OPINION: Brexit might have been more palatable with a sense of coherence to any of it
In the days since Britain voted Brexit on June 24th, there has been an onslaught of people wondering what any of it actually means.
The news has been mostly full of this stuff, and the questions have been piling up as to what the next step actually is, if indeed it is taken at all. But so far, since the vote, we’ve seen the resignation of the Prime Minister, the collapse of the opposition, trillions of dollars being wiped from the stock market in the 2 trading days after the vote, the pound collapsing against the dollar, the EU getting its knives out in preparation for divorce and bracing itself for similar votes in other countries, a sense of open mutiny between voters of both sides all over social media and even at play in protests in the street, and long, at times tedious, debates about what any of it actually means.
In many ways, this was always going to be the case. The fact a country hasn’t been bold enough to even call a vote on EU membership, let alone actually get to this position, opens up constitutional crises for both the UK and the European Union, and there’s already a sense nobody actually knows what to do.
Part of why Brexit is an issue, and is going to be an issue for a long time yet, is this history-setting lack of coherence, and that is going to continue. Its one thing simply for Remain voters to get a big agitated about the result – and a lot of them have been, not least the 4+ million who signed a certain e-petition set up in advance of polling day by a Leave activist anticipating a similar margin going the other way. But its another when you see the methodology of how we got here and its consequent uncertainty at play, and it leaves people wondering when, if any time, this might get figured out.
At this point, the disclosure this piece is being written by a Remain voter is required, but that is not to simply write one of those rants saying the only Leave voters were either the poorly educated, the racists, the old that should be denied a vote, or whatever else. This is the talk of the frustrated, snobbish, misanthropic and easily irritable, and doesn’t really help. After all, 17 million voted for Leave, and as its a broad church, there will be plenty of political, social, economic, and other issues people will have cited as a reason to vote.
The real talk, however, is how we got to a point where British politics has already seemingly collapsed, or at least begun a path towards total collapse, and there really is only one place to start. This was a vote the official Vote Leave campaign won by a highly questionable campaign – one they already seem to be running away from, given the laughable behaviour of deleting their entire website and merely saying their rhetoric was “possibilities”, not “promises”.
It is one thing they ditched economic arguments for immigration ones – its already being interpreted as the strategy that won them the race, in spite of its at times open xenophobia and exploiting legitimate fears into an overall message dealing in something nastier. But in-between immediately retracting promises about spending the savings from EU membership, or even if these savings at all, plus ones on freedom of movement, fishing, farming subsidies, and the like, one has to wonder what the point of this as an exercise actually was when the image has festered that they have conned Britons into voting for a cause that a lot of them didn’t even believe in.
This question of “What was the point of this?” was only reinforced when Boris Johnson’s first post-referendum column in The Daily Telegraph dropped, and essentially seemed to advocate EU membership rather than Brexit. Johnson is already in whipping boy mode, with one Tory MP using a Channel 4 News spot to tear into him as using the EU Referendum to grab power rather than actually seriously get a Brexit vote, and the former London Mayor being a rally point for chanting in recent pro-EU protest marches. His post-victory press-conference hardly gave the sense this is what he wanted.
Contrast that with Nigel Farage, who has perhaps already weakened Britain’s negotiating position by going to the European Parliament with a speech that earned him a hearty round of boos and came laced with Empire-era colonial arrogance. As if its not enough he also said this was a victory for “decent people”, and claimed this was Britain’s “independence day”, which is rich given many areas of the world celebrate their independence from Britain, it was equally a bit much when, at a sensitive time in the whole procedure, Farage decided to engage in such a crude manner for no real reason other than being a bad winner.
UKIP’s own leave campaign, Leave.EU, comes off little better, with its main backer saying their PR guys told them “facts don’t work” and “go for emotional responses”. While they were proved right and emotional response over facts worked in this referendum, it hardly helps us look at the credibility of any of this. Certainly, it should be a red flag when the backer proudly boasts that this policy is credited in the rise of Donald Trump in Republican politics.
Speaking of, the billionaire currently ruining American political discourse had a go at trying to claim victory, from a hastily arranged press conference at his golf course in Remain-voting, UK exit door-seeking Scotland. He received a warm welcome, with Mexican mariachi bands and being chased by tuba-wielding players, but he is still taking credit and now going to the USA claiming it proves him right. Which bodes well.
All of this is then given a further nasty and quite poisonous dimension with a surge in reported hated crimes. Be it laminated fliers being posted through Polish people’s doors in Cambridgeshire, or European-born people being told to “go home”, or the surreal episode that sees a Neo-Nazi interviewed on the news in the interests of balance, or the increasingly large quantities of posts of these rising on Twitter, it is depressing that the vote has been interpreted by some as a green light to drag Britain’s social politics back towards the uglier times we thought we’d eluded.
It should make the Leave campaigns uncomfortable the same emotive language used is being used in a more spiteful direction. It may also make them feel extremely uncomfortable that they are potentially in trouble, having promised Britain a win would see them reduce freedom of movement into the UK, when it is becoming increasingly apparent the best case scenarios for the nation are either ignoring the result, or doing a deal like Norway and Switzerland, who allow it into their nations.
Such contradictions are a myriad in this post-Brexit vote time. But it all comes back to the same recurring point. If a mainstream non-political campaign for Brexit with a coherent strategy and – above all – a plan to manage the political fallout, economic consequences, societal shifts and all the rest had come forward to lead the way, plus also had with them a coherent and believable vision for Britain’s future, then this might not be as bleak. But as is, we have none of those things, and its opened a vacuum up filled with empty speculation, most of which is either way too positive, unremittingly miserable, or predicting nothing will actually happen as a result of what remains a poll not legally binding, or settled by a unanimous decision.
As a result, we’re left asking questions and not knowing if we’ll get answers at any point this summer, or even this remaining year, or even ever again. Rather than answering the EU question, this has opened up a series of political nightmares for all concerned, divorced from the reality we thought it was being conducted in, and with no clear end in sight. And who knows where it will end up?