A few words for anyone thinking about the possibility of the Left taking back the Democrats: Lessons from complexity theory and the UK Labour party.

This election was close enough for any one of a dozen or more mistakes or actions from either party to have been a determining factor. All those who are pushing one reason over all the others are merely exposing their own ideological biases, and that's understandable. Lot of people hurting. But, the only way to tackle a problem with so many aspects is a solution that tackles all of them simultaneously.

This is hard. Real hard. That's why we simplify it. We find a meta-narrative that implicitly encompasses as many of the problems as possible, so that everyone can be on the same page as they go about their own way in doing things.

IMO, the most meta-narrative, and the most useful narrative given it's existing, increasing, and global reach, is that of Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism encompasses a vast multitude of issues that both Left and Right each face, and want rid off. It's also a fight currently being fought on every continent, and believe me, they see the US and UK as the epicenter of it. It is synonymous with neocolonialism for a reason.

So, in that context - The Democrats. Brief history: With the arrival of Reagan and Thatcher, the conservatives either side of the Atlantic borrowed and brutalised Hayeks ideals, ushering in the start of the Neoliberal hegemony in the West and Commonwealth. This hegemony was only cemented however when Clinton, then Blair, brought the major "Left-wing" parties in the US and UK into the neoliberal fold. Sure, when it comes to the "liberal" part, Democrats and Labour include social policy where conservatives do not; the Neo-part however, the economic side of things, was a bi-partisan agreement that gave the banking and finance sectors freedom to become integral players in politics, to the point that politics has become subservient to markets, and beholden to discredited economic dogma.

So Neoliberalism had an uncontested hegemony for two generations, in which time the neoliberal corporate media normalised it to such an extent that it managed to frame itself as the political centre, as a benevolent, technocratic, even un-ideological alternative to the much maligned Left and Right. This is a lie. Neoliberalism is none-of-this. It is has ideological as any political ideology before it, though there is one key difference.

Neoliberalism is not merely another political economic ideology, let alone a mere economic theory as some still manage to maintain. I recently came across a description of multi-national corporations as "meta-nationals", and this is *far* more appropriate. Neoliberalism is not bound by geographic borders, as other political ideologies most often find themselves. In fact, what neoliberalism represents is nothing short of an attempt to syncretise the scale of the nation-state, meaning to create an umbrella-like complex-system that incorporates nation states under it.

I'm not saying this is by design, though many no doubt recognised the significance. This did not need to be planned; complexity always finds new scales of complexity to grow into, and just as the nation state once syncretised religions, so too will nation states be syncretised into something new. But neoliberalism is not it. It has inherent flaws, like maximising efficiency, that make it increasingly more fragile and prone to collapse, and the climate change narrative will ensure that the arguments that worked in the 1970s and 80s will not cut it any more.

Ideologies emerge and spread if and when they are adaptive. Then, through dogma and institutionalisation, ideologies plateau and then start to fall behind the more rapidly evolving society outside of its bubble. That is where neoliberalism is now. There is no going back. There is no establishment rehabilitation. We are talking about a party for whom many have spent their entire political careers under a neoliberal, cross-party hegemony. Their contacts are neoliberals. Their thinking is neoliberal. Their donors are neoliberal. Their offices and colleagues and "enemies" are neoliberal. A shock event doesn't erase that memory, not at the individual scale, or the institutional scale. They will rationalise away blame. They will think they have to tack right just a tad more to capture Trump voters. They will maintain the same contacts and lobbyists, and friends that all stand to potentially lose in the event of any genuine change coming from the Left. They will fight.

The old order must come down before the Dems will be effective in opposing Trump. In the UK, Corbyn, with politics like Sanders but minus the imperialism, won the leadership contest against three cookie-cutter establishment neoliberals. From day one, the neoliberal right of the Labour party, Blairites, connived and opposed Corbyn, briefing the press against him, putting far more energy into rebellion than opposing vicious Tory policy. Smear after smear from the press, from his own party, led eventually to most of the party resigning their Westminster posts and holding a vote of no confidence, which they comfortably won.

So, another leadership contest, this time with purged members galore, 800% rise in party membership fee, and one opponent. Owen Smith. Former lobbyist for Pfizer (Incidentally, today a lobbyist for the Podesta Group announced his candidacy for Democrats Chair - took me back to the spring for a moment, before 2016 had done most of its damage), and on record as saying he thought himself and Blair as "socialist" (this is what I mean by the insidious way neoliberalism has effectively utilised the left to obscure right-wing structural ideology with social ideology and language.). Cobyn won. Again. With an improved mandate.

