Like many, I was genuinely surprised by the result of the EU referendum. However, I was less surprised by how close the result was. Whichever way the vote went, I never believed that it would be unanimous, I had just assumed that the established order would win out as it has repeatedly in the past. The preconditions for the referendum result have been building for quite some time and I have been made increasingly aware of them for the past few years. They have not been driven by the austerity politics of recent years, nor have the tabloids created them. Instead, they are the result of the social and economic policy of the last 40 years and a style of politics that has emerged in that time. The popularity of The Daily Mail, The Sun, Britain First, the EDL and UKIP and the dedication of its members and readers is in itself an expression of what already exists. As a nation, we have become increasingly divided and unequal, politically, socially and economically. We have also become highly closed-minded and bigoted, and prone to generalising and caricaturing. We have an inability to debate important issues objectively and intelligently and, like so many others, the EU referendum was polarised. Two army’s stair venomously across a field, too consumed with righteous indignation to notice that they have far more in common than differences.
The national debate more or less followed the trajectory that I had expected, with facts and reasoned argument swiftly brushed aside in favour of fear and hyperbole on both sides. But it was how easily we seemed to be taken in by this use of emotive propaganda that was far more worrying. Very quickly, the remain camp made the act of leaving the EU inherently xenophobic and closed-minded (easily done when you have UKIP as an opponent). At times it felt that they mentioned immigration more often than the leavers. But I believe this was a tactic designed to scare any liberal voters who may have considered voting to leave into conformity. Equally, the leave campaign was very quick to link the act of splitting from the EU as inherently patriotic, as if deciding to stay made you a Europhile who hates British culture. But of course, the greatest piece of fear mongering was economic. We were told by one side that to remain would tank the economy and by the other that to leave would do the same.
As someone who voted to remain, something that I found particularly frustrating was the level of condescension and derision on the part of the remain side; those who voted to leave were dismissed as idiots, racists and bigots, who have been taken in by the lies of the tabloids. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on EU law and policy, but I saw and spoke to a number of people who clearly hadn’t any real idea why they were voting to remain other than because "reasons"; reasons that seemed to have far more to do with their socio-economic environment than fact. Many facts or external reasons that I did see were lifted, memorised and then regurgitated from one newspaper or another. These same people would then criticise those on the leave side for doing precisely the same without any hint of self-reflection.
There was also a degree of classism in the debate that I found rather unpleasant. There is a meme that has been going around for a while lampooning the contradictory nature of anti-immigrant arguments called "Schrödinger’s Immigrant": simultaneously stealing British jobs while living exclusively on state welfare. Well, I’ve noticed that there is a parallel to this on the other side. I call it "Schrödinger’s Working Class": Simultaneously hard working, the salt of the earth and the victims of circumstance, while being lazy, entitled and unwilling to do the jobs that immigrants will do. It seems that we adore the poor and working class until one of them says something considered to be terribly vulgar and unenlightened at which point they become scum.
After the result, there was a certain degree of hostility and blame directed at the old, who voted in large numbers to leave, from the young, of which the majority of whom voted to remain. The reasons for this probably had a lot to do with nostalgia on the part of the older generation, while the younger generation, having grown up with the EU and a far more globalised world-view, felt far more comfortable with things as they were. But there was an equally strong link between voting to leave and income, level of education and geographic location. And I believe that this has played a much greater role.
Although worries about immigration and plain simple xenophobia undoubtedly played their part, and elements of media obviously swayed many, the reasons that people had for voting to leave were various and not just confined to this. Of course, some people are just nationalist who simply mistrusts the EU because it is foreign. However, for many it was an issue of sovereignty, they believed that the British parliament should alone make the laws of the land. For others, it was about globalisation and the belief that the EU represented the interests of a wealthy elite rather than the people of Europe. But for some, it was quite simply a great big "fuck you" to the establishment and, to a degree, a rejection of a perceived affluent liberal elitism. And those who describe this as stupid or petty are seriously misunderstanding what has been happening to this country for a long time.
