# data[].attributes.body
- Data on the result
- Was there a north / south divide?
- Danny Dorling: Austerity rather than immigration drove the vote
- Rust Belt UK (deindustrialised Britain) helps us understand

# data[].attributes.body
-What is the rust belt and why/how is it hurting?
-Why were white working-class voters pivotal in Trump's 2016 win?
-Who are Trump's base in 2020?

# data[].attributes.body
Stick to geographical impacts:
-Economic
-Environmental
-Geo-political

Extension: Socio-cultural factors eg BLM, border wall, Capitol insurrection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Just six months into his presidency, Trump announced America's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord - making the US, the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, one of the only countries on earth that does not participate.

Just six months into his presidency, Trump announced America's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord - making the US, the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, one of the only countries on earth that does not participate.

Trump has also gutted the Environmental Protection Agency, forced out or muzzled scientists whose research contradicts the administration's political preferences, and appointed industry insiders to federal agencies. He has rolled back Obama-era emissions standards, massively expanded the federal land and water available for oil and gas drilling, and propped up the dying and environmentally ruinous coal industry.

2. The judiciary

In only three years, Trump has appointed 185 judges - a staggering re-molding of the federal judiciary. (By comparison, Obama appointed 55 appeals judges in eight years.) Even if Trump loses re-election in 2020, the judges he has appointed will remain in office for decades.

3. Abortion

Rightwing activist groups have seized the opportunity to push new restrictions on abortion rights, including state abortion bans unprecedented since Roe v Wade. Ohio legislators even attempted to pass a bill that would force doctors to re-implant ectopic pregnancies, a dangerous procedure with no medical justification. Many of these radically anti-abortion laws are explicitly designed to test Roe v Wade, and there is a strong chance Roe could come up for review in the US supreme court, where liberal justices are now a minority.

4. Healthcare

Healthcare policy has come under continual challenge, with the Trump administration attempting to dismantle or roll back many parts of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

5. Immigration

Trump kicked off his presidency by banning immigration from several Muslim countries; he has also separated migrant children from their parents, escalated Ice deportations, and worked to sideline immigration courts. One of Trump's advisors, Stephen Miller, is suspected to be an outright white nationalist.

6. Voting rights

Thanks in part to aggressive gerrymandering, the Republican party has consolidated control of state legislatures and governorships across the US. These lawmakers' ultra-conservative agendas are often wildly unrepresentative of their more moderate, and increasingly diverse, populations.

The past several years have seen a dangerous rise in voter suppression, a trend the Guardian is documenting in our ongoing special series on voting rights. Under now-governor Brian Kemp, Georgia purged hundreds of thousands of voters from its rolls before the 2018 midterm elections. Wisconsin is currently on the brink of purging more than 200,000 voters - in a state where Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes.

7. The justice system

Despite an increasing bipartisan consensus on the need to reform the criminal justice system, the Trump administration has often promoted ineffective, backwards, and punitive criminal justice policies. Under former attorney general Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice largely abandoned oversight of troubled police departments operating under federal consent decrees. He also worked to undo state-based marijuana legalization and drug law reform.

8. National security and foreign affairs

Trump habitually denigrates US allies, the Nato military alliance, and his own intelligence agencies, while praising dictatorships including Russia, China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Polls show global opinion of the US, and Trump's leadership, at de-moralized levels.

9. Poverty and social welfare

In December, the Trump administration announced new work requirements that will strip 700,000 Americans of food stamps. We profiled some of the people who will be affected.

10. Education policy

Secretary of education Betsy DeVos, an ardent critic of public education, has loosened Obama-era restrictions on predatory for-profit colleges. She's also fought attempts to introduce debt relief for the millions of Americans who owe a collective $1.6tn in student loans.

Since Trump took power, the Guardian has been a constant and rigorous watchdog. We commit enormous resources to our investigative and public interest reporting. In all our journalism, we also work to give voices to the human beings affected by Trump's policies.

Next year America will face a momentous choice. The future of the White House, the supreme court, abortion rights, climate policy and a range of other issues are in play - at the same time that misinformation makes rigorous reporting more important than ever.

That's why robust, fact-based and independent reporting is critical: we hope to raise $1.5m to fund our journalism in 2020.

With your help, we'll continue to fight for the progressive values we hold dear - democracy, civility, truth.

Please consider making a contribution. And as always, thanks for reading.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Trump 2020 impact report: from environment to the courts, 10 ways Trump has changed America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Just six months into his presidency, Trump announced America's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord - making the US, the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, one of the only countries on earth that does not participate.

# data[].attributes.body
Trade wars

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A brief guide on the trade war between the world's two largest economies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump's trade wars and Brexit are making us all poorer | Jeffrey Frankel

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Current policies are hitting real incomes - and only voters, not central banks, can change that

# data[].attributes.body
Avocado anxiety!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mexico has condemned a US suggestion that it may impose a 20% tax on Mexican imports to pay for President Donald Trump's planned border wall.

Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said such a tax would make Mexican imports more expensive for US consumers and they would end up paying for the wall.

The Mexican president earlier cancelled a visit to the US over the row of who would pay for the barrier.

The planned wall was one of Mr Trump's key election campaign pledges.

Earlier this week, the president signed an executive order to create a wall along the 2,000-mile (3,200km) US-Mexico border.

Speaking on Thursday, Mr Videgaray said: "A tax on Mexican imports to the United States is not a way to make Mexico pay for the wall, but to a way make the North American consumer pay for it through more expensive avocados, washing machines, televisions.''

He also stressed that paying for Mr Trump's wall "is not negotiable" for Mexico.

Earlier on Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said a 20% tax could generate approximately $10bn (£8bn) in tax revenue per year.

"Right now our country's policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous", he said, adding that the tax will "easily pay for the wall".

But Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, later said that the border tax is only one of several options being considered.

Border tax unacceptable - Will Grant, BBC News, Mexico City

President Enrique Pena Nieto would have been perceived as very weak if he had travelled to Washington for talks and for many here it would have been tantamount to accepting Mr Trump's central claim - that Mexico will pay for the US border wall.

If that is not up front, then it may come eventually - perhaps under the latest proposal being floated by Donald Trump's White House, a massive 20% border tax on Mexican imports.

As Mexico exports some $300bn of goods a year to the US, the impact of such a proposal would be felt across the country.

Furthermore, the idea of funding a wall through a new tariff is simply unacceptable to most ordinary Mexicans who view the wall as unnecessary, inhumane, expensive and ineffective.

As their elected leader, at least for the next 18 months, Enrique Pena Nieto was left with little option but to deliver that message to the White House - by not going there in person.

The rift between the neighbours and trade partners has deepened just days into Mr Trump's presidency.

After Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto pulled out of next week's summit, Mr Trump said the meeting would have been "fruitless" if Mexico didn't treat the US "with respect" and pay for the wall.

Earlier Mr Pena Nieto said he "lamented" the plans for the barrier.

In a televised address, the Mexican leader told the nation: "I've said time and again: Mexico won't pay for any wall."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned that US consumers may wind up bearing the cost of the proposed tax.

"Any tariff we can levy they can levy. Huge barrier to econ growth", he wrote online.

"Build that wall" was one of Mr Trump's campaign rally slogans.

Mr Trump's executive orders also called for hiring 10,000 immigration officials to help boost border patrol efforts.

"A nation without borders is not a nation," Mr Trump said. "Beginning today the United States gets back control of its borders."

In other developments:

UK Prime Minister Theresa May addressed a group of Republican Congressmen ahead of talks with President Trump on Friday. She called for an end to foreign interventions overseas to "remake the world in our own image"

Chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon said that the media should "keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while" and that he views the press as "the opposition party"

The White House is planning additional executive actions in the coming days, one of which will reportedly curb refugee admissions

Mr Trump told US media that he had made his selection for Supreme Court nominee, and will announce the name next Thursday

What if Trump tries to bring back torture? Elon Musk: I'm Trump's voice of reason Do you think that you or your family could be affected by changes to immigration rules? Share your experiences. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your stories.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

Send pictures/video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk

Upload your pictures / video here

Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSay

Send an SMS or MMS to 61124 or +44 7624 800 100

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mexico has condemned a US suggestion that it may impose a 20% tax on Mexican imports to pay for President Donald Trump's planned border wall. Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said such a tax would make Mexican imports more expensive for US consumers and they would end up paying for the wall.

# data[].attributes.body
Stick to geographical impacts:
-Economic
-Environmental
-Geo-political

Extension: Impacts of Brexit on Covid

# data[].attributes.body
-Yes!
-No!
- There are lessons to be learned... (Stiglitz)
Conclusion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the Trump administration took office, it has been fighting what they call an "anti-growth" agenda put in place by the Obama administration. Regulations that required businesses to spend time and money to meet the former administration's environmental standards were swiftly reviewed and, in many cases, rolled back.

National Geographic has been tracking the decisions that will impact America's land, water, air, and wildlife. What started with curtailing information when the president took office in 2017 has evolved into actions like executive orders that open public land for business.

States, municipalities, and NGOs have responded to these changes by filing lawsuits to block the administration. Some, like lawsuits against the Keystone XL pipeline, have successfully kept public land closed to additional development.

Below are 15 influential decisions made by the Trump administration that could impact the future of our nation.

Clean air
1. U.S. pulls out of Paris Climate Agreement
This is perhaps the decision that set the tone for the Trump administration's approach to the environment: when he moved to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in June of 2017. To many, it signaled less U.S. leadership in international climate change agreements. (Read more about this decision.)
2. Trump EPA poised to scrap clean power plan
The Clean Power Plan was one of the Obama's signature environmental policies. It required the energy sector to cut carbon emissions by 32 percent by 2030, but in October 2017 it was rolled back by Trump's EPA. Among the reasons cited were unfair burdens on the power sector and a "war on coal." ( Read more on why Trump can't make coal great again.)
3. EPA loosens regulations on toxic air pollution
This regulation revolved around a complicated rule referred to as "once in, always in" or OIAI. Essentially, OIAI said that if a company polluted over the legal limit, they would have to match the lowest levels set by their industry peers and they would have to match them indefinitely. By dropping OIAI, the Trump EPA forces companies to innovate ways to decrease their emissions, but once those lower targets are met, they're no longer required to keep using those innovations. ( Read more about air pollution.)
4. Rescinding methane-flaring rules
Under the Affordable Clean Energy rule issued in August 2018, states were given more power over regulating emissions. In states like California, that means regulations would likely be stricter, whereas states that produce fossil fuels are likely to weaken regulations. The following month, the EPA announced they would relax rules around releasing methane flares, inspecting equipment, and repairing leaks. ( Read more about methane.)
5. Trump announces plan to weaken Obama-era fuel economy rules
Under the Obama administration's fuel economy targets, cars made after 2012 would, on average, have to get 54 miles per gallon by 2025. In August 2018, the Trump Department of Transportation and EPA capped that target at 34 miles per gallon by 2021. The decision created legal conflict with states like California that have higher emission caps. ( Read more about speed bumps in the way of super-efficient cars.)

Water
6. Trump revokes flood standards accounting for sea-level rise
In August 2017, President Trump revoked an Obama-era executive order that required federally funded projects to factor rising sea levels into construction. However, in 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development required buildings constructed with disaster relief grants do just that. ( Read more about how rising sea levels may imperil the internet.)
7. Waters of the U.S. Rule revocation
What are the "waters of the U.S.?" President Trump issued an executive order in 2017 ordering the EPA to formally review what waters fell under the jurisdiction of the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers according to the 1972 Clean Water Act. The proposed change narrowed the definition of what's considered a federally protected river or wetland. ( Read more about Trump's plans to roll back the Clean Water Act.)

Wildlife
8. NOAA green lights seismic airgun blasts for oil and gas drilling
Five companies were approved to use seismic air gun blasts to search for underwater oil and gas deposits. Debate over the deafening blasts stem from concerns that they disorient marine mammals that use sonar to communicate and kill plankton. The blasts were shot down by the Bureau of Energy Management in 2017 but approved after NOAA found they would not violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act. ( Read more about how scientists think seismic air guns will harm marine life.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
15 ways the Trump administration has impacted the environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the Trump administration took office, it has been fighting what they call an "anti-growth" agenda put in place by the Obama administration. Regulations that required businesses to spend time and money to meet the former administration's environmental standards were swiftly reviewed and, in many cases, rolled back.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On December 31, 2020, the transition period for the United Kingdom (U.K.) to withdraw from the European Union (EU), otherwise known as "Brexit," officially came to an end. This marked the end of a years-long process that was overseen by two different Prime Ministers, included several delays and extensions, and left the U.K. divided.

What Was Brexit?

Brexit was the nickname for " British exit" from the EU, the economic and policy union of which the U.K. had been a member since 1973. That changed on June 23, 2016, when the U.K. voted to leave the EU. The residents decided that the benefits of free trade weren't enough to offset the costs of free movement of immigration. The vote was 17.4 million in favor of leaving vs. 16.1 million who voted to remain.

Key Takeaways

What Caused Brexit?

In 2015, the Conservative Party called for the referendum. Most of the pro-Brexit voters were older, working-class residents of England's countryside. They were afraid of the free movement of immigrants and refugees, claiming in the process that citizens of poorer countries were taking jobs and benefits.

Small businesses were also frustrated by EU fees. Others felt leaving the EU would create jobs. Many felt the U.K. paid more into the EU than it received.

Those who voted to stay in the EU primarily lived in London, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. They liked free trade with the EU, and claimed most EU immigrants were young and eager to work. Most felt that leaving the EU would damage the U.K.'s global status.

Brexit Process

Leaving the EU was a complicated process. Former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, following the voters' will, submitted the Article 50 withdrawal notification to the EU on March 29, 2017. She negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the EU that outlined their new relationship but couldn't get approval from a divided Parliament.

In July 2019, Boris Johnson succeeded May as the U.K.'s Prime Minister. Johnson's Conservative Party subsequently attained a majority during a royally mandated general election on December 12, 2019. That allowed him to get Parliament's approval of the Withdrawal Agreement he negotiated with the EU.

On January 23, 2020, the Agreement Act received the necessary legislative Royal Assent, which is when the Queen formally agrees to make the bill into law. The U.K. formally left the EU on January 31, 2020, but entered a transition process that ended on December 31, 2020. The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was agreed to on December 24, 2020 (and signed on December 30).

Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement Summary

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement has three main pillars: trade, cooperation, and governance that took effect on January 1, 2021. Notably, the agreement does not cover foreign policy and defense.

The U.K. is no longer part of the customs union and single market with the EU. Instead, it has a trade agreement that allows zero tariffs and zero quotas on goods traded that comply with the appropriate rules of origin.

Note

Free movement between the U.K. and EU has ended. European nationals already living in the U.K. must make sure they have documents from the U.K. government specifically allowing them to remain.

Travelers between the EU and the U.K. must have passports ready to show at the border. Business travelers have additional requirements. If they do business regularly in an EU country, they may need to set up a local subsidiary. Many services, such as telecommunications, broadcasting, and electronic services, may be taxed.

