[LETTERS] Could Brexit be a sign of a major leadership problem?

Editor, RE: “Brexit: the hijacking of a working-class revolt” (The New Times, June 30). Such a detailed account of Brexit’s causal chain of events; it goes to show that all is not well in the UK, and that we shouldn’t take things at face value. Also, I cannot help but connect the on-going attempted coup on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to the fact that since day one, he has been opposed by similar Oxbridge chaps within his own party. Incidentally, as a man from a working-class background, his surprise rise to power caught many unprepared and they are still struggling to come to terms with it and are desperate to reset the status quo. But, what’s also encouraging is that when Corbyn became Labour leader last year, he did so after winning many votes from working-class Labour members who had quite simply had enough of these Oxbridge chaps who time and again fail to relate to them. It is just sad that these attempts to seek a government of the people are being hijacked by right-wing opportunists. Andrew Potterman ************************** From the frying pan into the fire; the Oxbridge lot have all the bases covered to ensure the plebs have nowhere to turn but always to one of their kind! Just consider, who led this Brexit revolt? Another pair consists Boris Johnson of Eton and Oxford (plus a few other exclusive European schools in his childhood), and Nigel Farage of Dulwich College. The latter may not be an Oxbridger, but only because he himself chose to eschew a university education after Dulwich, opting instead to go straight into commodities trading where his father’s wealth and connections (his father was himself a very wealthy stockbroker) would smoothen his way. Otherwise, in Ann Richards’ unbeatable description of George H.W. Bush (41st president not 43rd, his son); he was born with a silver foot in his mouth! While I understand ordinary people’s disenchantment with the whole lot of nobs from the entire political establishment whose policies have piled hardship over misery on despair, I doubt that the likes of Johnson or Farage in the UK, or Le Pen in France and Trump in the US (all of them from wealthy or very comfortable backgrounds) are themselves a solution. But despair with the inability of establishment politicians to resolve fundamental issues of equity for common people pushes electorates into bed with dangerous demagogues because they feel they been lied to too long and that the demagogues couldn’t do worse than the current lot. And that is how people like Adolf Hitler and his Nazis get into power. The establishment’s blithe condescension vis-a-vis ordinary people; born of the arrogant belief that their voters have nowhere else to go if they want to avoid a worse situation for themselves (i.e., the politics of lesser-evilism) eventually tips a majority of electors into the welcoming embrace of dangerous demagogues. All across Europe and in the US, signs of such dangerous popular despair and the rise in attraction of extremism to such desperate people abound. And, lemming-like, establishment politicians continue to ignore these dangerous trends they have helped set in motion. Mwene Kalinda

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[LETTERS] Could Brexit be a sign of a major leadership problem?