I voted to remain. I did so because, despite the serious problems that I have with EU, I believe there is something worth saving of which I would like the UK to remain a part and I certainly don’t regard the matter as closed. But I can understand the reasons of some people for wanting to leave. I certainly don’t believe myself to be intellectually or morally superior to those who did and neither am I an apologist for them. But I think it is the tendency of some, particularly on the left, to view themselves as inherently morally and intellectually superior to others that has helped to create a social divide.
In the last 40 years, we’ve had two long residing governments with a relatively weak opposition who have brought with them grand visions for the future of Britain and huge cultural and economic change. They’ve promised greater equality, opportunity, higher wages and a better standard of life. They’ve promised greater accountability, more choice and more democracy. But the reality is that for the majority of people, these promises have been left unfulfilled. For many, their standard of living has not improved much, if at all, and the UK has become less equal. While GDP and average wages have continued to rise, median income has stagnated and the number of people earning well below this has increased. Through deindustrialisation, the hearts of many communities have been destroyed or left to rot as secure, well-paid jobs are replaced by insecure low paid ones. Housing has become equally insecure with the dramatic increase in house prices and the reduction in the numbers of social housing greater relience has been placed on privite rental. Small and local businesses have declined as our towns and cities have been taken over by large corporate chains and franchises whose profits largely leave the community and, in some cases, the country. As a result, choice and opportunity have become increasingly anchored to your ability to pay, with health, education and job opportunities.
Our political system has become increasingly undemocratic, with power shifting further towards Downing Street (as the reaction to the high court ruling has proven) and more worryingly towards private business' interests. Greater amounts of PR and spin have been employed as public opinion and government policy has moved further apart, a project in which the media have willingly taken part. The opposition has increasingly been paved over by those in power and seen less as a view worthy of debate but rather the object of scorn and derision. Those with opposing views are seen as bigoted or stupid, and this attitude seems to have bled into society as a whole. But most worryingly, leaders have been transformed from simple public servants into messiahs, who have come down from on high with answers to all of our problems. Our political discourse has been bleached of any real debate or substance and has been replaced instead with personality and marketing. Turning our political parties into brands and our elections into protracted advertising campaigns. This has made the Trump’s, Farage’s and Johnsons of the world much more powerful than they otherwise would be because now you don’t need answers or facts, just money and a platform.
Against this backdrop, there have been two major changes in the last 20 years. The first was a cultural shift towards liberalism and progressive moral values. Television programming, films, music and other media began to depict a far more progressive, tolerant and inclusive society. Attitudes towards gender, sexuality, class, and race began to change and alternative lifestyles and families have become far more acceptable. It seemed as if, despite the protests of a few bigots, we had become a far more liberal nation. Only we hadn’t, there were many who still believed in traditional conservative moral values. There were also still many who did not share the apparent national mood as far as sexuality, race and multiculturalism were concerned. Both of these groups may not have represented the majority but they were not insignificant. They were an inconvenient truth that lay behind a façade of a liberal nation. But rather than engage with these people they were simply ignored or worse, shouted down and jeered. Contrary to the misguided hopes of those who did the jeering, this didn’t change any hearts and minds, nor did it make these people spontaneously combust. Instead, it created anger and resentment. For a while, the Conservative party continued to represent these people but it soon became apparent to them that if they were to ever regain power, they would have to appeal to more liberal Labour voters. It was at this point that they publicly stopped representing many of their traditional voters and so some of them began to look elsewhere.
The second major change was the significantly large increase in net migration both from the EU and beyond that has been disproportionately shared both economically and geographically. Many of these migrants did the same low paid, insecure jobs that many Britains do and moved into the same communities. This increase demographically changed some communities greatly, creating a large divide between perceived and actual immigrant numbers. Now it’s important to point out that in many places this happened with very little issue and people greeted and learned to live alongside their new neighbours peacefully. It is my honest belief that most people are inherently friendly, kind and inviting. But when someone’s life is filled with insecurity; when finding work, paying bills and trying to provide a decent life for oneself and those you care about is the cause of daily stress; when it feels that those who are supposed to represent you neither care about you nor listen to you; and when you feel that the table is so slanted in someone else’s favour that you are stuck where you are, it is understandable that anger and resentment can develop very quickly. And that anger has to go somewhere.