The U.K. must pay a "divorce bill" of approximately 34 billion pounds by 2064. This is to fulfill any remaining financial commitments made while a member of the EU.

While EU law no longer applies to the U.K., the latter will cooperate with the EU on law enforcement and criminal justice matters.

Governance

The agreement established a Joint Partnership Council to make sure the agreement is properly applied and interpreted. This includes dispute settlement, legal enforcement, and rules for retaliation if needed.﻿﻿

How Did Brexit Impact the UK?

The U.K. has already suffered from Brexit. The economy has slowed, and many businesses have moved their headquarters to the EU. Here are some of the impacts on growth and jobs. There would also be consequences specific to Ireland, London, and Scotland.

Brexit's biggest disadvantage is its damage to the U.K.'s economic growth. Most of this has been due to the uncertainty surrounding the final outcome.

Uncertainty over Brexit slowed the U.K.'s growth from 2.4% in 2015 to 1.6% in 2019. The U.K. government estimated that Brexit would lower the U.K.'s growth by up to 6.7% over 15 years. It assumed the current terms of free trade but restricted immigration.

The British pound fell from $1.48 on the day of the referendum to $1.36 the next day. That helps exports but increases the prices of imports. It has not regained its pre-Brexit high.

Brexit hurts Britain's younger workers. Germany is projected to have a labor shortage of 3 million skilled workers by 2030. Those jobs won't be as readily available to the U.K.'s workers after Brexit.

Employers are having a harder time finding applicants. One reason is that EU-born workers left the U.K., their numbers falling by 95% in 2017. This has hit the low-skilled and medium-skilled occupations the most.

The U.K. must negotiate new trade agreements with countries outside of the EU, which had more than 45 trade agreements with over 70 countries already in place.

Northern Ireland remains with the U.K. The Republic of Ireland, with which it shares a border, stays a part of the EU. The agreement avoids a customs border between the two Irish countries.

A customs border could have reignited The Troubles, which was a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestants. In 1998, it ended with the promise of no border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. A customs border would have forced about 9,300 commuters to go through customs on their way to and from work and school.

Brexit has already depressed growth in the U.K.'s financial center of London, which saw only 1.4% in 2018 and was close to zero in 2019. Brexit also diminished business investment by 11% between 2016 and 2019.

International companies are less likely to use London as an English-speaking entry into the EU economy. Barclay's moved 5,000 clients to its Irish subsidiary, while Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley switched 10% of their clients. Bank of America has also transferred 100 bankers to its Dublin office and 400 to a broker dealer unit in Paris.

Scotland voted against Brexit. The Scottish government believed that staying in the EU was the best for Scotland and the U.K. It had been pushing the U.K. government to allow for a second referendum.

To leave the U.K., Scotland would have to call a referendum on independence. It could then apply for EU membership on its own.

The Brexit Vote

In summary, the Brexit vote imposed these three hard choices on the U.K.:

1. Leave with no deal, known as "no-deal Brexit." Without a trade agreement, ports would be blocked and airlines grounded. In no time, imported food and drugs would run short.

2. Vote again on Brexit. Many argue that voters did not understand the economic hardships that Brexit would impose. On December 10, 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled that the U.K. could unilaterally revoke its Brexit application to remain in the EU.

3. Approve a negotiated deal. The sticking point had been the nature of the border between the U.K.'s Northern Ireland and the EU's Republic of Ireland.

How Did Brexit Impact the EU?

Brexit is a vote against globalization. As a result, it has weakened forces in the EU that favor integration. Members of right-wing, anti-immigration parties are particularly anti-EU in France and Germany. If they gained enough ground, they could force an anti-EU vote. If either of those countries left, the EU would lose its most robust economies and would dissolve.

On the other hand, the majority of EU citizens still strongly support the union. In a Pew Research Center survey across 10 European nations, almost 75% say the EU promotes peace, and 55% believe it supports prosperity. In addition, more than a third see the role of the U.K. as diminishing.

How Did Brexit Impact the US?

Brexit threw into uncertainty the status of London as a global financial center. U.S. stability, though, means London's loss could be New York's gain.

Note

The day after the Brexit vote, the currency markets were in turmoil. The euro fell by 2% to $1.11. The pound fell by 8% to $1.36. Both increased the value of the dollar. That strength is not good for U.S. stock markets. It makes American shares more expensive for foreign investors.

A weak pound also makes U.S. exports to the U.K. more expensive, although that hasn't slowed exports. In 2019, U.S. exports to the U.K. were $147.4 billion, up from $141 billion in 2018. That's created a $21.8 billion trade surplus. Meanwhile, imports were only $125.6 billion.

Brexit dampened business growth for companies that operate in Europe. U.S. companies invested $851.4 billion in the U.K. in 2019. Most of this was in the finance and insurance sector, as well as manufacturing and nonbank holding companies. These U.S. companies previously used the U.K. as the gateway to free trade with the EU nations. U.K. businesses, on the other hand, invested $505.1 billion in the U.S. in 2019, up 1.7% from 2018. Most of this was in manufacturing, wholesale trade, and finance.

The U.K. was in the process of negotiating a trade deal with the U.S. in early 2021, but these negotiations have since been on hold. The biggest stumbling block is agriculture. The U.K. requires greater food safety and animal welfare regulations than the U.S. does. U.K. farmers are concerned about inferior, cheaper agriculture products putting them out of business.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

When did Brexit talks start?

Why is Brexit important?

Who supported Brexit?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Was Brexit, and How Did It Impact the UK, EU, and the US?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brexit was the term for the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union. Learn about its causes, timeline, and impact on the UK, EU, and the US.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Limits on mountaintop-removal coal mining

"This one is low-hanging fruit," said Mr. Lazarus of a new coal mining regulation. On Jan. 19, the day before Mr. Trump took office, the Obama administration completed a rule to reduce mountaintop-removal coal mining, which uses explosives to blast off the tops of coal-seamed mountains. Coal companies oppose the rule, which prohibits them from using the technique near streams that could be polluted by the resulting rubble.

The rule will probably be undone quickly. Under the 1996 Congressional Review Act, Congress can scrap new regulations within 60 legislative days of being completed, by a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate. While the law has been used successfully only once in its 20-year history, it is expected to enjoy a newfound prominence soon. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of coal-rich Kentucky, has already vowed to use the act to undo what he calls "this regulatory assault on coal country." With the support of all 52 Republicans and probably Senator Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat, as well, the rollback of this rule is expected to be on Mr. Trump's desk within weeks.

Regulation on methane emissions

In November, the Interior Department completed a rule reining in the venting of methane, a potent planet-warming greenhouse gas, from oil and gas drilling facilities. Oil and gas companies called the rule expensive and burdensome. Like the mountaintop-mining rule, this one falls into the 60-day window allowing Congress to quickly overturn it with a 51-vote majority It is expected that the fossil fuel industry's allies in the Senate will quickly push to do so.

Rolling back vehicle fuel economy standards

While it can't be done quickly, there is a clear legal path for the Trump administration to undo one of the hallmarks of Mr. Obama's climate change policies: a 2011 regulation requiring automakers to build fleets of cars by 2025 that achieve an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon. The rule, jointly issued by the E.P.A. and the Transportation Department, would force manufacturers to build next-generation electric cars. It could reduce carbon emissions by about six billion tons, equivalent to removing a little more than the United States' emissions of carbon pollution for an entire year.

But the rule came with a loophole: a provision inserted by automakers to revisit it in 2017 if they found it too onerous. Just before Mr. Obama left office, the E.P.A. released a finding that the rule was not too costly for automakers to meet. But it did not do so jointly with the Transportation Department, leaving a legal avenue for the Trump administration to loosen the standards through that agency.

The chief executives of the biggest auto companies have already asked Mr. Trump to do just that, in a meeting with him this week. While Mr. Trump did not offer specifics, he did tell the automakers that he plans to ease their regulatory burden.

"It's not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen," said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former senior E.P.A. official in President George W. Bush's administration who has been mentioned as a possible deputy E.P.A. administrator in Mr. Trump's presidency. "It would likely take a year or 18 months. But it's not a heavy lift, from a legal perspective."

Rewriting regulations on climate change

The centerpiece of Mr. Obama's climate change policy is a 2015 E.P.A. rule curbing greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities. It could shutter and replace hundreds of coal plants with wind and solar plants. Mr. Trump has vowed to eliminate the rule, but doing so could require years of court battles. He would also be required by law to come up with an alternate regulation.

Mr. Obama's climate rule has already been challenged in a federal court, where it is awaiting a verdict. It is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration could refuse to defend the Obama rule in court, but environmental groups could continue to argue in its favor. Meanwhile, the Trump E.P.A. would have to create its own presumably more industry-friendly regulation, which could take about 18 months. But that rule would then assuredly be subject to a federal lawsuit, which itself would probably be appealed to the Supreme Court. In one possible but bizarre outcome, both the Obama climate rule and the Trump climate rule could spend years wending their way through the same courts.

"There are a number of ways this could play out as it goes through the courts, and it could take at least four to five years," said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University and director of the American Law Institute. "Ultimately, what happens to it will likely be determined by the results of the 2020 presidential election."

Social cost of carbon

This obscure but powerful metric was created by Mr. Obama's economists to put a measurable price, $36 per ton, on damage inflicted by carbon pollution. Mr. Obama's E.P.A. plugged the social cost of carbon into formulas to create an economic justification for regulations that impose a measurable cost on polluters. By reducing or eliminating this metric, Mr. Trump's regulators could create an economic rationale to undo those rules and replace them with relaxed, industry-friendly ones.

Waters of the United States

Mr. Obama received angry resistance from rural America over his controversial "Waters of the United States" regulation. It was released in 2015 under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, which gave the federal government broad latitude to limit pollution in major water bodies, like the Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River and Puget Sound, as well as small streams and wetlands that drain into those larger waters. But groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation called the rule a land grab, and Mr. Trump has vowed to get rid of it.

Mr. Trump's E.P.A. could revoke the rule. But it would be required to create a new one, venturing into complex legal territory as it tries to redefine the terms of federal waterways and wetlands. "That's not going to be easy," Mr. Holmstead said. "I believe they can do it, but it's likely to take several years."

Correction: January 31, 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Trump Can and Can't Do to Dismantle Obama's Climate Rules

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Limits on mountaintop-removal coal mining "This one is low-hanging fruit," said Mr. Lazarus of a new coal mining regulation. On Jan. 19, the day before Mr. Trump took office, the Obama administration completed a rule to reduce mountaintop-removal coal mining, which uses explosives to blast off the tops of coal-seamed mountains.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
His speech was like one normally expected of an American president. Countries must resist the temptation to retreat into harbour, the world leader said to a packed and admiring audience, but instead have the courage to swim in the vast ocean of the global market.

This was the kind of paean to free trade that might have come from John F Kennedy, George W Bush or Bill Clinton - all occupants of the White House who saw it as the United States's role to defend the open international trading system set up at the end of the second world war.

This, though, was China's president, Xi Jinping, in Davos last week, making it clear that he was prepared to fill the vacuum if Donald Trump went ahead with the sort of protectionist policies he had proposed in his election campaign.

The new US president has said he will renegotiate the Nafta free trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico and slap duties on imports from countries that don't play by global trade rules. He also floated the idea of a 35% tariff on goods from Mexico, a 45% tariff on goods from China, and a border tax - which would impose a levy on imports but not exports.

Those attending Davos reassured themselves that Trump would ditch all these proposals once he was in office. But if he doesn't, the consequences are obvious: the world will be plunged into a trade war that will bring the globalisation of the past quarter of a century to a juddering halt.

This is a possibility that some are contemplating. One breakfast in Davos, organised by law firm Clifford Chance, was entitled "The end of globalisation: has the world reached a tipping point?"

And it is not just Trump. Alarm bells were set ringing by Britain's vote for Brexit, seen as a shout of rage from those who feel that globalisation has brought them precious little. They will clang even louder if Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency in May. One senior diplomat said that if Le Pen pulled off yet another shock result, it would spell the end of the European Union.

The received wisdom for Davos is that this isn't a tipping point. Globalisation, it was asserted, is really being driven by technological change over which politicians have little control. Supply chains cross borders, often many times over. Consumers care more about whether the goods they can order online will be delivered the next day than where they are sourced from. Douglas Flint, chairman of HSBC, cited the example of the taxi app Uber as a disruptive technological change that was here to stay.

The globalisation optimists may well be proved right. Unravelling the complex web of international links that have been established since the Berlin wall came down at the end of 1980s would be a long and painful process. Pascal Lamy, once the EU trade commissioner and a former director-general of the WTO, scoffed at the idea that the world had reached a tipping point and said the recent slowdown in global trade was only to be expected after years of rapid growth.

Roberto Azevedo, the current WTO boss, said: "One difference between the 2008 financial crisis and the 1930s is that today we have multilateral rules and the 1930s did not."

The Brazilian noted that the tit-for-tat protectionism resorted to during the Great Depression resulted in world trade shrinking by two-thirds in three years. "That would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions."

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that if Trump went ahead with his trade agenda, it would undo all the growth benefits from his tax cuts and infrastructure spending - and then some. The hope at the big international organisations - the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD - is that the new president will quickly work out that there are downsides to putting a 45% tariff on Chinese goods: higher consumer prices and retaliation, to name but two.

That said, supporters of free trade have been their own worst enemies. They knew from the outset that globalisation creates losers as well as winners, but have done little or nothing to ensure that the benefits of greater liberalisation have been equitably shared. In recent years the losers have increased in number - and become more vociferous.

Moreover, it is not entirely true that countries have maintained a commitment to free trade since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 triggered the worst recession since the 1930s. Many countries have quietly been resorting to protectionist measures. It has proved impossible to complete the ambitious round of global trade liberalisation talks launched in Doha in 2001. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, an American-brokered regional free deal involving the US and a number of Asian countries (but not China) will be scrapped under Trump. A bilateral deal between Brussels and Washington - the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP for short) is dead in the water.

And, just as in the 1930s, there is a prevailing cult of the strong man. Mark Malloch-Brown, the former UN deputy general secretary, said: "In a range of countries there are very strong leaders, not always that respectful of the rules of the game."

Malloch-Brown cited Xi in China, Narendra Modi in India and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey as leaders who - together with Vladimir Putin in Russia and, now, Trump in the US - make up a formidable cabal on the G20, the group of developed and developing countries that was set up during the financial crisis to provide better global governance. "Bourgeois democracy is being replaced by a generation of Caesars," Malloch-Brown said.

This is not the first era of globalisation. What might be called Globalisation 1.0 was alive and well at the end of the 19th century, an era of free trade, mass migration and liberalised capital flows.

It was described by John Maynard Keynes in the following way: "The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole Earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages."

What's the difference between Keynes's Londoner sipping his tea and today's Londoner slurping a latte while using a smartphone to buy something from Amazon? Sure, technology is faster and the global networks are more integrated. But in Edwardian Britain there was exactly the same confidence that the globalised world would continue uninterrupted as there is today.