So, we won? Nope. Not really. Neoliberals in Labour are still there. They are still agitating. Who knows how many awkward conversations they have had with the likes of Richard Branson, private health-care and rail owner who surprisingly doesn't like Corbyn, and the prospect of nationalised rail and a protected NHS.

These kinds of conflicts are going to occur in the US. The establishment Democrats - by the way, "establishment" literally means neoliberal by 2016 - will fight anything that resembles actual change. As will the Hillary supporting neoliberal twitterati, comedians, and celebrities. That's why I was suspicious of Harry Reid and others endorsing Ellison. Everyone needs to make sure that they do not escape accountability, not for punishment's sake, but in terms of actually learning something.

In some ways, I envy you; we didn't have the kind of shock doctrine moment to make use of. Maybe that can make a difference? Maybe Trump is so bad, the shock so deep, that they can reassess in ways Labour MP's could not? It's not impossible; one impassioned appeal by one to a group at the right time could unwind a number of ways. *But it is very unlikely*. In fact, I think doing so smoothly would be historically unprecedented.

So, go forward expecting a fight. Establishment Democrats will not take kindly to the Left (who many still blame for Trump winning) demanding that the party get tough on the TPP, Fossil fuels, banking, finance, wealth redistribution or any of the many other things that desperately need addressing. That would lead to some many awkward conversations with peers and contacts over issues they essentially agree on, and guess what? They won't do shit, and like Labour in the UK, they will likely put far more effort resisting such changes.

They will say it's "far-left", that Hillary got more votes than Sanders, that you can't win an election by being "soft" on immigration and crime, that whoever emerges is "unelectable", that finance is too important to risk it moving abroad, and many other things besides. Do not listen. They have proven how good they are at political analysis plenty enough already.

So. Expect a fight. If it doesn't come, ask why not. Don't get caught up with what to promote; that is varied and messy and potentially divisive. Join people from Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, Spain, Greece, India, South Africa, Nigeria, and wherever neocolonial neoliberalism has spread, and focus on opposing Neoliberalism. In the Democratic party, in meta-national organisations, and in your families and bars. If that is done, you may find that left and right have more in common than you think, given neoliberalism is neither, and fucks both.

Countries most searching google for Neoliberalism (Blue) and Neoliberalismo (Red). 

Also, even if the Democratic party were to pull a Corbyn, intra-party sniping and rebellion aside, it would still only be one step. The problem, at heart is meta-national. The risk is meta-national, and for that matter, existential to many. We must become meta-national in our response, and, if possible, make that a central pillar of whatever comes next. For now, it looks like Neoliberalism is about to take a step back from the globalising trend many foolishly took for granted, but that needn't be bad. I mean fuck, the planet could do with a break from the needless stream of novelty trash being transported around the globe so we can spend more on things we know we will probably throw away. It doesn't mean that culture and communication will stop; we just need some time to get our fucking shit together regionally.

TL:DR Rather than focus on what to promote, focus on what to oppose, something that encompasses as many of the individual problems as possible: Neoliberalism. But Neoliberals in Democrats will fight. Hard. Expect it, and use the unifying banner of anti-neoliberalism to win back the US system, and use it as a springboard to join the rest of the world in tackling the meta-national problem that is Neoliberalism.

EDIT:  By now, February 13th, it's pretty clear that a significant fascist element is challenging Neoliberalism. Resistance to this is paramount, but it is also vital that it not stop there, that we not allow Neoliberalism to try to take us back to an unsustainable "normal". That's done, it's broken, it's over. If they try, we will just suffer more and more until power is finally held accountable, and the US can rejoin the modern world in a new, more sustainable, and more time-appropriate, form.. 

The dynamics of the hegemonic ideological life-cycle AKA Why we are fucked in the West

I wanted to quickly outline the dynamics at play in the US and UK, to show how the betrayal of the left by the Democrats and New Labour set us on this terrible path. Again, I do not speak as someone who identifies as left. I speak as someone who is anti-ideological hegemony (so it just comes across that I am far-Left sometimes), and who understands these dynamics as universal dynamics across all complex adaptive systems. This is merely written in the context of political economy..

When an ideology has cross party (or dictatorial) support for long enough, when that ideology is reflected in all shared cultural production at the expense of other identities, then it becomes hegemonic. Not just in power, but as part of peoples identities and their culture.

