[beaconstudios]

why do there need to be "schools of thought" about the opposition when people could just ask them? Seems to me to be another instance of the political echo-chambers around contentious issues like Brexit. We'd have much better political perspectives if both sides talked to each other instead of theorising about the other side in their own bubbles.

Ironic given that Corbyn was also Eurosceptic - Brexit was a bipartisan issue with pro/con arguments on both sides of the aisle.

[detaro]

I think it's more "schools of thought" inside the pro-Brexit groups? (although missing any pro-closely-aligned-Brexit groups, since those got pretty pushed out the solution space in the last years)

[beaconstudios]

If that's meant to be the schools of thought for pro-Brexit groups, it's sorely lacking. Though it goes unsurprisingly under-reported, there were many different reasons I heard when talking to people about their support for Brexit, ranging from critiques of EU's fundamentally neoliberal nature, to its bureaucratic inefficiency, to issues of decentralisation of power, issues of tall hierarchies being too one-size-fits-all, the EU's future if the federalist factions take power, and so on. And that's just the handful of people I spoke to at the time, plus some casual listening to campaigners.

Even the idea that Brexit was driven by nationalism, while at least partially true, doesn't really dive into what nationalism means in this context - it's usually just used as a no-no word.

[toyg]

> doesn't really dive into what nationalism means in this context

Because, when you get into the heart of the matter, it boils down to racist anti-immigration sentiment, and nobody really wants to talk about that.

[beaconstudios]

that's the caricature form, yes, in the same way that communism is just gulags and breadlines. But there are nationalist sentiments like "I value my country's unique culture" that have nothing to do with xenophobia. Or "we should control who comes into the country to ensure we get the right kind of labour skills we need".

Funnily enough, if you want to talk racist anti-immigration sentiment - in my parents' lifetime that was the stock-and-trade of the Labour working class, despite being staunchly socialist (which as an ideology is inherently international). Ideology often doesn't make much sense.