Yet the first era of globalisation did end. What's more, a precise date can be put on the day it died: 28 June 1914, the day the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off the chain reaction that led to the outbreak of the first world war six weeks later. The unspoken question in Davos was whether 20 January 2017 will be another day that will go down in history for all the wrong reasons.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Globalisation once made the world go around. Is it about to grind to a halt?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
His speech was like one normally expected of an American president. Countries must resist the temptation to retreat into harbour, the world leader said to a packed and admiring audience, but instead have the courage to swim in the vast ocean of the global market.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Taliban recently voiced its hope that Donald Trump would win a second term because he would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, it was a reminder that the 2020 U.S. election has big implications for the Middle East - and, by consequence, for American national security.

Foreign policy barely registers on Americans' election agenda this year in a race dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, economic woes and structural racism.

Nonetheless, the United States' global role is on the ballot in November. Trump has an "America First" vision in which narrowly defined U.S. interests rank as more important than helping maintain the global order. Biden, whose decades of foreign policy experience include chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to restore the United States' international stature.

A Biden win would change American foreign policy significantly. But my research on U.S. policy in the Middle East suggests the United States' actual engagement there might only show cosmetic changes.

Trump's Mideast policy

Trump came to office promising to tame Iran, end the Islamic State and make " the deal of the century " between Israel and the Palestinians.

But he has executed no grand strategy in the Middle East.

Today Iran is emboldened, there's no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and, despite Trump's claims, the Islamic State still exists. Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 international agreement that restricted Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. But restoring sanctions has not curbed the Iranian government's regional influence, much less forced regime change.

New sanctions just imposed on Iran's banking system, for example, are mostly just making life harder for ordinary Iranians during a pandemic by reducing the value of the Iranian currency.

One consistency in Trump's Middle East policy is Israel. Trump steadfastly supports its escalating opposition to Iran and aggressive policies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza territories. Trump also departed from decades of settled U.S. policy on Israel's capital, Jerusalem - a holy city for Muslims that the Palestinians likewise claim as their capital - by moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. This shift angered Muslim nations across the Middle East and beyond, and effectively killed hopes of peace with Israel.

The Trump White House scored one diplomatic victory in the region by normalizing relations between Israel and two Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

In numbers, that matches what presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter together achieved in the Middle East: Carter normalized Israeli ties with Egypt and Clinton with Jordan. But without a just solution to Palestinian demands for statehood, critics say, genuine peace with Arabs is not possible.

Either way, Trump has unquestionably altered the geopolitics of the Middle East, pushing aside Israel-Palestine as the region's main conflict. For both the U.S. and leading Arab nations, the priority is now stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and reducing Iranian attacks on American interests and allies.

Biden's challenges

If Biden wins the election, he would have to contend with more hostile U.S.-Iran relations than what he and Barack Obama bequeathed to Trump in 2016.

In a CNN op-ed when Biden promised to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Biden wrote that through greater cooperation, he believes Iran can be pacified. Rejoining the deal - signed by the U.S., China, Russia and several European powers - would have the effect of improving frayed U.S. cooperation with those nations, too.

But increased engagement with Iran would hurt U.S.-Saudi relations, which have grown closer under Trump's son-in-law and Mideast adviser, Jared Kushner. Saudi Arabia is entangled in what it considers to be a zero-sum struggle with Iran for domination of the Gulf region. The Saudis see U.S. pressure on Iran as a key component of its strategy to contain Iranian influence.

Biden has also signaled that the U.S. will no longer support Saudi Arabia in its devastating intervention in Yemen's civil war.

Iraq, Syria and Libya are all also embroiled in civil wars, conflicts that Biden - who believes the U.S. has "an obligation to lead" - would have to decide how to engage with.

Biden would also contend with a new development in the Middle East: Turkey, which now has military presence in Syria, Iraq, Qatar and Libya. Trump has largely accommodated Turkey's growing regional assertion of its influence.Israel-Palestine

Biden's rhetoric about Israel differs from Trump's. In May he came out publicly against Israel's proposed annexation of the West Bank - an inflammatory plan that the Trump administration may have quietly opposed but would not condemn. Israel has since suspended that plan as part of the United Arab Emirates deal.

But there's no sign the United States' Israel policies would differ substantively under Biden. His campaign has repeatedly stated its "ironclad" support for Israel, condemning any effort to boycott the country or withhold aid to force policy change. As vice president, Biden in 2016 helped get the country its biggest ever U.S. aid package, $38 billion. Biden has already announced he would not move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv if elected.

The U.S. is Israel's strongest ally. Every American president since 1973 has given substantial foreign aid and military technology to the Israelis while shielding Israel from international condemnation over its policies toward Palestinians.

Palestinians almost certainly won't get their land back under Biden. But they could get more money and political support. Biden promises to restore some of the $600 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, among other agencies. Trump eliminated that funding last year in a failed effort to force Palestinians to accept his peace plan.

Obama created some goodwill in the Mideast, which may help Biden. But the region presents challenges that have for decades stymied American presidents, Democratic and Republican alike.

Muqtedar Khan is a professor of Islam and global affairs at the University of Delaware in Newark. This was first published by The Conversation - "Biden's plan to revive Iran talks could calm the Middle East - but on Israel he and Trump largely agree".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion: Trump altered the geopolitics of the Middle East - how would Biden policies compare?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Taliban recently voiced its hope that Donald Trump would win a second term because he would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, it was a reminder that the 2020 U.S. election has big implications for the Middle East - and, by consequence, for American national security.

# data[].attributes.headline
Brexit's bitter-sweet meaning for chocolate lovers - and Ivory Coast - BBC News

# data[].attributes.subject
Brexit's bitter-sweet meaning for chocolate lovers - and Ivory Coast - BBC News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you like chocolate, Brexit and future trade negotiations should matter to you.

This is because Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of cocoa beans - and it currently does most of its business with the European Union, where the beans are processed to make chocolate and cocoa powder.

The UK is a nation of chocolate lovers.

At the moment it imports the bulk of its chocolate products from the EU, and relatively little from Ivory Coast directly.

Many cocoa bean exporters in Ivory Coast are worried about the impact of Brexit, as prices are set in pound sterling, which has fallen sharply since the vote to leave the EU, so the value of Ivory Coast's cocoa sales has dropped.

But trade experts think the UK's exit from Europe may in the long run be an opportunity for the West African nation to restructure and improve its trade deals.

Fourth-largest consumer of chocolate

If the UK imposes tariffs on EU imports, this could mean the price of chocolate rising.

For Abidjan-based financial expert Kadi Fadika-Coulibaly, this is key.

"It would be silly for Ivory Coast to not focus on building better relations with the UK, given that it is the fourth-largest consumer of chocolate products," she says.

Tina Blazquez-Lopez, a financial lawyer in London, says Brexit also allows African countries to reassess their current trade deals.

As it stands, trade between Ivory Coast and the EU is currently free of tariffs.

The EU encourages the African continent to open up approximately 80% of its market to its imports in exchange for tariff-free access to the European market for African goods.

Critics say that this favours the EU as in many cases, tariff-free entry into Africa means that imports end up being cheaper than locally made products and this undermines local efforts to industrialise.

Ms Blazquez-Lopez's view is that existing agreements assume a level playing field.

"In reality, African economies simply cannot compete with Europe and therefore unrestricted EU imports into their markets are unsustainable."
Ivory Coast and chocolate:

It produces 37% of the world's cocoa beans

Its total cocoa export revenue is $3.6bn a year

55% of its cocoa beans are exported to the EU, worth $2bn a year

Only 3% of its cocoa beans are exported directly to the UK, worth $102m

Source: The Economic Complexity Observatory The chocolate shops of Ivory Coast
Jean-Louis Billon, Ivory Coast's commerce minister, agrees that Brexit presents a chance to renegotiate trade deals.

He says the EU is good for Ivory Coast and is likely to remain the country's main trade partner, but says the West African nation is also keen to open up trade with new markets.

"I think it is time for African countries to move to the next level, and start being industrialised countries. If we remain competitive, our products will get the access we need in the EU and in the UK," the minister says.

"We have specific products that you cannot find in the UK, if you do not trade with us."

The big hurdle for the UK when it comes to trade with Francophone Africa has been cultural and language barriers.

Edward George, from pan-African Ecobank, agrees that the UK's commercial relations with French-speaking Africa are weak.

But he argues that in many sectors the flexibility and openness of the British model of doing business gives the UK a huge advantage over French corporations.

"Britain needs to think bigger than Anglophone Africa when it comes to trade. Francophone Africa is a missed opportunity for the UK," he says.

"Brexit will allow us to reset trade relations."

Regardless of what happens post-Brexit, Ivory Coast aims to be able to process 50% of its cocoa locally by 2020.

But chocolate products are expensive to produce and without public and private investment, local companies may find it difficult to compete with global producers.

Transport, labour, electricity, shipping and handling costs discourage investors.

To encourage the export of finished cocoa products, the Ivorian government has provided tax incentives and this is leading to a fresh crop of chocolate entrepreneurs like Olga Yenou.

But four years after launching her healthy chocolate business, she has still not made any profit.

She is keen to export her products to the UK and hopes tax incentives and tariff-free exports will help her succeed.

Africa may be significantly low on the list of post-Brexit priorities, but to avoid its chocolate addicts going without their favourite fix, the UK needs to be proactive in its outlook.

And Ms Blazquez-Lopez sees more positives than negatives for the continent when it comes to the negotiations.

"Brexit is an opportunity for the UK to step up and support Africa so it can begin to feed its own people, refine its own oil, and process its own cocoa and coffee, among other things."

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa, on Instagram at bbcafrica or email africalive@bbc.co.uk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit's bitter-sweet meaning for chocolate lovers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you like chocolate, Brexit and future trade negotiations should matter to you. This is because Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of cocoa beans - and it currently does most of its business with the European Union, where the beans are processed to make chocolate and cocoa powder.

# data[].attributes.body
Rust Belt USA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How did the Leave camp clinch victory in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU after what was a very closely fought contest?
The Leave campaign triumphed right across England and Wales, winning in large northern cities including Sheffield, the Welsh valleys, across the Midlands including Birmingham, and the south and east of England.
The Leave share of the vote mapped Find the result in your area
Nine areas voted by over 70% to leave, many of them in eastern England including Boston, South Holland and Great Yarmouth.
The Remain share of the vote mapped
The Remain campaign, in contrast, dominated in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The highest share of the vote achieved by the Remain camp was in Gibraltar, which is not shown on the map above.

Seven of the 10 areas with the highest share of the vote for Remain were in London, including Lambeth, Hackney and Haringey, all of which polled over 75% to stay in the European Union.

Edinburgh polled over 74% for Remain and Belfast West polled 74.1%.
UK round-up
Overall the Leave campaign came top in nine of the UK's nations and regions, with the Remain campaign coming top in just three. The West Midlands had the highest vote share for Leave, with Scotland highest for Remain.
Full list of every voting area by support for the Leave campaign Who turned out to vote?
The turnout was high at 72%, with more people turning out to vote than in last year's general election. Over 30 million people voted.
Younger people voted Remain
According to polling by Lord Ashcroft, younger voters were much more likely to vote Remain than older voters.

But turnout in areas with a higher proportion of younger residents tended to be lower.

As well as age, educational attainment and national identity were also key factors in how the UK voted.
The overall result
Leave polled the most strongly in 270 counting areas, with Remain coming first in 129.
What happened in the first referendum?
Thursday's referendum was the UK's second referendum on Europe. Back in 1975 the UK voted to stay in by a clear margin. In the 1970s Scotland was one of the areas that voted most strongly against the Common Market, a total reversal as compared with 2016.
Full list of every voting area by Leave
The chart below shows the nearly 400 voting areas that took part in Thursday's referendum. They are ordered by their strength of the vote for the Leave Campaign, those with the strongest support are listed first.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EU referendum: The result in maps and charts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How did the Leave camp clinch victory in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU after what was a very closely fought contest? The Leave campaign triumphed right across England and Wales, winning in large northern cities including Sheffield, the Welsh valleys, across the Midlands including Birmingham, and the south and east of England.

# data[].attributes.body
Danny Dorling on Brexit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Danny Dorling , Halford Mackinder professor of geography

School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

Blame austerity not immigration for the inequality underlying the referendum decision

On the same day that the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, huge rises in UK death rates were reported. These rises followed the austerity policies enacted by the 2010 coalition government.1 Self reported health was a key component of David Cameron's wellbeing index, and it has declined in every year of his premiership, most rapidly towards the end.2 In March 2016 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported: "The proportion of people aged 16 and over in the UK who were somewhat, mostly or completely satisfied with their health was lower in the financial year ending 2014 (57.8%) than in the previous year (59.3%). The way in which people view their health is crucial to well-being."3

Brandishing the slogan "Vote leave, take control,"4 the Leave campaign secured 51.9% of the referendum vote. However, 13 million registered voters did not vote, ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit: the decision of a divided country

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Danny Dorling , Halford Mackinder professor of geography School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK Blame austerity not immigration for the inequality underlying the referendum decision On the same day that the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, huge rises in UK death rates were reported.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lorenza Antonucci, Laszlo Horvath, and André Krouwel challenge the popular view of Leave voters as those left behind educationally and financially. They explain why it is individuals from an intermediate class, whose financial position has been declining, that represent an important section of the Brexit vote.
Over the past year or so, Brexit has been interpreted as the symbol of a historical shift to anti-establishment politics, kicking off a surge in the 'outsider' vote across Europe and the United States. In line with this narrative, initial interpretations of the vote depicted Leave voters as marginalised segments of the population - both educationally and economically - who had channelled their discontent through the referendum.

Another popular view that emerged is that Brexit was the unified response of the working class which finally found its long-lost voice. Yet subsequent, rigorous analysis showed that the profile of Brexit voters is more heterogeneous than initially thought, and that it includes voters with high education and 'middle class' jobs. If Brexit is really connected to socio-economic factors, how do we make sense of this apparent contradiction?

For our own study, we implemented a unique set of questions in a post-referendum survey, focusing on the 'ordinary Brits' - the intermediate class. This intermediate class refers to 'ordinary' families with intermediate or upper-intermediate levels of education, stable jobs, and median levels of income, but which nonetheless face an increasing challenge in maintaining their life-style. This term is preferred to the popularised understanding of class in the UK, which opposes the 'working class' to the 'middle class'. Echoing what Joan Williams has stressed in her analysis of Trumpism, public debates discussing the popularity of populism amongst the working class in most cases refer to the impoverished middle class, rather than the poor and the left behind. Our argument is that, rather than representing the 'left out', Brexit was the voice of this intermediate class who are in a declining financial position. This category of voters represent a group of high sociological relevance also labeled as ' the squeezed middle '.
Brexiters: the least educated voters?
The left-out argument has been constructed around voters whose low levels of education render them unable to compete with those with a university degree in the globalised economy. Academic research has already argued against this. For example, Goodwin and Heath show that voters with A-level education from low skilled communities had similar pro-Leave voting profiles to those with no education. With this in mind, the first set of our models looks at the probability of voting Leave within a number of educational categories, and also explores the combined effect of education with financial circumstances.