To give you an extreme example. The Nazi's took over all shared cultural production, from film to schools to public spaces.. everywhere was saturated with Nazi ideology. This feeds into people identity, either directly making them agree, making them ambivalent, or making them not disagree either through fear of some sort, or through thinking everyone else might agree. 

In the US and, to a lesser extent the UK, a handful of corporations own all shared cultural production via national media, and have done for over two generations (except BBC/NPR/PBS - but they tow the state line anyway). Both parties support (or supported, until Corbyn) the Neoliberal political economic regime: the FED, the World Bank, the EU, the IMF, Central Banks, the Washington Consensus, Neoclassical economics, global finance, etc. Every piece of shared culture is filtered and shaped through a myriad of conscious and subconscious forces to, if not reinforce neoliberal ideology, then to not oppose it.

Now, party politics only functions when you have a Left and a Right. You go one way for a while, then the other party takes a turn and goes the other, correcting the previous mistakes. And thus we move forward in a balanced way. But when Bill Clinton and Tony Blair embraced Neoliberalism, they turned their parties from the left to the anti-left, and thus broke the functioning of party politics.

When you have a hegemonic consensus, progress in governance doesn't happen. You simply keep moving in one direction, regardless of party. This creates what are known as path dependencies; the longer you go down said paths, the harder it is to reverse course.

So, what happens? Well, without any challenge to the hegemony, those involved do not see the root of the problem. Previously, religion acted as a moral challenge as in the Great Depression, but no more. Since government and institutions evolve at a much slower rate than the rest of society due to their doctrinal, ideological structure, tension begins to build. Like an earthquake.

This is where we are now. Power is in an ideological bubble, unable to see that it is their own ideological path dependencies and doctrine that are causing the tension. A growing number of people in society outside of that bubble do recognise it however, yet they are denied any route within the system by which to make reform.

And you know what JFK said about reform, right? Those that make peaceful revolution impossible and violent revolution inevitable. It's not just a slogan. It's real.

The only way that a hegemonic ideological structure can maintain itself in such a situation is to get more and more authoritarian. The hegemony doesn't evolve, society does, and so the tension grows and grows and grows until SNAP.

The way that these ideological hegemonies collapse is called a cascade event, or a transition. They happen quickly, suddenly, and unpredictably, and the violence (or energy) involved is determined by how much tension the ruling power has allowed to build. Not by those responding to it.

Voting Clinton or Owen Smith doesn't release the tension. It simply allows to keep building, because they are ideologically blind and unable to deal with the root causes of the tension, the root causes of why we have Trump. It doesn't make the threat of fascism go away with Trump losing, it makes the the eventual fascism likely to be even worse.

That's because the energy in the tension will be higher. Which direction the cascade event falls depends on which force outside of the hegemonic system triggers the cascade. If to the right, we move *even further* right, meaning unsustainable fascism. If to the Left, we return to the mean, and correct the mistakes that were made over the last 40 years.

Right now, the main priority should be in ensuring it breaks to the Left. I fear that should Clinton get in, the momentum from outside forces will come from the right; liberals won't mobilise in the same way if their own President is in. It could mean that come 2020, the insurgent challenger is on the Right once again, and the Left will once more be urging us to support the lesser evil. If Trump gets in, however fucked up that will be in the short-term, at least the Left will be the insurgent force, and the Neoliberal consensus will be well and truly shattered.

There is no happy ending here. At least in the UK we have managed, somehow, to repel the Neoliberal backlash and maintain an anti-neoliberal Labour leader. The US is a much bigger shit-show.

Why Hillary may be a worse option than Trump (beyond the short-term).

The following is a scenario that merely extends current, long-term Neoliberal trends, making two base assumptions that Clinton is a) Neoliberal, and b) Hawkish. I consider these premises to be self-evident, and I make no attempt to justify them in this short post. This scenario is why I think that Hillary winning in 2016 may be worse than Trump winning, in the medium-to-long term.

It’s 2020.

Hillary Clinton is once again the Democrat nominee, with Elizabeth Warren long ago having sold out and no other anti-neoliberals left in the party. Third parties have failed to make headway, thanks to the rigged electoral commission still being half Democrat and half Republican. America is slowly “recovering” from yet another global economic crash - which people this time blame on those such as Kaine who pushed for more deregulation just before it happened - and any systemic reform is still being resisted. Hillary’s friends and donors hold sway in the White House, which has allowed Goldman Sachs to avoid collapse through yet more bailouts. The wealth of the rich continues to grow.

