

"I'll vote for Brexit to snub Cameron because he wants me to vote for it but he said X 3 years ago and I'm still mad about that."

[auntpurl]

19. This is how Ireland got the EU in-vote to pass, twice. They held two referendums.

First one: "I am hacked off! F*ck you all in the government!"

Second one: "Ok, seriously now lads."

They got all the kicking as you describe it out of the way in the first vote, then voted sensibly the second time.

[OnDoutside]

48. Having voted in those Nice Referendums, the first was as you say, the second was massive threats and

scare tactics from the Irish Government and the EU about all the jobs that would be lost, that would otherwise be created. "Vote YES for Jobs" !

During the time of "reflection" between Nice 1 and Nice 2, a few trinkets were added, packaged and presented as a new and improved Nice Treaty, so we weren't voting on the same thing, apparently !

There simply has to be another UK Referendum to try and sort this.

[auntpurl]

49. This sounds perfect.

I agree, we must try.

[OnDoutside]

47. Yes, absolutely true. It is a lack of leadership from the center in telling the people inconvenient

truths. It's easier to ignore, and tell people what they think they want to hear.

[uponit7771]

27. +1

[TubbersUK]

6. Same story where I'm currently living

Economically distressed former coal mining area
EU = one of the few sources of reliable inward investment
Relatively few immigrants
Heavily pro-Brexit

[tblue37]

7. K&R for visibility. nt

[REP]

11. Oddly enough, Glyn Ebwy has been populated by non-Welsh speaking outsiders since the late 1800s

So there's some irony for you.

Most (not all) of the Welsh speaking areas - those with high populations of actual Welsh - voted to Remain.

Glyn Ebwy is mostly non-Welsh.

[auntpurl]

15. Interesting. Thanks for info.

[Glorfindel]

12. Similar to the American South...

Those most heavily dependent on the Federal Government hate it the most.

[Rex]

17. Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy.

Same thing, just a different country.

[Skeeter Barnes]

13. I liked that cop show they filmed in Wales, Hinterland. There was supposed to be a third

season but I bet there won't be now without EU funding.

[auntpurl]

18. Ok.

Nationalism is not something to aspire to.

I'm sure it's fine though. Rampant nationalism and economic recession in a European country have never led to anything bad.

[auntpurl]

21. The UK already had complete control over both its borders and it economics

These are lies fed to a gullible public by the media and craven politicians.

[auntpurl]

23. That is a personal attack.

Which is against the rules of this website. You're new so I thought I'd tell you.

The UK is required to take a certain number of migrants under EU agreement. The number is so small as to be insignificant. Other than that small number, we're on an ISLAND and can do what we like with our borders. The border situation is about to become a LOT more complicated in Ireland, leading to likely violent unrest.

The UK has its own currency and central bank.

The UK has won all but 7% of its economic policy arguments with the EU.

[auntpurl]

26. "an UNLIMITED number of migrants who live in certain EU countries"

Those are not migrants! That is free movement between EU countries. Jesus Christ. For god's sake. I just...it is to laugh.

[The Straight Story]

28. I am guessing they are someone who bought into conservative BS

and can't fathom that something that was on fox news/dead bart/FR/etc isn't the total 100% truth.

[auntpurl]

29. Yes, I'm not sure this poster is here with friendly intentions.

[auntpurl]

35. Thank god for MIRT, seriously.

That one didn't last long.

[The Straight Story]

36. Probably back at discussionist, where skinner abandoned the TOS and handed the site

to conservatives.

Seriously, he made a TOS there for show and no one knows why. That person was probably one of the cons there who got tired of the echo chamber conservatives created by banning liberals (to the delight of skinner I am guessing at this point).

Just like with brexit the jury voters there have buyer's remorse. Gotta love it

[Rhiannon12866]

37. Sorry that one lasted so long.

We have seen worse - just today.

[auntpurl]

38. You are doing the Lord's work.

And I see in ATA the new system is making it harder for you. Hope they get it straightened out soon.

[Rhiannon12866]

39. It has taken some getting used to

Not being able to see what was posted earlier makes it tougher, just an adjustment. But we're always here - and watching.

[auntpurl]

45. Hello again!

I believe our friend is back - just below. Thank you!

[Rhiannon12866]

46. Thanks! We know...

[auntpurl]

33. Oh you mean that the media mischaracterised EU workers as "migrants"

tarring them with that dogwhistle brush?

Yes, that's true.

[auntpurl]

41. Are you the same one, or a different one?

I'm sure you're being deliberately coy and you actually understand full well that when the media uses the word "migrants" these days, they are dogwhistling for Syrian/Afghani/etc refugees, and the consumers of this media hear it loud and clear.

[Rex]

31. Why are you so upset with migrant workers? The UK takes in a small amount

they don't cause trouble and work very hard. I will never understand people like you.

[auntpurl]

44. Right, you ARE the same one. MIRT!

[The Straight Story]

24. Rarely (especially when it comes to conservatives)

There isn't a conservative in the US who wouldn't sell out their country for more money (See: corporations, slave labor, profit, jobs leaving the US so the very few can make more money - which cons believe someone will trickle down to them if they just work harder - like 80 hours a week, no breaks, etc)

Cameron didn't want this vote, but he promised it to gain a seat in parliament. He did it to kiss some ass believing that there was no way in hell it would happen. He was wrong (and like a coward is resigning). The UK and other countries in the Eu had their own countries and the EU was a framework they all agreed to.

But some people sucked up the propaganda and now have buyer's remorse.

If it is what the people want, that is fine with me. They must have some sovereignty or they wouldn't have been able to make this vote - right?

[The Straight Story]

34. When the UK decided for war with Iraq

Was that forced on them by the EU or the US?

The EU and the UK worked together, often to the benefit of the people of the UK (look at the film industry as one example).

You don't throw the baby out with the bath water. People were afraid of immigrants (like the idiots on the right here with trump - and yet under Obama illegal immigration is down, deportations up - you can't explain the stupidity of conservatives) and like republicans here based their decisions on unfounded fears.