In all specifications of our regression models, we also include gender, age, and 2015 GE vote as individual level predictors, as well as cluster respondents within 11 UK regions to account for the geographical variability in the Leave vote. Samples sizes vary for these models between N=1,473 and 1,382.

Figure 1. Predicted probabilities by education (left panel) and by perceived change in financial situation (right panel).

Our findings confirm a negative relationship between education and voting Leave: the higher the level of one's education, the lower the likelihood of them voting Leave. Our findings, however, reject the dichotomous view of the low-educated Brexiter vs the high-educated Remainer, by showing that two groups with intermediate levels of education (voters with good GSCEs and A-levels) were more pro-Leave than the low-educated (those with no formal education and with low GSCE grades).

Looking into how personal finances have changed within these education categories, we find an interesting dynamic (Figure 1). While worsening financial conditions increased the probability of voting Leave, the effect of stagnation is ambiguous. In our model, respondents with A-levels slide towards a Leave vote as their economic conditions worsen. Our model also predicts that those with lower grade GSCEs would vote Leave only if their economic conditions had not changed.
Challenging the myth of Brexit as a working class vote
A second set of models presents the impact of self-assessed social class membership and income on voting Leave. In other respects, these models are identical to the previous by controlling for individual-level demographics as well as geographical clustering. Our sample sizes, however, drop significantly as we had to recover these variables from previous waves of data collection, down to 279, meaning these results must be read with caution.

Looking at class first, we find the Leave vote to be associated with middle class identification and the more neutral 'no class' identification. But we find no evidence of a link with working class identification.

Self-assessment of class presents obvious limitations, but our findings become even more relevant if we consider that Britons tend to identify themselves as working class - even when holding middle class jobs. This analysis does not rule out the popularity of the Leave vote within particular working class communities, but it aims to show that the Leave vote is far from being the expression of a singular and conscious working class, as commentators assume. It instead confirms that the middle class support was very relevant to the Brexit outcome - perhaps the predominant group behind Brexit, as argued by Dorling.

We then turn to analyse whether Brexit has been supported by an intermediate group in objective terms. In order to do this, our models tease out the proportion of Leave voters within income categories. The result is partly similar to previous reports in that higher income would link to the Remain vote. Still, it is only the top quantile - the richest respondents - who slant significantly towards Remain. But we do not find enough evidence to show that the effect of income is incremental: that the intermediate class would be more likely to vote Remain than the poorest groups (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Predicted probabilities by income quantiles and class identification.

So, based on the above, the Leave vote was not more popular among the low skilled, but rather among individuals with intermediate levels of education (A-Levels and GSCE high grades), especially when their socio-economic position was perceived to be declining and/or to be stagnant. These findings point to an alternative narrative to that of the left behind.

This argument of the squeezed middle being behind Brexit raises new questions about how the new politics of inequality influences voting, for it shows that Brexit was the expression of a widely felt social malaise that affects ample segments of the population.

_________

Note: the above draws on a co-authored article, published in Competition & Change (DOI: 10.1177/1024529417704135).
About the Authors
Lorenza Antonucci is Birmingham Fellow at the School of Social Policy of the University of Birmingham. Lorenza's research explores the changes in the distribution of welfare sources across European welfare states and their impacts on inequality. She is the author of ' Student Lives in Crisis' (Policy Press, 2016) and she tweets at @SocialLore.

Laszlo Horvath is PhD candidate and Marie Curie Fellow at University of Exeter Q-Step Centre. He tweets at @_lhorvath.

André Krouwel is associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam and is Academic Director of Kieskompas (Vote Compass). His latest book is Party Transformations in European Democracies (SUNY Press, 2012).
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Featured image credit: Pixabay/Public Domain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit was not the voice of the working class nor of the uneducated - it was of the squeezed middle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lorenza Antonucci , Laszlo Horvath , and André Krouwel challenge the popular view of Leave voters as those left behind educationally and financially. They explain why it is individuals from an intermediate class, whose financial position has been declining, that represent an important section of the Brexit vote.

# data[].attributes.body
Brexit Myths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC's political editor, will spill the inside beans of Brexit on Monday: how was it possible for David Cameron to have entered this referendum so unprepared, so lukewarm, when it was his idea in the first place? Was Jeremy Corbyn ineffective because he was indifferent, or was he a perfectly effective campaigner, scuppered by a hostile media? How did Michael Gove make his peace with the epic public mendacity his case required? What happened to turn the Labour heartlands to Ukip?

The first three questions are fascinating at the level of character; the Brexit decision was so significant, and the human flaws and vanities that created the moment so petty, that it is impossible not to get drawn in. Yet that final question about Labour heartlands - a well-worn euphemism for "deprived north" - is everything. Already an orthodoxy and inevitability have shaped around it: if you take what was traditionally red, add a bolt of blue in the form of defensive nationalism, then of course you get purple - it has the solidity of a physical law.

How history judges Cameron - between hapless victim and appalling bungler - will not have a huge impact on our political landscape; the verdict on Gove, even less. There will be some lasting effect on Labour's truths and confidence from an analysis of Corbyn, but we can't hang anything off his performance during the referendum until we accept that both sides are right: he was beset by a hostile media and he was ambivalent.

This story about the deprived north, however, will have lasting and profoundly misleading consequences for the political landscape, if we don't think more deeply about it.

The prevailing assumption is that the vote was one in the eye for metropolitan elites, and that the white working classes, the disenfranchised and unheeded, the voters hidden on estates, had finally given a message to the Westminster bubble that knew nothing and cared less about their concerns. In fact, most leave voters were in the south: the south-east, south-west - indeed the entire south apart from London voted leave.

They did so by slightly smaller margins - though it is interesting to note that Wales, apparently the hotbed of a self-sabotaging leave movement, driven by a deprivation that only the EU was interested in alleviating, voted out by a smaller margin than the south-west. Yet southerners voted in greater numbers; their votes were decisive. Furthermore, most leave voters are middle class, or at least were of the generation whose housing and pension windfalls put them squarely in the category of wealth.

Analysing voting data by education - where the more degrees you had, the more likely you were to want to remain - is misleading: it was much less common, before Tony Blair's 1999 pledge to provide tertiary education for 50% of the nation, to go to university, and a degree was by no means a prerequisite for membership of the middle classes.

The more enlightening figures are those that plot voting against housing; yes, social and council tenants voted leave, but so did those who owned their houses outright, the people we might describe as society's winners. By housing type, the only groups where remain prevailed were private renters and people with mortgages.

In other words, the very most we can say is that leave had some popularity with the disaffected and the disenfranchised; but it was not limited to that group, and the people who swung the vote were affluent, older southerners. Instead, we've taken it as a kicking-off point that the Brexit vote was won by a council estate in Bolton.

The result is, firstly, the othering of the north: people think differently up there, and nobody in London could possibly understand them. In the media and, to a lesser degree, parliament, this has turned into a performative defeatism belied by competitive authenticity: you're more metropolitan elite than me, because I've done some polling in Rochdale; ah, but my grandmother is northern and I met someone once from Wirral South, and I can tell you, on the contrary, that you're the one who will never understand.

Perhaps defeatism from the elite sounds like a good thing, not a moment too soon; except it carries an attendant assumption that poverty has an immovable set of opinions, which cannot be shifted and which it is disrespectful of the wealthy even to name, let alone discuss. Because we wouldn't understand.

For every one person who voted leave because the global rat race had left them behind, there was more than one person pretty well served by the economy, who voted leave because they believed the line about sovereignty, or because they were still huffy about the European directive on clean beaches, or because they simply associated the EU with faceless change and preferred things to stay the same. The picture cannot be drawn in simple, binary lines between rich and poor. The divisions are, like the crosscurrents in a family, much more layered; and, like a family, insoluble without the presumption of a fundamental ability and ardent desire to accommodate one another.

Secondly, of course, it has become the immigration election, despite the fact that only a third of leave voters cited borders as their chief concern. And this brings with it a host of assumptions that we might loosely class as swallowing Nigel Farage whole: that people who oppose free movement will always oppose it; that it is pointless explaining the lump of labour fallacy, because that is yet more elitist sneering; that public services are under pressure because of foreigners rather than underfunding; that housing is expensive because of demand rather than rent extraction by a capital class empowered by inequality; that the voters have spoken, and now our humanitarian duties to refugees must come second, to the point that we don't even mention them; that the metropolitan elite must simply accept that it let immigration get out of control and must pay the price of a mistrust of unknowable proportions and unguessable length.

Remaking this picture, so that it resembles reality rather than regurgitates false absolutes, is far more important than any discussion about a second referendum, or a snap election, or a progressive alliance. It is more important even than the terms under which we exit the EU, if indeed we meaningfully do. At stake is our ability to cohere. For the sake of national unity, we must question, rather than merely accept, the new nationalism.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Think the north and the poor caused Brexit? Think again | Zoe Williams

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC's political editor, will spill the inside beans of Brexit on Monday: how was it possible for David Cameron to have entered this referendum so unprepared, so lukewarm, when it was his idea in the first place? Was Jeremy Corbyn ineffective because he was indifferent, or was he a perfectly effective campaigner, scuppered by a hostile media?

# data[].attributes.body
The UK's reign as a global power is now over

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The UK's vote to leave the EU has already had a number of worrying effects. The strength of the pound is in question, and the leadership of the Labour Party and Ukip are still in disarray. For those in the Remain camp, this was all utterly predictable; it is the canary in the coal mine. Those who sided with the Leave campaign, however, are more sanguine.

The current political and economic turmoil will subside, they say, and with time the UK will bounce back with an even stronger economy and greater political autonomy - just some of the many positive by-products of reasserting the national power that had been lost to the much-maligned bureaucrats in Brussels. The logic is simple: although the UK was already in command of its foreign and military policy, by cutting the institutional ties that bound it to Europe it will regain freedom of action over that other major element of great power status - the economy. It will become sovereign once more, and thus able to chart its own course.

But the idea that the UK will gain power by removing itself from the EU is based on a profoundly mistaken understanding of where the UK's great power status comes from. While it is tempting to reduce state power to military capabilities and economic power, such a calculation fails to appreciate the other forms of power that states can accrue. But while harder to measure, less-tangible sources of power have been the foundation of the UK's great power status for much of the last 70 years.

In recent years, the maintenance of these sources of power was strongly dependent on the UK being in the driving seat of a continental political entity. So severely will these foundations of power be eroded by Brexit that their loss will far outweigh any putative economic benefits the UK may achieve by leaving. To put it another way, even if the UK's economy grew as a result of its decision to leave - an outcome few predict - Brexit would still mean the end of the UK as a major power.

Brexit reactions - in pictures
Show all 10
It has long been acknowledged that the UK has been punching above its weight on the global stage, but people are less clear as to why this is. Since Anthony Eden's failed attempt at asserting neocolonialist control over the Suez Canal in 1956, the UK has commanded a declining share of the world's economy and a declining military budget, especially relative to other great powers. Yet, despite this material decline, it has retained an outsized influence on global affairs.

There are several reasons for this, such as the remnants of imperial relationships including a shared history and culture with the hegemonic US. But, we contend, a major reason has been due to its position as a key player, along with France and Germany, in the EU, a polity that could jostle with the US and China at the top of the global hierarchy. This position generated at least three different forms of political influence that it will now lose.

First, the most obvious benefit of being a senior partner in the EU was that the UK could help to navigate the shape of the European project in a way that met its particular foreign and economic policies. Leavers were certainly right that Britain sometimes had to take deals that did not suit it, but the reality was that the UK was able to set the terms of the EU's institutional structure. The UK's presence in the EU helped to steer the project towards being more market-friendly than it otherwise might have been.

UK membership also acted as a brake on the integrating tendencies of the EU, preventing the centralisation of too much power on the continent. Membership thus allowed Britain to help meet two of its longstanding strategic goals since the time of Napoleon: the promotion of European free-trade and the prevention of the emergence of a continental hegemon. Outside the EU, it can no longer meet these goals through institutional design and management. Instead, it must rely on its traditional power capabilities which, when arrayed against the market fortress that is the EU, will have far less impact.

UK's May pledges close ties with Germany in Merkel meeting

Second, as a consequence of being the 'sceptical' member of the EU's leadership triumvirate, the UK also gained a number of followers inside Europe. Britain's suspicion of Brussels' authority and its preference for a more market-oriented union are shared by many other states in the EU, most notably the post-communist Eastern European members who acceded in the last 15 years. As the strongest representative of these shared interests, the UK could credibly act as spokesperson on their behalf. The ability to speak on behalf of many other states (either implicitly or explicitly) meant that the UK had to be listened to and courted by other states. Now that it is headed out of the EU, Britain cannot claim to represent a broader constituency of states.

Of which state is this post-EU UK representative, except itself? Eurosceptic states inside the EU will have to form a new bloc to meet their interests while Eurosceptic states outside the EU will bypass the UK entirely in having their concerns addressed.

This last point illustrates the final element of British power that has been shattered by Brexit - its position on the global stage. The UK's privileged position inside the EU meant that it was an important "plug socket" into the EU for outside states. Consider the much-vaunted "special relationship" between the US and the UK. The quid pro quo for this was reasonably clear: in return for American support of British interests, such as in Kosovo in 1999 and in Libya in 2011, the UK would act as an advocate for US ideas and policies inside Europe.

But this relationship was dependent on Britain's access to, and positions within, the decision-making apparatus of the EU. With its new found "freedom". the UK is a political outsider, with less political intelligence, fewer British personnel in key positions and less good-will with European officials. Thus it is less able to promote US interests in Europe.

Indeed, Washington is already moving its focus from London to Berlin. This is a dynamic we should expect to repeat itself in every international political relationship the UK has. Its important role as seasoned broker in the UN Security Council will be reduced (most likely in favour of France) when other diplomats realise that Britain will have a harder time bringing the other Europeans along. The same will be true in the G7, the G20, the WTO, the IMF, and of course, the EU itself.

Brexiteers claimed that by leaving the EU they would finally cut the ropes that tied the UK down and prevented it from achieving its potential. But they failed to realise that the UK had already far exceeded the political potential that its GDP and military capabilities suggested it deserved. Rather than binding its political power, the UK's close ties to the EU helped it to have an outsized influence on the continental and global stage.

Now the ropes have been cut, in this - and far too late - those ropes have been found to be the UK's political lifelines. For the first time since 1973, the UK will truly be on its own, forced to rely far more on its raw economic and military power than it has for a generation. This does not augur well. In the modern interconnected world naked power is an inefficient tool of statecraft and states more often meet their interests through subtler forms of influence.

Yes, Britain is free of one of the most complicated institutional structures in history. But political freedom can also mean political isolation. Just ask Russia.
David Banks is a professorial lecturer specialising in political history at the American University in Washington DC. Joseph O'Mahoney is a Stanton junior faculty fellow in the Security Studies Program at MIT and an assistant professor in the school of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
After Brexit, Britain is free - but it will never be a global power again

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The UK's vote to leave the EU has already had a number of worrying effects. The strength of the pound is in question, and the leadership of the Labour Party and Ukip are still in disarray. For those in the Remain camp, this was all utterly predictable; it is the canary in the coal mine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
China has moved long-range missiles to the Russian border from where they could reach the USA, apparently in response to President Donald Trump 's "aggression", unconfirmed reports say.