National debt has increased even more (in line with wealth inequality), a situation not helped by increased military funding to counter the growing threat of Iran and Russia (due a deterioration in relations that's the result in large part of Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy strategies), as well as combatting both ISIS and white nationalist terror attacks domestically. This also results in even more powers for the FBI, NSA and CIA, and further expansion of the NSA base in Utah and enforced corporate cooperation.

The police have continued to kill blacks with impunity, and to become even more militarised, as “super-predators” start fighting back in larger numbers. Riots and bomb threats from a new Black Panther resurgence and KKK groups (empowered since the loss of Trump) rock major cities throughout the summer, while the media scream about the need to crack down on radical anti-neoliberals, far-left, and far-right (somewhat less so, mind).

TPP has been passed, and foreign-owned corporations are suing states that seek to pass environmental regulations to adapt to the increasingly violent and extreme impacts of climate change across the country. The subsequent rise in environmental activism has been labelled as domestic terror, with police forces infiltrating and preemptively arresting anyone with any connection to anti-fossil fuel direct action, including thousands of indigenous peoples. Drought and hurricanes rock the West and South like never before, yet corporations are largely untouched by water sanctions, and investment in infrastructure and adaptation is not forthcoming.

From this situation, a new fascist emerges. Using the same language and techniques as Trump, only this time more conservative, and far less easy to ridicule. The Republican base takes to this newcomer in a broader fashion, the establishment more willing to work with him. People on the left who were anti-Hillary in 2016 remember the emotional blackmail and refuse to succumb to the same cries of “Vote Hillary or you support Fascism!”.

The fascist wins. Suddenly, the (neo)liberal “left” realise their mistake. They realise that this fascist has all the infrastructure he needs, infrastructure built under Democrats watch - to immediately impose fascism through declaring a state of emergency. They go to protest, and they are crushed by a police force that welcomes new poers and military equipment. Many ask.. "Maybe if things hadn’t gotten this bad before we stood up, we might have saved America?"

I don’t say I told you so, even though part of me scream it. I say welcome to the club, now let’s do something about it.

An Open letter to establishment Democrats and Republicans, and US liberals.

Let me begin by saying that America does not become fascist simply because a fascist becomes President. The US political system was explicitly designed for that not to happen. 

No. Trump needed Obama and Bush to create fascist infrastructure first.

Bush & Obama militarised police, built an unprecedented surveillance state, killed US citizens with no trial, gave sovereign power to banks and financial institutions, codified torture and pre-emptive war, and only now y'all are freaking out about fascism? 

Where the fuck have you been for the last 15 years? This is merely a culmination of decades of ideological hegemony.

Bush and Obama, Democrats and Republicans, Neoliberals, the lot of them, have together, with all of your help, created a turnkey fascist police state. Now that an actual fascist - recognisable to you only because he isn't a Neoliberal - might turn that key, now is the time you all realise? 

This isn't an aberration. This is the telos of consistently voting the lesser of two Neoliberal evils, interspersed with Neoliberal hope (but still neoliberal). Any ideological hegemony, be it a dictator or a "democratic" cross-party consensus, will devolve into authoritarianism as it tries to sustain its doctrine in the face of societal evolution and growing dissonance. By ignoring that, you've all contributed to this approaching fascism. 

And if Trump doesn't win, it doesn't matter a jot in the medium-term. You've done fuck all to stop what is now inevitable. It will simply be 4-8 more years of increasingly authoritarian Neoliberal oppression, exponential inequality, unaccountable finance, militarising police.. until another fascist comes along, but this time in conditions worse than now.

And it will keep going like that until shit gets so fucking bad that people revolt. You had a chance. You could have broken the Neoliberal hegemony. But Clinton’s hubris and ambition, the DNC's neoliberal colluding heart, and the indoctrination of neoliberal "left" scuppered Sanders.

That was your shot. You won't get another. Not unless HRC wins, the DNC allow a democratic challenger in four years, then you vote for them. But all you Neoliberal "left" will be like "Don't split the party! Don't fight amongst ourselves! Look at the fascist! Support our Hillary!"

Unless you break the Neoliberal hegemony, you will get fascism, sooner or later. And it won't be non-voters fault. It will be Neoliberals. The "Liberals" that besmirch the name recognisable to those in the 60s. The New Liberals. The Neoliberals. The now inherently anti-left Neoliberals thanks to the rapidly disappearing Overton window.