For most of us in our daily lives, politics and economics are very abstract, so it should come off to very little surprise that the anger of many gets directed at those in our immediate environment. Whether it’s based on class, age group, sexuality or nationality. Many people from communities most affected by immigration began to speak up, and rather than engage with them, many simply labelled them as bigots and racists with the government broadly doing the same and offering no real answers. Some were obviously simply racist, but many were not. But this only increased the sense that those in power do not care about them and that while everyone’s opinions mattered, some, it seemed, mattered more than others. And like those abandoned by the Conservative party, these people were suddenly left unrepresented.
The point is that when the government and main political parties, and society as a whole decided to disengage the tabloids and the far right stepped in. They cherry picked and embellished the stories of those in the most affected communities and sold them to people who had probably seldom come across an immigrant but were suffering the same economic problems or to those just looking to reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. People who had been dismissed suddenly found a willing ear and so a massive divide was created between relatively affluent progressives and a coalition of poor working class people, moral conservatives and hateful arseholes. Unfortunately, it seems that rather than seeing each group as separate and distinct, they were viewed as one. It is this general theme of inequality, hopelessness, powerlessness and disengagement with opposing ideas that is at the root of why I think we voted to leave.
Opposed to a general election the referendum offered a genuine opportunity to make a change. A potentially terrible and damaging change, perhaps, but a change nonetheless. It also offered a clear opportunity to go against the perceived liberal elitist establishment. Those who had ridiculed these people, of which sadly I have to admit I once was one, had their comeuppance. Unfortunately, they may have cut off their nose to spite their face.
From what I have read and the Americans that I’ve listened to, the situation seems to be broadly the same with the election of Donald Trump. Although I acknowledge that a referendum and a Presidential election are two very different things, the themes seem to be the same. In any election, particularly one like that of the US, the majority of the voters are usually not the ones you need to be looking at. Republicans (with exceptions) will normally always vote for the republican candidate and the democrats the same with theirs. The people who decide the elections are a minority of swing voters. And although I haven’t yet been able to take a detailed look at the results, it seems that many states that switched were ones that have seen massive deindustrialisation and the loss of secure jobs. There is here an obvious parallel with the north of England and other former industrialised regions of the country who voted strongly for leaving the EU.
Although we don’t do it consciously, it is natural for all of us to create for ourselves a bubble in which to live to some degree. We socialise with those who are broadly like ourselves, we read newspapers that mirror our own opinions and watch TV and films that depict the world in the same way that we see it. And now with social media, we like and follow people who equally share our social and political views, while the Internet as a whole acts as a mirror rather than a window. This does three things, firstly it tricks us into thinking that our beliefs and socio-economic conditions are the norms when they may not be; secondly, it makes us far more susceptible to propaganda that is aimed at our sensibilities; thirdly, it makes us far more sensitive to opposing views when we encounter them.
I am a true believer in freedom of thought and speech; I believe that people should have a right to speak their mind if they have a reasoned argument to back up their position. And if you disagree with what they say, you have a right to counter their argument. You may not change anyone’s opinions but you may light in them a flame of self-reflection that might lead to change. Additionally, you might learn something from that person that might change your perspective.
More importantly, I believe that we must come to understand that poverty and inequality are not just facts of life, they are socially corrosive. They undermine social cohesion and trust in one another. They can cause people to disengage from their communities and hate those around them. Our economic system has become a game of musical chairs in which the chairs are being removed at an alarming rate and many people are unable to hear the music. This happened under Thatcher and Major, and it continued under Blair and even worse, under Cameron.
Let me be clear, I am not condoning racism nor am I an apologist for it. There are plenty for whom there are no excuses. Prejudice and fearing what is different is, unfortunately, a part of the human condition, but so is compassion and warmth towards others. It’s the conditions that we make for ourselves that leads us towards one and not the other. We have a global economic and political system that is marginalising, disempowering and condemning large numbers of people to poverty. And it is this environment that creates extremism, not Donald Trump, not the Daily Mail and not Facebook pages like Britain First.