The missiles, which can carry ten nuclear warheads up to 8,700 miles, have reportedly been moved to Heilongjiang province in north-east China.

A leading English language newspaper in the communist country carried an editorial urging the country to strengthen its nuclear arsenal to '"force" the US to respect China in the wake of the new President's tough talk.

The Global Times - which is state controlled like all Chinese media and is sometimes used to road-test public opinion - this week called on the Government to boost its nuclear arsenal.

The editorial said: "Before Trump took power, his team showed a tough stance toward China, and in turn, Beijing will ready itself for pressures imposed by the new US Government."

And it added: "China bears the heavy task of safeguarding national security. Nuclear deterrence is the foundation of China's national security, which must be consolidated with the rising strategic risks."

It said a military clash with the US is "the very last thing that China wants" but nuclear weapons must be at the cornerstone of its deterrent.

The call is in stark contrast to a speech given by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United Nations just days earlier, where he called for nuclear weapons to be "prohibited and destroyed over time".

Chinese social media has carried pictures claiming to show an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile system, Dongfeng-41 in the north-east.

The Global Times suggested the People's Liberation Army could have leaked the photos on social media as a warning to Mr Trump.

The President, who has been in office for less than a week, has ruffled Chinese feathers with strident talk on trade and national security.

In one of the campaign debates with Hillary Clinton, he blamed China for stealing US jobs from Americans, for devaluing the dollar and for engaging in state-sponsored cyberhacking.

Mr Trump said: "Look at what China is doing to our country. They are using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China."

He also said on Twitter back in 2012 that global warming was " a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese " - but has since said that was meant in jest.

Before he took office, Mr Trump stoked a diplomatic row by accusing China of flexing its muscles in the disputed territory of the South China Sea.

Mr Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said last week China's access to the islands it has built there might be blocked - raising the prospect of a military confrontation.

The US does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign nation, but in December Mr Trump became the first US President or President-elect since Jimmy Carter in 1979 to speak on the telephone to Taiwan's leader, President Tsai Ing-wen.

The bilateral relations between the US and China are regarded as among the most important in the world because of the potential for conflict and the size of their economies.

Relations between the two countries have generally been stable but with some periods of conflict - most notably in the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

Mr Trump has urged China to use its influence to rein in North Korea, which is believed to have conducted at least two tests of nuclear weapons in the last year.

Reuse content

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
China 'deploys nuclear-capable missiles' in response to Trump

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
China has moved long-range missiles to the Russian border from where they could reach the USA, apparently in response to President Donald Trump's "aggression", unconfirmed reports say. The missiles, which can carry ten nuclear warheads up to 8,700 miles, have reportedly been moved to Heilongjiang province in north-east China.

# data[].attributes.body
State voting by demographic weight

# data[].attributes.headline
Brexit: How will it affect Britain's standing in the world? | The Independent

# data[].attributes.subject
Brexit: How will it affect Britain's standing in the world? | The Independent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Common foreign and security policy covers foreign affairs, defence and civilian crisis management. It is in the domain of the European Council, headed by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs who is supported by the European External Action Service. Member states have a veto on policy.

The European Defence Agency, based in Brussels, coordinates proposals, projects and operations. The member states themselves, however, are at present in charge of their overall defence policies and investment.

In the EU's own words it "is a key player on issues ranging from Iran's nuclear programme and stabilising Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa to fighting global warming. Its joint foreign and security policy, designed to resolve conflicts and foster international understanding, is based on diplomacy; trade, humanitarian aid, security and defence often play a complementary role."

Will Britain gain or lose in terms of defence and diplomatic reach by Brexit?

The European Union wants to expand its foreign affairs and defence arms. It says: "The sheer demographic and economic weight of the 28-nation bloc makes it a major power. It is the world's biggest trader with the world's second currency, the euro. The trend towards joint foreign policy decisions strengthens its arm."

To the Brexiteers this is another example of "ever closer union", the project to create a European super state. They are particularly suspicious of the creation of European armed forces, maintaining that it will be incompetent and, at the same time, undermine Nato and alienate the US.

The Brexiteers also hold that the EU exaggerates its diplomatic capabilities. The final deal with Iran over its nuclear programme involved not the EU but the five permanent members of the US Security Council along with Germany.

The Remain campaign say that talks of a European armed force is alarmist and Britain has no intention of signing up to it. The UK, they say, has the opportunity to play a key role in shaping EU foreign and defence policy by staying inside. EU officials point out that it was Baroness Ashton, a Briton, who laid the initial groundwork for the initial Iran talks and a historic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo when she was the High Representative.

The EU will, in reality, move towards greater integration in foreign affairs and defence with or without the UK. As a senior German government official pointed out last week: "The goal is a European defence union. That is not about competing with Nato, but we need a stronger Europe. If we wait for the Eurosceptics, then we will only go backwards."

What about the Special Relationship between Britain and the US?

The Obama administration has been making in clear for some time that it wanted Britain to stay in the EU. The President intervened personally, coming to the UK midway through the referendum campaign to state that America wanted its friends and allies to stick together. His words were flattering, such as in stressing the need for British leadership within the EU, but also intimidating, pointing out that the UK would be "in the back of the queue" in getting trade deals with the US if it chooses to leave the EU.

Hillary Clinton is also a strong advocate of the UK staying in the EU, using her former advisor, Jake Sullivan, to say: "Hillary Clinton believes that transatlantic cooperation is essential, and that cooperation is strongest when Europe is united. She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU."

This was when Ms Clinton was seen as a certainty to beat Donald Trump to the White House without too much trouble. The latest poll figures show she is still ahead of the presumptive Republican candidate, but a Trump presidency is no longer beyond the realms of possibility. Mr Trump, who will be visiting Britain a day after the referendum, has declared: "I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe. A lot of that was pushed by the EU. I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation: just my feeling."

Can Britain strike out alone?

The Brexiteers hold the view that Britain, with the world's fifth largest economy, a member of the UN Security Council and the possessor of a nuclear arsenal, does not need the EU to be a player on the international stage.

Various options exist such as joining NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) if it agrees to take the UK as a member, strengthening trade and strategic relationships with rising powers and even becoming a " Switzerland with nukes". There is also the prospect of greater involvement in the G8, G20 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Firstly, however, the UK will have to negotiate its departure from the EU. A number of EU governments have warned that Britain will get nothing like an easy ride on this, not least because doing so would encourage exit movements in member states. The Brexiteers argue that the EU cannot afford to take a punitive stance because it needs to trade with Britain.

Joining NAFTA would place the UK strategically firmly in the mid-Atlantic, away from Europe, but this will also include a certain amount of loss of independence, and London will have relatively little leverage in terms of the joining rules.

A "Switzerland with nukes" option does not work because Britain, as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Libya and elsewhere, wants to continue to flex its military muscle and not just be a financial centre. Forums such as G20, meanwhile, only allows limited avenues to project influence.

Britain can focus on potentially lucrative markets like China and India. But the Chinese have made it clear that they want to deal with the UK as part of an EU block. India, because of historic ties, may be more accessible, but is unlikely to be easy. David Cameron has visited India three times since he became Prime Minister in 2010. Narendra Modi's visit to Britain last November was the first by an Indian prime minister since 2006. Mr Modi made 28 other foreign trips before coming to Britain. He will be in Washington this week, visiting the White House for the second time in two years. It will be his seventh meeting with President Obama.
The EU referendum debate has so far been characterised by bias, distortion and exaggeration. So until 23 June we we're running a series of question and answer features that explain the most important issues in a detailed, dispassionate way to help inform your decision. What is Brexit and why are we having an EU referendum? Will we gain or lose rights by leaving the European Union? What will happen to immigration if there's Brexit? Will Brexit make the UK more or less safe? Will the UK benefit from being released from EU laws? Will leaving the EU save taxpayers money and mean more money for the NHS? What will Brexit do to UK trade? How Brexit will affect British tourism What will Brexit mean for British tourists booking holidays in the EU? Will Brexit help or damage the environment? Will Brexit mean that Europeans have to leave the UK? What will Brexit mean for British expats?
Reuse content

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How will Brexit affect Britain's standing in the world?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Is there a European Union foreign and defence policy? The Common foreign and security policy covers foreign affairs, defence and civilian crisis management. It is in the domain of the European Council, headed by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs who is supported by the European External Action Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit and the environment Protecting what we have | Friends of the Earth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As Britain leaves the European Union, what are the prospects for our air quality, beaches and wildlife? And what protections will there be for our bees?

# data[].attributes.body
How the Rustbelt Paved Trump's Road to Victory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The president-elect won by locking in support from traditional "blue wall" states Hillary Clinton thought were in her corner.

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Two Americas collided in the presidential race and the side that was genuinely passionate about its champion walked away the narrow winner.

Donald Trump, the billionaire populist, mobilized ardent support from the groups most uneasy about the economic, cultural, and demographic trends remaking America. Hillary Clinton, in turn, posted solid, but not resounding, margins among the groups that have most welcomed those changes. That slight imbalance allowed him to breach the Democrats' "blue wall" at its weakest point-the blue-collar Rustbelt-and rumble to victory. A political scientist might say she fell victim to asymmetrical mobilization.

Latest from Politics

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Catch A Sketch
Trump's victory was fragile and deeply contested. Trump did soundly defeat her in the states each side treated as the biggest battlegrounds: Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. But as I write, Clinton has passed him in the national popular vote, and seems likely to stay ahead given that most remaining votes are in West Coast states she won. The key to his win was breakthroughs in Rustbelt states Clinton had thought safely in her corner: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and perhaps Michigan depending on the final count. At best, he will win each of those states by margins of about one percentage point or less. (She held Minnesota by a similarly narrow margin.)

Yet all of that and a dime, as people used to say, would get Clinton on the subway. To the astonishment of old-school reporters, new-age data journalists, pollsters in both parties, and to a large extent each campaign, Trump will take the oath next January. I count myself among those not smart enough to see this coming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The States Hillary Clinton Neglected Led to Her Defeat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The president-elect won by locking in support from traditional "blue wall" states Hillary Clinton thought were in her corner. Two Americas collided in the presidential race and the side that was genuinely passionate about its champion walked away the narrow winner.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Durham Energy Institute : Impact of Brexit on the UK energy system - Durham University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The DEI is calling for a recognition that the UK is already facing significant threats to the future security of the UK energy system which are likely to be enhanced by the uncertainties of the Brexit process.

# data[].attributes.body
How Trump won: The revenge of working-class whites

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For the past 40 years, America's economy has raked blue-collar white men over the coals. It whittled their paychecks. It devalued the type of work they did best. It shuttered factories and mines and shops in their communities. New industries sprouted in cities where they didn't live, powered by workers with college degrees they didn't hold.

They were not the only ones who felt abandoned by a rapidly globalizing economy, but they developed a distinctly strong pessimism in its face.

On Tuesday, their frustrations helped elect Donald Trump, the first major-party nominee of the modern era to speak directly and relentlessly to their economic and cultural fears. It was a "Brexit" moment in America, a revolt of working-class whites who felt stung by globalization and uneasy in a diversifying country where their political power had seemed to be diminishing.

It was a rejection of the business-friendly policies favored at various points by elites in both parties, which deepened trade relationships with foreign countries and favored allowing more immigrants in. And it was a raw outburst at the trends of rising inequality and economic dislocation that defined America's economy thus far this century.

Whites without a college degree - men and women - made up a third of the 2016 electorate. Trump won them by 39 percentage points, according to exit polls, far surpassing 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's 25 percent margin. They were the foundation of his victories across the Rust Belt, including a blowout win in Ohio and stunning upsets in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In polling, these voters have expressed deep racial and cultural anxieties. In exit polls they were more likely than the country as a whole to say that illegal immigrants should be deported. But those polls also suggested economic concerns and hostility toward leaders in Washington were much more important factors driving them to Trump.

Half of these voters said the economy was the most important issue in their vote, compared to 14 percent for immigration. A majority said international trade takes away American jobs. Three-quarters said the economy is "not good" or "poor" and nearly 8 in 10 said their personal financial situation was the same or worse than it was four years ago. Two-thirds said they preferred Trump to handle the economy instead of Democrat Hillary Clinton, compared with less than half of the electorate overall.

These frustrations were not new. They had mounted for decades, boiling over in the slow recovery from the Great Recession. That was particularly true among men. From 1975 to 2014, according to census data analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, white male workers without a college degree saw their median incomes fall by more than 20 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Their incomes fell 14 percent between 2007 and 2014.

Last year, amid a much improved US economy and a tightening labor market, their incomes had jumped by 6 percent, according to the Center's analysis. But that increase was nowhere close to enough to make up the ground lost in the recession - let alone since the 1970s.

"It's completely understandable how these workers feel left behind," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the center who is a former aide to Vice President Biden.

At the same time, these working class whites have seen the fruits of American prosperity increasingly go to the very rich. "Superstar" cities, like San Francisco, Boston and yes, Washington, gained even more wealth, and they have been responsible for an increasingly large share of the country's job growth.

Meanwhile, non-college whites saw jobs go away and businesses fold in the rural communities and smaller cities where they are more likely to live, particularly in the Rust Belt.

"Their access to economic opportunity in large measure comes down to the luck of geography," said John Lettieri, co-founder of the Economic Innovation Group, an advocacy group whose research also showed that this group of voters is underrepresented in America's most prosperous regions.

Many of the downtrodden areas have lost factory jobs over the last several decades, as expanding trade and advancing technology pushed the economy away from production work and into services. Some areas suffered as coal mines closed. Others experienced rapid growth in high-paying energy extraction and support jobs several years ago as hydraulic fracturing boomed, only to watch many of those jobs evaporate when oil prices fell.

The workers increasingly came to see trade deals as the culprit - namely the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada in the 1990s and the effort to open up trade up trade with China in 2000, a decision that economic research suggested has cost America at least 2 million jobs on net.

Trump courted working class whites by promising a restoration of the old industrial economy - through renegotiated trade deals and tariffs on imports; by pledging to deport immigrants, which he said would reduce competition for native-born workers; and by promising rapid economic growth from tax cuts, deregulation and more drilling.

US Election night in pictures
Show all 24
Many economists, including several conservative ones, warn Trump's plans will not deliver the relief those workers are seeking. Some say tariffs won't bring back jobs and could actually lead to recession. Others say Trump's plans ignore more critical issues for the working class, such as the need for improved worker training or measures to encourage workers to migrate to higher-opportunity regions.

"That's the most disappointing part of the 2016 election," said Abby McCloskey, an economist who focuses on the middle class and who advised some of Trump's rivals for the GOP nomination. Like Clinton, she said, Trump had "resorted to partisan talking points that the system is rigged against these workers."

Trump's message did not resonate with black or Latino workers, who earn less at every education level than whites do. Those workers lean Democratic by various degrees but appeared especially repelled by Trump's attacks on immigrants and his stoking of racial resentments.