Only Neoliberalism has the power to change course, because only Neoliberals have power. But they won't. Not without a fight. Ideological hegemony doesn't just look in the mirror one day and say "Huh, we've gone too far, let's allow our opponent a turn to correct our mistakes". That's not how ideological hegemony ends.

Democrats and Republicans alike, both those in power and you who have supported them, have collaborated in creating a fascist infrastructure the likes of which the world has never seen. And now a fascist - only recognisable to you because he isn't Neoliberal - has come along with the key to the turnkey state, and now you freak out.

You have stood aside while your guy built a fascist state, whether Bush or Obama, and instead of self-reflection, you guilt trip those who have had enough and can no longer continue to facilitate the gradual decline into authoritarianism.

Fuck that. Fuck you. Everybody who has supported Neoliberalism, or even failed to learn what the fucking word means, you all helped make Trump. Even worse, you supported the making of the tools and the infrastructure that means that simply having one psycho in one office is enough to have fully fledged fascist state.

If the US wasn't in the grip of a dying ideological consensus, if it was a functioning democracy, Trump couldn't do fuck all. Again, the whole point of the US governance system was to avoid one man being able to create a tyranny. That fucked up way before Trump appeared.

It fucked up under Bush. It fucked up under your precious Obama. I mean, how good a President can Obama be if Trump inheriting his system is such an existential threat?

So don't give me "Vote Hillary coz Trump!", because another Trump is inevitable anyway, and it was your bullshit ignorance and apathy that made it so. Unless every one of you can make a pact to never again vote for the lesser of two evils, to take Trump as the warning he is, to reflect on your own role in this shit-show and commit to becoming dedicated political reformers should conscientious people vote for Hillary against their will, then excuse me while I angrily dismiss your emotional blackmail. 

If Trump alone can make America a fascist state, you need to take a long damn look at yourselves and ask why that is so. All of you. You don't get to participate in building a turnkey fascist police state, and then blame others for allowing one to turn the key.

Brexit: the aftermath

So, did everyone have fun?

Some did. I didn't. Not because I desperately wanted to stay. I didn't. Neither did I want to go. I seem to have been in an odd, sidelined group that couldn't decide either way. So let me get my own view out of the way so you can account for whatever biases you may think you find in here.

IN: To me, this meant nothing more than a slow decline in a neoliberal system of supranational governance that was going to face insurmountable existential threats regardless of the way this referendum went. Don't get me wrong; there are things about the EU I love, with free movement of people and environmental protections among them. But there are things I hate about the EU too; the way they sided with neoliberal institutions to undermine Greece, the way they have handled refugees, and the seeming lack of any hope of reforming it out of it's neoliberal mode of being.

OUT: There are things about leaving the EU that worry me greatly, not least the danger it poses to the things I love about the EU. I also feel deeply for those in the UK that are directly affected by the prospect of leaving the EU. I hate the idea that it emboldens the far-right, and the fact that it leaves even more hard-line neoliberals in the Conservative government empowered. On the flip-side, I think it is easier to reform one's own government that that of the EU, and I support the global trend of devolution and smaller-scales of governance.

So to me, there was no good result from the out-set from this referendum. It should never have taken place, in my opinion. Not so much because of anything inherent about referendums, but because it is so damned complex that it is completely unreasonable to think that the population could come to an educated decision. Now, before one thinks I'm being patronising, I'm not criticising people's capacity to make decsions, not inherently. I'm criticising the media and those in power for having spent the last twenty years or so demonising everyone except those actually responsible.

We've all seen the many examples of misinformation that have influenced people's thinking. Stretched services and infrastructure blamed on immigrants and not the chronic under-funding by government. A press that demonises the poor and minorities because fear sells papers. The incredibly simplistic and misleading soundbites perpetuated by a news media that barely bothers to actually parse fact from fiction. As many have said, the establishment can hardly complain that, after years of blaming immigrants for their own failings, the people then go out and blame immigrants for the stagnation they feel in their lives.

So no, I don't think it should have happened. But it has. And now the shit has hit the fan.

Personally, I'm disgusted by both sides of this debate. There was no good option here in my opinion; at best, there was a least worse option with the promise of worse to come anyway, Yet one would think from social media that we have voted to leave a land of milk and honey and opted for the Fourth Reich instead.

Someone called Ahmed Gatnash posted this on Facebook that nicely summed up my feelings about the reaction of remain supporters:

If you don't know a single person who voted leave then you need to get out of your bubble. If you don't have different opinions on your news feed or timeline then you're living in an echo chamber and likely only get the other side's arguments as interpreted through your own side, after application of appropriate spin. And that means that you're part of the polarisation.

