Sounds coherent to me. The argument is that controlling immigration now (which requires leaving EU) will stave off a future, even greater anti-immigration backlash which could add protectionism thrown in for good measure. So Brexit would prevent a protectionist like Trump from ruling Britain. The main counterpoints to this argument are that Brexit itself is quite harmful to free trade already (we'll see what happens in the next year), or skepticism that an even worse backlash would ever happen later.

This would have made sense if people would have voted against immigration per se. In reality they didn't -- very few people actually get offended by a sight of someone with a different colour skin so badly that they want them away at once.

What people actually voted against is losing their livelihoods -- jobs, communities, families -- to a steady march of progress. That loss is real, but make no mistake, no politician can stop it by signing any sort of trade treaties, limiting immigration to any extent, or outlawing EU Directive 89/686/EEC.

So the sad reality of Brexit is that the people who voted leave will see no change. Immigration may be restricted as a result of the vote, but it won't save them from anything because the moving force potentially causing what you call "a greater anti-immigration backlash" has immigration as just one of its many symptoms, and not a root cause.

"..to a steady march of progress. That loss is real, but make no mistake, no politician can stop it by signing any sort of trade treaties, limiting immigration to any extent, or outlawing EU Directive 89/686/EEC."

I used to believe the same, that globalisation in its current form is an absolute inevitability. That any efforts to react and adapt to it would always be counter-productive and fail to this invisible force. We have had this drilled into us ad nauseam.

I am starting to doubt that this is the case. I see no reason why the future has already been determined at this point and that we must accept it, resigning ourselves to believe change is an absolute impossibility. Are interventions for the better 100% likely to fail? Why? Is largely due to the nature of macro-economics and free trade? Are there no mechanisms possible present or future that can address these effectively and to the majorities' satisfaction?

I do not intend this to come across as a hostile response, I am genuinely interested in everyones thoughts on this.

"...symptoms, and not a root cause"

What do you believe is the root cause?

> What people actually voted against is losing their livelihoods -- jobs, communities, families -- to a steady march of progress. That loss is real, but make no mistake, no politician can stop it by signing any sort of trade treaties, limiting immigration to any extent, or outlawing EU Directive 89/686/EEC.

That may be true, that no politician can stop it, but at the moment (at least here in Australia, which seems to have the same trend as UK and America) no politician will acknowledge it. We've had three recessions in 10 years that have been "hidden" by immigration. The economy has grown but everyone's relative share has shrunk.

That's a decent argument to say immigration wasn't a real concern (that was the second counter point I mentioned). Although it does seem like a fair bit of Leavers voted because of migration (at least according to polls).

So he is worried that an anti-immigration backlash will limit free trade, and because of that he wants to limit immigration and the best way to do that is to join forces with (other) anti-immigration politicians in a project to leave the EU?

It still sounds incoherent to me. Leaving one of the biggest single market places is not a free trade move. Post-Brexit Britain is not a place where anti-immigration forces have less political power. If it made British Trump less likely (and I don't think it did) then not because of appeasement of British nationalists but because it served as a wake-up call for the rest.

Well one could argue that Brexit will still preserve free trade (indeed the government wants to preserve that). And UKIP seems to be imploding, so it's plausible that Brexit could have neutralized them.

> Well one could argue that Brexit will still preserve free trade (indeed the government wants to preserve that).

The government says they want it, but that doesn't mean that there is any reasonable basis tomexpext that it will happen.

Yeah, it's coherent enough to me that if i'd ever heard it pre-referendum i'd have been more comfortable that there were at least some real arguments to be made in favour of leaving.

Why, arguments for both sides could've been made easily. You absolutely can make a case for both leaving or staying. It's just that neither side of the referendum bothered to do this before the vote.

True. But i'd contend that the side arguing for changing the status quo has a higher burden of persuasion. This seems especially true given (a) the degree to which even a well-managed Brexit would have unpredictable economic implications, and (b) the way that that a racist minority managed to conflate their cause with a potentially more reasonable one.