Critically, his huge margins among blue-collar whites would not have sufficed to deliver him the presidency, if he had not also maintained a slim advantage among whites with college degrees as well. As a group, those workers have been the winners of the new economy, blessed with cheaper imported consumer goods and a persistent wage advantage over their non-college counterparts.

Trump's challenge was inspiring the blue-collar whites without alienating the college-educated ones. He succeeded, and it won him the White House.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Trump won: The revenge of working-class whites

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For the past 40 years, America's economy has raked blue-collar white men over the coals. It whittled their paychecks. It devalued the type of work they did best. It shuttered factories and mines and shops in their communities. New industries sprouted in cities where they didn't live, powered by workers with college degrees they didn't hold.

# data[].attributes.body
The geography of the Brexit vote (4): Anton (C), Lorenz, Scott, Sam H

The geography of the Trump election win (3): Tom B (C), Jared, Hector

The potential geographical impacts of Brexit (3): Sasha (C), Raph, Mac

The geographical impacts of a Trump administration (3): Violet (C), Jay, Sam T

Is this the end of globalisation (3)? Tomos (C), Louis, Oli S,

# data[].attributes.body
Brexit rejects globalisation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
T he age of globalisation began on the day the Berlin Wall came down. From that moment in 1989, the trends evident in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s accelerated: the free movement of capital, people and goods; trickle-down economics; a much diminished role for nation states; and a belief that market forces, now unleashed, were unstoppable.

There has been push back against globalisation over the years. The violent protests seen in Seattle during the World Trade Organisation meeting in December 1999 were the first sign that not everyone saw the move towards untrammelled freedom in a positive light. One conclusion from the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 was that it was not only trade and financial markets that had gone global. The collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers seven years later put paid to the idea that the best thing governments could do when confronted with the power of global capital was to get out of the way and let the banks supervise themselves.

Now we have Britain’s rejection of the EU. This was more than a protest against the career opportunities that never knock and the affordable homes that never get built. It was a protest against the economic model that has been in place for the past three decades.

To be sure, not all Britain’s problems are the result of its EU membership. It is not theEuropean commission’s fault that productivity is so weak or that the trains don’t run on time. The deep-seated failings that were there when Britain voted in the referendum last Thursday were still there when the country woke up to the result on Friday.

Evidence of just how unbalanced the economy is will be provided when the latest figures for Britain’s current account are released later this week. These show whether the country’s trade and investment income are in the black or the red. At the last count, in the final three months of 2015, the UK was running a record peacetime deficit of 7% of GDP.

In another sense, however, the EU is culpable. In the shiny new world created when former communist countries were integrated into the global model, Europe was supposed to be big and powerful enough to protect its citizens against the worst excesses of the market. Nation states had previously been the guarantor of full employment and welfare. The controls they imposed on the free movement of capital and people ensured that trade unions could bargain for higher pay without the threat of work being off-shored, or cheaper labour being brought into the country.

In the age of globalisation, the idea was that a more integrated Europe would collectively serve as the bulwark that nation states could no longer provide. Britain, France, Germany or Italy could not individually resist the power of trans-national capital, but the EU potentially could. The way forward was clear. Move on from a single market to a single currency, a single banking system, a single budget and eventually a single political entity.

That dream is now over. As Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform thinktank put it: “Brexit is a momentous event in the history of Europe and from now on the narrative will be one of disintegration not integration.”

The reason is obvious. Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare states were all better protected in the heyday of nation states in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation. Unemployment across the eurozone is more than 10%. Italy’s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the euro was created. Greece’s economy has shrunk by almost a third. Austerity has eroded welfare provision. Labour market protections have been stripped away.

Inevitably, there has been a backlash, manifested in the rise of populist parties on the left and right. An increasing number of voters believe there is not much on offer from the current system. They think globalisation has benefited a small privileged elite, but not them. They think it is unfair that they should pay the price for bankers’ failings. They hanker after a return to the security that the nation state provided, even if that means curbs on the core freedoms that underpin globalisation, including the free movement of people.

This has caused great difficulties for Europe’s mainstream parties, but especially those of the centre left. They have been perfectly happy to countenance the idea of curbs on capital movements such as a financial transaction tax, and have no problems with imposing tariffs to prevent the dumping of Chinese steel. They feel uncomfortable, however, with the idea that there should be limits on the free movement of people.

The risk is that if the mainstream parties don’t respond to the demands of their traditional supporters, they will be replaced by populist parties who will. The French Socialist party has effectively lost most of its old blue-collar working class base to the hard left and the hard right, and in the UK there is a danger that the same thing will happen to the Labour party, where Jeremy Corbyn’s laissez-faire approach to immigration is at odds with the views of many voters in the north that supported Ed Miliband in the 2015 general election, but who plumped for Brexit last week.

There are those who argue that globalisation is now like the weather, something we can moan about but not alter. This is a false comparison. The global market economy was created by a set of political decisions in the past and it can be shaped by political decisions taken in the future.

Torsten Bell, the director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, analysed the voting patterns in the referendum and found that those parts of Britain with the strongest support for Brexit were those that had been poor for a long time. The result was affected by “deeply entrenched national geographical inequality”, he said.

There has been much lazy thinking in the past quarter of a century about globalisation. As Bell notes, it is time to rethink the assumption that a “flexible globalised economy can generate prosperity that is widely shared”.

Self-evidently, large numbers of people across Europe do not believe a flexible, globalised economy is working for them. One response to the Brexit vote from the rest of Europe has been that a tough line should be taken with Britain to show other countries that dissent has consequences. This would only make matters worse. Voters have legitimate grievances about an economic system that has failed them. Punishing Britain will not safeguard the EU. It will hasten its dissolution.

… we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.

Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.

And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. ​​Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The EU has failed to protect its population from a global economic model that many believe is not working for them

# data[].attributes.headline
Trump's election spells the end of globalisation

# data[].attributes.subject
Trump's election spells the end of globalisation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Not necessarily ... global trade growth has been slowing for years, down to China's economic deceleration and checks on riskier international lending

oes Donald Trump's election as US president mean that globalisation is dead, or are reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated? If globalisation is only partly incapacitated, not terminally ill, should we worry? How much will slower trade growth, now in the offing, matter for the global economy?

World trade growth would be slowing down, even without Trump in office. Its growth was already flat in the first quarter of 2016, and it fell by nearly 1% in the second quarter. This continues a prior trend: since 2010, global trade has grown at an annual rate of barely 2%. Together with the fact that worldwide production of goods and services has been rising by more than 3%, this means that the trade-to-GDP ratio has been falling, in contrast to its steady upward march in earlier years.

This disturbing trajectory, argue the mavens of globalisation, reflects the resurgent protectionism manifest in popular opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and now in Trump's electoral victory. It means that the benefits of openness and specialisation are being squandered.

Causality in economics may be elusive, but in this case it is clear. So far, slower trade growth has been the result of slower GDP growth, not the other way around.

This is particularly evident in the case of investment spending, which has fallen sharply since the global financial crisis. Investment spending is trade-intensive, because countries rely disproportionately on a relatively small handful of producers, like Germany, for technologically sophisticated capital goods.

In addition, slower trade growth reflects China's economic deceleration. Until 2011 China was growing at double-digit rates, and Chinese exports and imports were growing even faster. China's growth has now slowed by a third, leading to slower growth of Chinese trade.

China's growth miracle, benefiting a fifth of the Earth's population, is the most important economic event of the last quarter-century. But it can happen only once. And now that the phase of catch-up growth is over for China, this engine of global trade will slow.

The other engine of world trade has been global supply chains. Trade in parts and components has benefited from falling transport costs, reflecting containerisation and related advances in logistics. But efficiency in shipping is unlikely to continue to improve faster than efficiency in the production of what is being shipped. Already, motor vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point, unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns.

So should we worry that trade is growing more slowly? Yes, but only in the sense that a doctor worries when a patient runs a fever. Fever is rarely life threatening; rather, it is a symptom of an underlying condition. In this case, the condition is slow economic growth, also known as secular stagnation, caused by depressed investment, which in turn reflects financial problems and policy uncertainty.

This, then, is the underlying condition. Trade agreements such as TPP and TTIP address it only obliquely. Increased spending on infrastructure by governments, to boost investment and growth directly, is more to the point.

But whether the Trump administration and the new US Congress can design and implement a programme of productive infrastructure spending remains to be seen.

More generally, a political consensus is needed on growth-promoting policies, so that investment is not held hostage to political infighting. Whether this will be possible under Trump's administration is another open question.

The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital flows - the sum of inflows and outflows - are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly in absolute terms from 2009 levels.

But dramatic is not the same as alarming. In fact, it is mainly cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment - financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies - remains at pre-crisis levels. So do cross-border borrowing and lending through stock and bond markets.

This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations. In response, many banks curtailed their cross-border business. But, rather than alarming anyone, this should be seen as reassuring, because the riskiest forms of international finance have been curtailed without disrupting more stable and productive forms of foreign investment.

We now face the prospect of the US government revoking the Dodd-Frank Act and rolling back the financial reforms of recent years. Less stringent financial regulation may make for the recovery of international capital flows. But we should be careful what we wish for.
* Barry Eichengreen is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley; Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge; and a former senior policy adviser at the IMF. © Project Syndicate Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Does Trump's election spell globalisation's end?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Not necessarily ... global trade growth has been slowing for years, down to China's economic deceleration and checks on riskier international lending oes Donald Trump's election as US president mean that globalisation is dead, or are reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated? If globalisation is only partly incapacitated, not terminally ill, should we worry?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit Provides Early Proof of Deglobalization's Costs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Never in the last 70 years has a major economy left a free-trade area. Brexit and its effects on the U.K. are providing the first real-world evidence of the costs that come from undoing the intricate bonds of globalization.

# data[].attributes.body
Globalisation is over!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In among the shock from the EU referendum result, the risk of contagion was raised. Analysts asked which EU country might leave next and whether this unravelling could shatter the postwar European order. A month later, it's clear that Brexit was less a cataclysmic cause than a symptom; a manifestation of global forces unleashed by the 2008 global financial crisis, including slower growth, rising inequality, and a widening backlash against open borders and incumbent leaders.

Inside Europe the political earthquake is receding, with the installation of a new UK prime minister who, ostensibly, did not want to leave the EU. Yet even if Brexit does not herald the unravelling of Europe or of the global economy, it is the most important sign yet that the era of globalisation as we have known it is over. Deglobalisation will be the new buzzword.

The world has entered what I call the AC era - after the crisis of 2008. It is already marked by much more upheaval than prevailed in the era before the crisis, and many of the policies and leaders that nations have embraced, hoping to ease the pain, have only made matters worse.

Worldwide, an anti-establishment revolt has been raging since the crisis. In 30 of the major democracies, the incumbent has been winning in as few as a third of national elections each year since 2008, down from two-thirds before that year. In the 20 top emerging and developed nations, the median approval rating of the incumbent leader has fallen from a high of 54% in the years before 2008, to just 37%.

Economic growth may have to take a back seat while political leaders address public anger

Anger at incumbent governments is now widely seen as a boon to rightwing populists such as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and some of the leaders of the Brexit campaign. This, however, is a revolt against the establishment, not an ideology, left or right.

In Europe and the US rightwing upstarts are exploiting the frustrations of the working class by blaming their woes on immigrants stealing jobs. But there is no such widespread rise of the populist right in Asia or Latin America, where voters have been toppling leftwing governments in favour of mainstream reformers like Mauricio Macri of Argentina, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru. A former World Bank economist ,whose first promise to Peruvians was to rebuild "consensus", Kuczynski is about as far from angry populism as a president can get.

The ballot-box revolts are not isolated, local events. They have sprung from slow growth in the global economy, which has fallen since 2008 from its postwar average of 3.5% to just above 2%, the level that feels like a global recession. This is the weakest recovery of the postwar era, and until recently Europe was the hardest-hit region, having suffered not one but two recessions since 2008. It has thus been fertile ground for popular anger.

The popular frustration is amplified by rising inequality. To fight the global slowdown, central banks have been pumping out easy money. Instead of fuelling wage and job growth in the real economy, as intended, much of that money has found its way into financial assets, including stocks, bonds and housing - pushing prices to record highs. Because the rich own most of these assets, inequality is widening and spreading, and wealth is massing in financial capitals like New York and London. The period since 2008 has seen weak wage growth but spectacular returns for the wealthy: in Britain, wages are up 13%, but the stock market is up 115%.

This story repeats itself in country after country. In a recent study of 46 major economies, Credit Suisse found that prior to 2007, wealth inequality was on the rise in 12 of them; but after 2007, that number more than doubled to 35,.

In that brief span, the world population of billionaires nearly doubled to more than 1,800. More than 70 of them live in London - one of the highest concentrations in the world - making the British capital a ripe target for class resentments. In England proper the Brexit vote was, in large part, a vote against London, its globalised elite, and all they stand for, including free trade and open borders.

Here too, the British revolt is less a turning point than the latest flashpoint for the negative passions of the AC era. In late 2008 the G20 gathered at a summit and vowed not to engage in the kind of trade wars that extended the Great Depression. Then they went back home and have since imposed hundreds of new barriers to trade. This bout of protectionism has helped to slow growth in global trade from better than 8% before the crisis to near zero. Britain has turned inward too, imposing more than 200 new trade barriers after the global financial crisis - third most in the developed world after the US and Germany, according to the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

The hype for globalisation that excited the era before the crash has given way now to fears of deglobalisation, and the measures governments have taken to buffer economies against another crisis have only deepened this self-destructive trend. Driven in part by new limits on their overseas activities, global banks have pulled back to within their home borders. Global capital flows fell from a peak of 16% of global GDP in 2007 to just 1.6% - a level last seen in the 1980s. This retreat will act as a drag on economic growth, suggesting that every country needs to downsize its ambitions, or face new outbreaks of frustration.

The anti-immigrant movements that have gathered pace are the latest proof, and they come at an inopportune time. In countries rich and poor, women are having fewer and fewer children, a trend that predates the crisis of 2008. Since 1980 the number of countries with a shrinking population of working age people has risen from 2 to 38. And one of the only ways for any country to counter the economic shock of depopulation is by attracting immigrants.

In fact, Britain's workforce would already be in decline too, were it not for relatively strong net migration, which brought in 900,000 people over the last five years. Though the challenges of assimilating foreign workers are real, so are the economic consequences of barring them: fewer workers will mean less growth.

But perhaps this outcome is unavoidable now. In the decades before 2008, the world economy expanded at it fastest pace in recorded history, thanks in part to greater freedom of movement for goods, capital and people. Unfettered globalisation lifted millions of people out of poverty in the emerging world, but it also frayed the social fabric of many western nations. Brexit is just one manifestation of the anti-globalisation backlash in the post-2008 era. The champions of that backlash are pushing policies that are likely only to exacerbate the global economic slowdown.