It's easy to dismiss half of the entire population as ignorant bigots and racists if you've never tried to understand them or had even one genuine, heartfelt conversation. Even easier if your life rarely brings you into contact with them, which is especially the case for students.

I actually see the same condescending attitudes from my (overwhelmingly young, cosmopolitan, progressive) friends towards their fellow citizens here that I see from white western orientalists commenting about what's happening in the Middle East - looking down, talking about but never to, and trying to fit everything into pre-conceived boxes without admitting a possible knowledge (let alone empathy) deficit.

Populism and xenophobia aren't being normalised, they were normalised long ago. If you want us to head in a different direction you can either ignore the problem and hope it'll fix itself somehow, try to abuse people into change (good luck with that), or suspend democracy. If none of those options sound appealing then get out there and burst your bubble. This is a polarised country, and it certainly won't be politicians that fix that.

There are not 17 million people worthy of being labelled racist bigots in this country. There weren't before the vote, and that hasn't changed. I understand the frustration, but trying to seek a single answer to why Leave won is never going to work. There is never a single reason for such large scale complex emergence. That is true technically, and it is true if you just look. Yes, 71% of graduates voted Remain, but 29% voted Leave. Yes, two-thirds of people who value multiculturalism voted Remain, but one-third voted Leave. However you look at it, this isn't simply a right vs left issue, nor educated vs uneducated, or even urban vs rural. And it certainly isn't Racists vs Good People. 

Let me set this within a wider context. Neoliberalism is dying. The world economy is waiting to crash again. Nothing was reformed since 2008, and little has changed. The same people in power then, globally, are in power now. In that time, their wealth has grown significantly whilst everyone else wealth has stagnated. This merely extended a trend evident since the 1970's, and while the population at large may be unaware or unclear on what or who is to blame, they recognise their situation regardless. They look to London as a symbol of that exploitative power; do not be surprised that there is such antipathy toward it, and those pontificating from within its prosperous bubble.

These people have been failed by neoliberalism, and calling them a bunch of racists isn't going to help. There was no coherent proposition that spoke to these people's needs in the contexxt of Remaining in the EU. There was no anti-neoliberal, pro-EU movement. There was no rationale presented that simultaneously sought to keep us in the EU whilst also addressing the stagnation and insecurity felt by millions around the country. Instead, we got project Fear, that wheeled out the very CEO's and economists that constitute the neoliberal hegemony to tell us, again, that we have to align with their interests because it is also in the peoples interest. People don't believe them anymore (I don't blame them), and the failure of the Left and Remain campaign to realise this cost them the referendum.

At the end of the day, people were presented with successful talking heads telling them the status-quo was great, despite the status-quo being a dying ideology that has seen growing wealth inequalities across the country. A status-quo where the global rich invest in London properties driving the whole market up from already high levels. A status-quo that includes an unaffordable rental market that continue to climb. A status-quo which for years has blamed everyone else but themselves. 

The choice was that status-quo, or a roll of the dice. A roll of the dice that would simultaneously say Fuck You to those in power, and to those that failed to appreciate the perilous state millions find themselves in.

You don't need to think 17 million people are bigoted racists to explain why Leave edged it, unless you are unable to see other reasons. If you cannot see that, you are part of the problem. In framing this referendum as bigots vs the enlightened, the Remain camp have played their part in making actual racists feeling like they are somehow representative of 17 million people. That has to stop now. We have to combat the threat from the far-right not by alienating those on the left who voted Leave, but by undoing the poisonous and exploitative systems that generated both the fear and misinformation, and the structural tensions and inequalities. 

We need to target neoliberalism. We need a coherent alternative. The SNP did it. The pirate party have done it in Iceland. Podemos have done it in Spain. Yet in the UK, many in Labour are still utterly blind to the state of neoliberalism, and are determined to undermine any effort by Corbyn to present a united front. I'm not a particularly big fan; I'd rather someone more dynamic and engaging. But he's got a mandate. He has support. And he potentially has the easiest job in the world: rallying people to an anti-neoliberal banner at a time when neoliberalism is on its last legs (which incidentally is when it is most dangerous).

So quit with the generalisations, quit with the blaming each other, quit with the divisiveness. The core problems facing both Leave and Remain voters are the same problems, so start acting like it. We have an emboldened far-right to slap down. Get to it.