We’re still several hours away from the “official” results. [Edit: uh...well, we were minutes away from the more-or-less “official” results. BBC just called it. UK is out of the EU].
But the trends — votes and currency markets — are pretty clear at this point.
The United Kingdom has just voted to exit the EU. This is against all common sense, against all economic sense, against what nearly everyone in the “establishment” UK wanted, and in severe contradiction to the polls.
It’s not a happy day for Britons, no matter how they voted. Brexit offers no real upside (given the UK’s already preferential EU deal), and huge chaotic downside. This is not going to turn out well for them. Well, 5 years from now maybe they’ll rejoin to start to undo the damage?
But it must give us pause, as well, in the United States for 2016. We have the idiocy of Brexit personified in a candidate, and his name is Donald Trump.
There can be no complacency for our nominee Hillary Clinton, for our party, or for our policy set; the latter being the most important. Surprises, in the age of Nate Silver and the technology of prediction, still exist. And it’s uncomfortable.
But it’s only uncomfortable for those who want easy victory along the lines of algorithms.
We must not rely on algorithms of polling. Or equations of outreach. Or the algebra of data-mined assurances.
The November 2016 election will be about issues and person-to-person contact. GOTV in the most local and immediate sense.
Learn the Brexit lesson well, everyone. Chaos has an appeal, these days. Chaos does not serve us well.
ORGANIZE.
EXECUTE.
COMMUNICATE.
NO COMPLACENCY.
Get out the vote. From now until November.
Friday, Jun 24, 2016 · 4:14:01 AM +00:00 · Addison
As an analysis: the results of UK austerity policy were scapegoated onto the EU by voters.
This happened because the UK gov’t decided austerity was their main domestic economic policy — against even the eventual judgment of the austerity-happy IMF.
But that does not have to do with the EU, really. The UK had a really fantastic special arrangement with the EU, and then they made their own bed domestically. They embraced austerity for a margin of votes, and as a result of that terrible policy voters came out for blood.
Lessons, lessons, lessons.
Austerity doesn’t work, the IMF agrees.
Austerity doesn’t work, the voters agree.
Lessons, lessons, lessons.