But the message from Brexit and similar movements is clear: economic growth may have to take a back seat while political leaders work to address the anger of those who believe that globalisation has left them behind.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Globalisation as we know it is over - and Brexit is the biggest sign yet | Ruchir Sharma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In among the shock from the EU referendum result, the risk of contagion was raised. Analysts asked which EU country might leave next and whether this unravelling could shatter the postwar European order.

# data[].attributes.body
....or is it?!

# data[].attributes.headline
Brexit will delay not postpone globalisation

# data[].attributes.subject
Brexit will delay not postpone globalisation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Brexit delay will not postpone deglobalisation

Many associate Brexit and the Trumpian trade wars with the start of a new phase of deglobalisation. This column argues that we should view them as symptoms rather than causes, as the world had already started to fundamentally change before either came on the horizon. Neither the delay to Brexit nor the extended pause in the US-China tariff war means that the risks of deglobalisation have diminished.

While economists agree that the multilateral trading system is under pressure and that US trade wars and the Brexit chaos provide examples of behaviour that is completely new for the present generation, it is still unclear if we are actually in the midst of deglobalisation (O'Rourke 2018, 2019). Deglobalisation would imply a fundamental change in our economic environment but not a new phenomenon from a long-run perspective, because a period of significant deglobalization also occurred in the 1930. We can glean from history the pattern of emerging deglobalisation (van Bergeijk 2019). Figure 1 illustrates this historical perspective of alternating waves of globalisation (a more open world economy) and deglobalisation by means of the change in the world trade to world output ratio. ¹ The figure shows that strong globalisation phases are followed by decades in which the world's trade-to-GDP ratio decreases or stagnates. What does the current pattern of emerging deglobalisation look like?

Figure 1 Change in openness 1880-2023
(average annual change per decade of the world trade to world production ratio)
Notes: The estimate for 2010-2023 is (partly) based on IMF forecasts. Note that the number of available years is limited in the 1910s and 1930s and the absence of the 1940s.
Sources: Maddison (1995, 2001), World Bank World Development Indicators, and IMF World Economic Outlook data base.
Deglobalisation 2.0

The start of the deglobalisation phase is a major economic crisis that reduces demand, increases uncertainty, and destroys confidence. Next follows a collapse of world trade and investment (Baldwin 2009). The collapse marks the end of decades of intensifying globalisation, and increasingly free international trade and capital flows. The start of a period of deglobalisation at first remains hidden under the veil of initial economic recovery, but later becomes clear and measurable. Figure 2 shows this pattern for the most recent phases and turning point. In the early 2000s openness (on the vertical axis) increased until it reached an all-time high in 2008 and from there deglobalisation sets in. Deglobalisation actually gains momentum around 2013 (and this leads to the recognition of the world trade slowdown; see Hoekman 2015). At the same time, uncertainty (on the horizontal axis) increases and moves into unknown territory. The figure makes an important point: deglobalisation started well before Trumpism and Brexit came on the horizon. Rather than being the causes of deglobalisation, we should therefore treat them as symptoms - the world had already started to change fundamentally and the wave of deglobalisation that we are currently experiencing may be here to stay for quite some while.

Figure 2 Openness and economic policy uncertainty of the world economy
Sources: Davis (2016) and data underlying Figure 1.
The major difference between the 1930s and the 2000s is that authoritarian countries in the era of the Great Depression where more likely to reduce trade and openness, whereas reductions of trade and openness during the Great Recession were more likely to occur in democracies (van Bergeijk 2018). To some it may be especially worrying that the clearest manifestations of deglobalisation occur in democracies, because democracies built the Bretton Woods institutions (and the EU). Indeed, the popular anti-globalist movements currently seem to hit the system at its heart. It is unwise to downplay the issue of populism, but it is important to recognise that the turning point of globalisation in all major economies appears to have occurred well before the recent trade shocks. This is why the phenomenon of deglobalisation requires a much broader conceptualisation than the 'backlash from globalisation' or the 'retreat from globalisation' on which research is already well underway. Deglobalisation in the sense of reduced openness also occurs in countries where popular support for globalisation is still strong, and this is a research puzzle that has not yet been addressed.

Drivers of the turn towards deglobalisation

Phases of strong globalisation carry the seeds of their own destruction, that is, such phases generate the forces that ultimately set limits and force a retreat of internationalisation. A first mechanism operates in national economies: redistributing the gains from further openness to the people who lost from globalisation becomes more difficult at higher levels of globalisation. This is a double-edged sword. In the initial phase when a country starts to open up, the economy experiences steep increases in productivity and welfare, but once the low-hanging fruit has been picked the same increase in the intensity of globalisation brings less benefits to the economy. At the same time the costs of redistribution at a low intensity of globalisation are initially small, but they are on an increasingly steep path. This shift in the (marginal) costs and benefits of further globalisation shifts the political balance towards less openness

A second mechanism operates in the international arena. During both the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession, the leading economic power of the time deserted the rules of the game that underpinned globalisation and were actually designed by its initial interest in an open trade and investment climate. An open stable and relatively peaceful system, however, allows other countries to develop and grow faster, capturing a larger share of the benefits of globalisation. In the early phase of globalisation a smaller share from a larger economic pie may still be an improvement. At some point the costs of being a hegemon, however, outweigh the benefits. It is ironic, but sad, that the US and the UK (the hegemons that helped to build a constellation in which trade, democracy, and peace were reinforcing aspects of the world order) are opting against global and European governance.

Cease fire?

Deglobalisation is a structural transformation of the world economy. Political turbulence can perhaps hasten this process. To some observers, delays to the big topical trade shocks may therefore seem to help to turn the tide. Brexit and 'Make America Great Again' are, however, symptoms of underlying processes that have already generated significant trade and investment uncertainty and this is already exercising a concrete impact on trade and investment flows as firms and consumers are adjusting behaviour in anticipation of further trade shocks. The delay of the deadlines provides a pause at best. It is therefore pertinent to rethink global economic governance and make it resistant to deglobalisation. A repositioning of the extent of internationalisation is manageable, but then concerted action is necessary to make the required changes in the rules and regulations of the world economic system. Those rules and regulations should be redesigned to meet the requirements of globalisation and, as recent experiences have made crystal clear, also meet the challenges posed by a wave of deglobalisation.

References

Baldwin, R E (ed) (2009), The great trade collapse: Causes, consequences and prospects, a VoxEU.org eBook.

Davis, S J (2016), "An Index of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty," Macroeconomic Review, October (updated on http://www.policyuncertainty.com).

Hoekman, B (ed) (2015), The global trade slowdown: A new normal, a VoxEU.org eBook.

Maddison, A (1995), Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992, OECD.

Maddison, A (2001), The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, OECD.

O'Rourke, K H (2018), "Economic history and contemporary challenges to globalization," CEPR Discussion Paper 13377.

O'Rourke, K H (2019), " The end of globalization ", Vox Talks, 1 February.

Pástor, L and P Veronesi (2018), "Inequality Aversion, Populism, and the Backlash Against Globalization", CEPR Discussion Paper 13107.

van Bergeijk, P A G (2018), "On the brink of deglobalization... again", Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11(1): 59-72.

van Bergeijk, P A G (2019), Deglobalization 2.0: Trade and openness during the Great Depression and the Great Recession, Edward Elgar.

Endnotes

The figure is intended to sketch a long-run perspective and thus by necessity focuses on merchandise trade in relation to world production. This of course ignores developments in services and financial flows.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brexit delay will not postpone deglobalisation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many associate Brexit and the Trumpian trade wars with the start of a new phase of deglobalisation. This column argues that we should view them as symptoms rather than causes, as the world had already started to fundamentally change before either came on the horizon.

# data[].attributes.body
Hanretty counters Dorling

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A greater proportion of people in the North voted to leave the EU than in the South

Danny Dorling has written an editorial in the British Medical Journal. I am not sure why the BMJ is publishing editorials on the sociology of the Brexit vote. I am sure that there are links between public health and the vote, and that the vote will have consequences for public health, but I am not sure that these links can be satisfactorily addressed in a 700 word editorial.

There is one particularly curious claim in Prof. Dorling's editorial (my emphasis):

The outcome of the EU referendum has been unfairly blamed on the working class in the north of England, and even on obesity. However, because of differential turnout and the size of the denominator population, most people who voted Leave lived in the south of England.

I say that this claim is curious not just because it cites in support polling evidence rather than actual results, but also because it seems to ignore some fairly obvious calculations.

If we take regions in the North of England to include the North East, North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber, then 4,325,965 people in the North voted to Leave (according to figures from the Electoral Commission).

If we take regions in the South of England to include the South West, South East, and London, then 5,750,908 people in the South voted to Leave.

It's therefore true to say that more people voted to Leave in the South. But it's also misleading to say this. The electorate in the North is 11,053,689 people. The electorate in the South is 16,028,306 people. The proportion of registered voters in the North who voted to Leave was greater than the proportion in the South (39.1% compared to 35.9%).

When Prof. Dorling says that "most people who voted Leave lived in the South of England", this seems to be merely a consequence of the fact that more people live in the South of England than live in the North. Prof. Dorling presumably recognises this, and that's why he's included the qualification in bold above. I don't want to blame any region for Brexit - but let's at least be clear about which regions were more likely to vote for it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
North and South - Chris Hanretty - Medium

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Danny Dorling has written an editorial in the British Medical Journal. I am not sure why the BMJ is publishing editorials on the sociology of the Brexit vote. I am sure that there are links between public health and the vote, and that the vote will have consequences for public health, but I am not sure that these links can be satisfactorily addressed in a 700 word editorial.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump's Border Message: Barrier Now, Immigration Reform Later

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During his visit to Texas near the border with Mexico, President Trump said that before any discussion about broader changes to U.S. immigration policies can take place, including the fate of so-called Dreamers, he wanted to tackle construction of a barrier.

# data[].attributes.headline
Donald Trump rails against China as team runs damage control over Taiwan

# data[].attributes.subject
Donald Trump rails against China as team runs damage control over Taiwan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President-elect Donald Trump railed against China on Sunday, only hours after his transition team denied that his call with Taiwan's president signaled a new US policy toward Pacific power.

"Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the US doesn't tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?" he tweeted. "I don't think so!"

Earlier on Sunday the vice-president-elect, Mike Pence, had tried to downplay the possibility that Trump could threaten a diplomatic rift with Beijing through his actions last week. Trump's 10-minute phone conversation on Friday with Tsai Ing-wen - thought to be the first time a US president or president-elect has spoken to a Taiwanese leader since 1979 - and subsequent reference to Tsai as "president" threatened such a breach, and implied he might be making up policy on the hoof.

In damage control mode, Pence sought to dismiss the row as "a tempest in a teapot", contrasting it with Barack Obama's rapprochement with communist Cuba.

"He received a courtesy call from the democratically elected president of Taiwan," Pence told ABC's This Week. "They reached out to offer congratulations as leaders around the world have and he took the call, accepted her congratulations and good wishes and it was precisely that."

Later, in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Pence again used the term "the president of Taiwan", suggesting it was no slip of the tongue.

China views self-ruling Taiwan as part of its own territory awaiting reunification, and any US move implying support for independence - including use of the word "president" - is likely to offend Beijing.

Chinese state media said Trump's "inexperience" led him to accept the phone call but warned that any breach of the "one China" stance would "destroy" relations with America.

Asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos if he understood China's objections, Pence replied: "Yes, of course." But he quickly shifted gear to claim that the American people find Trump's "energy" refreshing.

The Indiana governor was asked directly if there were implications for the "one China" policy. "We'll deal with policy after 20 January," he said, referring to the day of Trump's inauguration.

On NBC, Pence suggested the controversy had been overplayed. "The waters here seem like a little bit of a tempest in a teapot," he said.

"I mean, it's striking to me that President Obama would reach out to a murdering dictator in Cuba and be hailed as a hero. And President-elect Donald Trump takes a courtesy call from the democratically elected president of Taiwan and it becomes something of a thing in the media."

Other Trump surrogates sought to neutralise the issue. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, senior aide Kellyanne Conway said her boss was "well aware" of Washington's "one China" policy.

"I know China has a perspective on it," she said. "The White House and state department probably have a perspective on it. Certainly Taiwan has a perspective on it.

"The president-elect's perspective is he accepted a congratulatory call. When he's sworn in as commander-in-chief, he'll make clear the fullness of his plans. But people shouldn't read too much into it."

Since his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton on 8 November, Trump has accepted congratulatory calls from dozens of world leaders including the prime ministers or presidents of Israel, Singapore, Japan and China, Conway said.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Sunday afternoon, Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be "valuable" to Trump if he took advice from state officials before such calls. Speaking to reporters at Trump Tower, however, Conway said the president-elect was "not really a talking points kind of guy".

There were also signs of uncertainty over Trump's choice of secretary of state. The transition team has previously said the short list was down to four - understood to be Tennessee senator Bob Corker, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former CIA director Gen David Petraeus and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president.

On Sunday, Conway told reporters "he's broadened the search" and the "list is expanding", and added: "More than four but who knows how many finalists there will be. It's a big decision and nobody should rush through it."

Petraeus appeared on ABC in what some observers billed as an audition for the cross-examination he could expect from Congress over his conviction for mishandling classified material.

Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanour charge after sharing intelligence with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, a former army officer with whom he had an extramarital affair.

"What I would say to them is what I've acknowledged for a number of years," he said. "Five years ago, I made a serious mistake. I acknowledged it. I apologised for it. I paid a very heavy price for it and I've learned from it."

Petraeus added that he has given more than 38 years of "in some cases unique service to our country in uniform and then at the CIA".

Reflecting on his hour-long meeting with Trump last week, Petraeus, speaking from Germany, said he found the president-elect to be "quite pragmatic" and added: "What I enjoyed most, frankly, was the discussion of issues, if you will, or campaign rhetoric, and placing that in a strategic context."

Petraeus's viability for the job was put to Pence, who insisted that despite Trump's attacks on Hillary Clinton over her own carelessness with classified emails while secretary of state, the former military leader was an "American hero" and still in contention.

"He paid a price for mishandling classified information," he said on NBC. "I think the president-elect will weigh that against the background of an extraordinary career of military service.

"It will be the president-elect's decision about the totality of Gen Petraeus's experience and background."

Stephanopoulos also grilled Pence over Trump's evidence-free claim that "millions of people voted illegally", denying him victory in the popular vote in the presidential election, in which Clinton leads by more than 2.5m ballots.

The host made 10 different attempts, through questions or interventions, to make Pence admit the claim was groundless.

Stephanopoulos asked: "It's his right to make false statements?"

Pence replied: "Well, it's his right to express his opinion as president-elect of the United States. I think one of the things that's refreshing about our president-elect and one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country is because he tells you what's on his mind."

Stephanopoulos shot back: "But why is it refreshing to make false statements?"

Maintaining his cool, Pence said: "Look, I don't know that that is a false statement, George, and neither do you. The simple fact is that ..."

Stephanopoulos interrupted: "I know there's no evidence for it."

At the end of the exchange, Pence insisted: "He's going to say what he believes to be true and I know that he's always going to speak in that way as president."

In another series of tweets early on Sunday, Trump threatened heavy taxes as retribution for US companies that move their business operations overseas and still try to sell their product to Americans.

He promised a 35% tax on products sold inside the US by any business that fired American workers and built a new factory or plant in another country.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Donald Trump rails against China as team runs damage control over Taiwan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
President-elect Donald Trump railed against China on Sunday, only hours after his transition team denied that his call with Taiwan's president signaled a new US policy toward Pacific power.

# data[].attributes.body
...and again

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
People still fail to realise there are more people in the South than in the North

Zoe Williams has written about the political geography of the Brexit result. She repeats a point previously made by Danny Dorling, and which I've criticised here. She writes:

"In fact, most leave voters were in the south: the south-east, south-west - indeed the entire south apart from London voted leave... Yet southerners voted in greater numbers; their votes were decisive".

I've already pointed out, in my comment on Danny Dorling's piece in the BMJ, that the claim "most leave voters were in the South" is entirely a result of there being more voters in the South.

To show just how uninformative this claim is, allow me to indulge in a thought experiment. Let's hold the number of people voting Leave in the North constant, at 4,325,965 people, and slowly change the proportion of people in the South who voted to Leave.

Just under 12 million people in the South voted (all figures from the Electoral Commission). 48.2% of them voted to Leave, compared to 55.8% in the North. 48 percent of 12 million gets you five and three quarter million, which a lot more than the people voting Leave in the North.

Let's now change the proportion voting Leave in the South from just over 48% to 45%. We end up with 5.4 million.

What if it just 40% voted Leave? 4.8 million. Still more than the North.

We can keep going down. We can go as low as 36.5%. Put slightly differently, even if 63.5% of people in the South had voted to Remain, there would still be more Leave voters in the South than in the North, just because there are lots of people in the South.

You can play around with this - you can include the East of England in the South, in which case you can reach an even lower number. Or you can exclude London from the South - but now you're just hunting for a pattern.

So the claim that "most leave voters were in the South" remains true but uninformative. What about the claim that southerners' votes were decisive?

This claim seems false to me. If you exclude votes from the areas I've included in the South, then you're left with 11,659,834 votes for Leave, compared to 9,982,985 votes for Remain. Leave wins whether or not you include the South.

It might be true that southerners' votes might be decisive in the sense that the result would have been different had southerners voted differently - but this is true for very many arbitrary groups with more voters than the margin of victory.

I've got no desire to address the other issues raised in the piece: I really just want to address the misleading use of election results. I think the "othering" of the north (a) exists and (b) is harmful. Would that the House of Commons were moving to Richmond (Yorks) rather than Richmond House. But I think this independently of the referendum result, and misleading statistics aren't going to make me believe it more fervently.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
North and South, take 2 - Chris Hanretty - Medium

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zoe Williams has written about the political geography of the Brexit result. She repeats a point previously made by Danny Dorling, and which I've criticised here. She writes: "In fact, most leave voters were in the south: the south-east, south-west - indeed the entire south apart from London voted leave...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Globalisation: time to look at the past to plot the future | Joseph Stiglitz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Trade deals were hammered out in secret by multinationals at the expense of workers and citizens. Benefits must be shared if the global economy is to work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
US President Donald Trump's path to re-election requires maximising the support of his oft-mentioned "base" - white voters without college degrees - in the key battleground states where he eked out victory in 2016.

This is because Trump's support among other voters has slipped. According to the Pew Research Centre, he still holds a 60-34% lead over Democratic challenger Joe Biden among whites without a college degree, but Biden has substantial leads among college-educated white voters, as well as Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.

As a result, Trump has a very narrow path to victory that will require high voter turnout by so-called "working-class whites" in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan. Based on the current polls, this path is increasingly unlikely.

But that doesn't mean it's impossible. According to Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst from the Cook Political Report, Trump's base is key.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, he estimates there are about 2.4 million non-college-educated white voters who did not cast ballots in 2016, but could do so this year. As Wasserman notes,

the potential for Trump to crank up the intensity of turnout among non-college whites is quite high.

Who are 'white working-class' voters?

Whites without a college degree in America are often referred to as the "white working-class". In truth, this label is used rather loosely.

The "working class" has long been thought of as "blue-collar" factory, trades and construction workers.

But according to US political scientists, the working class today is defined by both education and income levels:

those who do not hold a college degree and report annual household incomes below the median, as reported by the Census Bureau (in 2016, for instance, the median annual household income was nearly US$60,000).

Under this definition, small business owners and various "white collar" workers (those in service jobs) and "pink collar" (jobs traditionally held by women such as caregiving roles) are also considered part of the American working class.

Read more: Appealing to evangelicals, Trump uses religious words and references to God at a higher rate than previous presidents

Working-class voters have long held the key

Working-class voters have long played an outsized role in US elections, despite the fact they have been a minority among wage and salary earners since the 1920s.

Working-class voters, particularly those who belonged to unions, were once steadfast supporters of candidates on the political left. These days, however, the left feels largely abandoned by these voters, while the right is increasingly dependent on them to win elections.

As working-class voters have drifted to the right, the labels used to describe them have changed. In the 1970s, they were called " hard hats". By the 1980s, they were known as " Reagan Democrats", and in the early 2000s, " NASCAR Dads ".

In the UK, they have been known as " working-class Tories", and in Australia, " Howard's battlers ".

The story of working-class whites abandoning left-wing parties makes for catchy journalistic copy. Each election cycle, there are numerous articles and television vox pops featuring machinists or miners who have moved rightwards, feeling disillusioned with the parties of their parents.

Books like The Inheritance, Hillbilly Elegy, Strangers in Their Own Land and What's the Matter with Kansas? have also tried to capture the essence of this changing working class and why these voters have drifted to the right - and at times, voted against their own economic interest.

Read more: Trump could win again (without cheating)

Working-class voters are more complex than we think

The only problem with this narrative is that it is all too neat. In reality, the voting behaviours of the white working class is more complex.

Take for instance Trump's supporters in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. As the data below show, Trump didn't earn his largest share of votes among the poorest whites in America, but among those in the "middle class" (that catch-all label used to describe everyone between the rich and those living under the poverty line).

More than 10% of white voters with incomes under $30,000 actually voted for a candidate other than Trump or Clinton.

So, while Trump won large numbers of white working-class votes compared to Clinton, experts say it isn't clear he motivated more of these voters to the polls.

Other factors may also have come into play in 2016 that weren't related to either income or education.

As this chart shows, non-college-educated voters split their voting preferences evenly between Democrats and Republicans as recently as 1996.

An accelerated shift to the right began then, resulting in a remarkable 39% margin of support for Trump over Clinton in 2016. For many scholars, this " diploma divide " was the single most important explanation why Trump won.

But many commentators have also pointed to racism and xenophobia to help explain Trump's rise among these white working-class voters.

According to Identity Crisis, a widely praised book on the 2016 election, Trump successfully "racialised economics" by promoting to white Americans

the belief that undeserving groups are getting ahead while your group is left behind.

Biden shows empathy with working-class voters, but few new ideas

Have the Democrats tried to woo back these white working-class voters in recent elections?

In recent elections, former President Barack Obama, Clinton and Biden have focused much of their economic rhetoric on industrial and construction employment, even though these sectors only make up 20% of all jobs (the rest are in the services sector).

Most politicians lack the language to explain the reality that most jobs are service jobs. Because of this, it is hardly surprising they also lack good ideas to address unequal wages and poor working conditions within the services sector.

Policies that address economic inequality are the best way to guard against the white working class being drawn to populist figures like Trump. Biden has not offered these voters much more than Clinton did, with the possible exception of more empathy.

But Biden may not need to win over working-class white voters to defeat Trump. With minority voter turnout expected to be high, and fewer white women and elderly voters expected to support Trump, the president's hopes of winning on a shrinking base are looking ever more remote.

Read more: Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who exactly is Trump's 'base'? Why white, working-class voters could be key to the US election

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
US President Donald Trump's path to re-election requires maximising the support of his oft-mentioned "base" - white voters without college degrees - in the key battleground states where he eked out victory in 2016. This is because Trump's support among other voters has slipped.

# data[].attributes.body
Rust Belt UK - Brexit no surprise

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On 2 May this year, I set off to walk from Liverpool to London, a journey of 340 miles that would take me a month. I was walking in the footsteps of the People's March for Jobs, a column of 300-odd unemployed men and women who, on the same day in 1981, exactly 35 years previously, had set off from the steps of St George's Hall to walk to Trafalgar Square.

In the two years after Margaret Thatcher had been elected, unemployment had gone from 1 to 3 million, as her policies laid waste to Britain's manufacturing base. In 1981, we saw Rupert Murdoch buy the Times and Sunday Times. We witnessed inner-city riots, unprecedented in their scale and violence, in Liverpool and London. The formation of the SDP split the left. The Tories lost their first assault on the coal miners, capitulating over the closure of 23 pits.

My father, Pete Carter, was one of those who organised the original walk. My journey was an attempt to work out what had happened to Britain in the intervening years. What I saw and heard gave me an alarming sense of how the immense social changes wrought by Thatcherism are still having a profound effect on communities all over England. It also meant that when I awoke last Friday to the result of the EU referendum, I wasn't remotely surprised.

Some of those charity shops had closed down. What does it say about a town when even the charity shops are struggling?

I left Liverpool the week of the Hillsborough inquest verdict, flowers and scarves still adorning lampposts. The inquest had finally vindicated the families of the 96 killed at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final, exposing the lies and cover-ups of the police, the media and the political class, who had spent over a quarter of a century traducing not only those fans, mostly working class, but also the city and its people. In fact, that demonising had found expression in 1981, too, when Geoffrey Howe suggested to Thatcher privately that, after the Toxteth riots, Liverpool should be subject to a "managed decline".

I walked through Widnes and Warrington, past huge out-of-town shopping centres and through the wastelands of industrial decay. In Salford, down streets where all the pubs were boarded up and local shops, if you could find them, had brick walls for windows and prison-like metal doors, I found an Airbnb. My host was selling her terraced house. I sat in her living room as the estate agent brought around potential buyers. They were all buy-to-let investors from the south of England, building property portfolios in the poverty, as if this was one giant fire sale.

"Is this a thing now?" I asked the agent.

"It is," he replied.

On I walked. Through Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton. The flag of St George flew, from flagpoles, from guttering. Leave posters were everywhere. I didn't see a single one for remain.

Just before Stoke-on-Trent, I passed the immense workings of the Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, closed down in the 1970s. The mine, one of Europe's largest, had become a heritage centre and museum. In 1993 even that had shut.

In Hanley, I started asking people what they thought about the referendum and if they wouldn't mind telling me how they'd be voting. There was little reticence. "Out," they would say. "No question."

"Why?" I'd ask.

"Immigration," would come the response. "We want our country back."

The Potteries museum opened in 1981, the year of the People's March. There I read about Stoke's industrial heritage, the ceramics, the coal mines, the steel industry, employing tens of thousands of people. All gone now.

Stafford, Cannock, Wolverhampton. Different towns, same message: "There's no decent work"; "the politicians don't care about us"; "we've been forgotten"; "betrayed"; "there's too many immigrants, and we can't compete with the wages they'll work for". Nobody used the word humiliation, but that's the sense I got.

In Wolverhampton, the Express and Star newspaper was reporting on the fury from Wolves fans at the football club's new shirt sponsor. It was to be the Money Shop, a payday lender. In Walsall, where I went to college, I walked around a town centre unrecognisable from 30 years earlier. Everywhere there were betting shops, dozens of them, and right next door to every betting shop was a pawnbroker or payday lender. It was a ghoulish form of mutualism, or symbiosis, the "natural" market at its most efficient.

And there was another thing I noticed about all of these towns: the ubiquity of mobility scooters, and not all of them being driven by the elderly. Was this a manifestation of the established links between poverty and ill health?

I walked on. Birmingham glittered, a skyline of cranes and high streets of fashionable shops, a confidence, a bounce. But out of the city centre the familiar motifs returned: boarded up pubs and shuttered shops, leave posters in windows, and a proliferation of hand car washes. It began to make sense why these have blossomed in modern Britain: why invest in expensive automated machinery when labour can be sourced so cheaply.

Nuneaton, the home town of George Eliot and Ken Loach, had more charity shops in its high street than anywhere I've ever seen. And some of those charity shops had closed down. What does it say about a town when even the charity shops are struggling?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

'I started asking people if they wouldn't mind telling me how they'd be voting. There was little reticence. "Out," they would say. "Why?" I'd ask. "Immigration," would come the response.' Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

In Coventry, whose car industry is now mostly gone, there seemed to be a construction frenzy. These were mostly new buildings for the colleges and universities, competing not only for a bigger share of domestic students but also for the lucrative foreign student market. A friend doing an MA in the city told me that 90% of the students on his course were from overseas, and the majority of them Chinese.

As I moved south, I thought that the economic picture might change, but in Rugby, Bedford, Luton the high streets all had the by now familiar composition: betting shops, fast-food outlets, tattoo parlours. And the answer to the question "in" or "out" never changed either. "We've been left behind," a white, middle-aged man told me at a bus stop as I rested in Hemel Hempstead. "Those politicians don't care about us. Immigration has ruined this country."

I walked into central London, through Chiswick, past people sitting at pavement cafes, shops selling expensive furniture, estate agents offering two-bedroom flats for a million pounds. Through Hyde Park and on to Wellington Arch, with all the pomp and puffery of empire, and then Buckingham Palace, as tourists lapped up the pageantry. I was in, literally and spiritually, another country.

In 1935, a young Laurie Lee set off to walk across Spain, from north to south. In the book the adventure would eventually lead to, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Lee describes a country riven by inequality, of communities in grinding poverty, and an out-of-touch ruling elite. The fascists and the communists both laid claim to the discontents, the rhetoric becoming increasingly polarised. The narrative resonated across the European continent. By the time Lee got to Malaga, in the summer of 1936, the Spanish civil war had begun.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

A student by the gates of Downing Street approached Mike Carter and asked him if he could tell her who was pictured on her worksheet. It was Margaret Thatcher. Photograph: Mike Carter

I thought about Lee's journey, about Europe in the 1930s and 40s, and thanked God for the 70 years of peace we'd had since. I walked up Whitehall. On 30 May 1981, Thatcher had refused to meet the marchers to accept their 250,000-strong petition. On 30 May 2016, I paused at Downing Street, all high fences and machine guns now, and spoke to one of the armed officers. He told me about the attacks on police pensions, about the terrible morale these days in the force.

A girl came up, spoke in faltering English. She was on a school trip from Belgium. She had a project to complete, she said. Could I help her? She held up a piece of A4 paper. "Can you tell me who this is, please?" On it was a photograph of Margaret Thatcher.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I walked from Liverpool to London. Brexit was no surprise | Mike Carter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On 2 May this year, I set off to walk from Liverpool to London, a journey of 340 miles that would take me a month. I was walking in the footsteps of the People's March for Jobs, a column of 300-odd unemployed men and women who, on the same day in 1981, exactly 35 years previously, had set off from the steps of St George's Hall to walk to Trafalgar Square.