Brexit: a political catastrophe

Smile at us, pay us pass us, but do not quite forget

That we are the people of England, who have never have spoken yet.

G.K.Chesterton, The Secret People

Well,we spoke and fifty two percent of us were sufficiently beguiled by demagogues and their right wing supporters to vote out of  the  institution that was insisting on workers' rights. For years the Conservative Right have opposed the European Union, not because of its advocacy of free trade, they love that, but because it insists on workers' rights, which they don't love, so a long campaign of misinformation was launched. They did not directly say that they primarily objected to workers' rights, but they used deception and stoked up fears of immigrants,promising that if we left Europe then we could stop the massive flow of immigrants to our shores. True, there is an a problem with migration, but leaving the EU won't stop it. Even more deceptively they promised a more democratic Britain, a Britain able to make its own laws again, one that was truly democratic. Sounds wonderful, does it not?

But a Pandora's box was opened. The racism that has been bubbling under the surface of Britain has found its head. There have been  incidents of people telling immigrants to go home,for after all, the ignorant racists that we have among us were so stupid that some of them thought that the day after a vote to leave immigrants would be chased out, and then these often hardly employable racist types thought that they might  get a well-paid job that their skill base does not merit. I am worried,my eldest son is married to a black,immigrant woman and I have a mixed race grandchild; and my son is already preparing for the eventuality of having to take his young family elsewhere for their safety and economic future. He is applying to activate his right to Irish citizenship. 

Within a day of the result the leaders of the Leave campaign were not looking very joyful, as the realization that they had no political and financial plan hit them. Already the pound had fallen against the dollar and businesses were having contracts cancelled. My nephew lost a contract on the first day. Another reason for their joylessness was that they had expected  the prime minister to instantly begin the quitting process and then stay on to manage it, but he has left it to his successor, who will be in place by October, leaving  them to bear the massive burden of leaving. You can see the plan,leave the work to someone else and then take the credit for leaving when he is overthrown or resigns. But he has delayed to start the formal process and that shunts the burden onto his opponents. The over-confident Brits who thought that we could dominate negotiations with Europe have had a shock, for the European leaders are taking a hard line about the deal.Strange, the Leave campaign thought that they would come a-begging to us.

Moreover, already promises are being broken, two gone and it's only a few days.The Leave campaign stated that the money that we commit to the EU could be spent on  the National Health Service, but now that they have won they are backtracking. Furthermore, we were promised a speedy departure, but Boris Johnson,  the leader of the Leave campaign, is now declaring that we are in no hurry.

And to cap it all, the Scottish Nationalists  are demanding another independence referendum, that will fracture the United Kingdom for good. Many people are applying for Irish passports to maintain their EU rights. Otherwise we are told to rejoice at our independence!

Two things are sure: population flows destabilize societies and demagogues make use of them for their nefarious ends. Europe has been struggling with an immigration crisis as refugees from Syria etc and economic migrants flock across borders, and once-welcoming states put up the barriers out of fear that they will not be able to cope. Britain does not suffer anything as bad as this, but we are a densely packed island and in particular the South East around London is packed and there is a housing crisis. This crisis is due to the fact that the previous Labour government was basically incompetent at doing what Labour is supposed to be good at, public works, and it was worsened  by the fact that though the Conservatives have been better than Labour  at house building, they don't care about ordinary people and so have under-provided social housing. The result is that house prices and therefore rents have soared and many are in cramped accommodation, and others are homeless.Migrants do put greater pressure on  housing, even though migration is good for the economy, so you can see the pressures. 

The Leave campaign played on fear while blaming their opponents for playing on it. The great fear was Turkey's future accession to  the EU. "Seventy seven million Turks could come to the EU" the propaganda declared, even though there is no evidence that Turks want to  move in numbers at all.Terror was created in the minds of already stressed out people; and what is more, Turks are Muslim,so the spectre of being overrun by Muslims was raised.

The stresses to which the people were subject have been  added by the fact that Britain is a case study in economic injustice. As the economy has boomed profits have risen, but wages have risen little at all. Chief executive officers, executives, managers  and directors have seen their earnings rise with productivity as wages for the rest have stagnated. Britain's wage differential between chief executive officers and workers is an obscenity.  To add to the problem,  capitalists were employing cheap immigrant labour at wage rates below official minimum wage, and so wage levels were being depressed.  Again, stresses are being felt by the poor.

There is a wealth gap between North and South, with wealth being disproportionately found in London and the South East, while northern and western areas have a disproportionately low share of the country's resources. As people struggle with the injustices of capitalism, the right saw its chance. "Blame Europe for your woes!" And you see the consequences.

The right wing press has been campaigning for years to get us to leave Europe, and there has been a steady stream of propaganda stories, all distorted, to maintain the pressure. The EU bans bent bananas,  we are told. Seems mad, but there were quality control rules emanating from the EU about what could be sold as top quality fruit, that's all. But the lies accumulated in less educated minds, and the demagogues could play on them.  

However, there has been discontent across Europe with the continent's political elites, some of whom have become distant from the ordinary people, so again another source of tension and stress for the burdened populace. Political correctness has led to many progressive left sneering at the English identity while celebrating every other one; and many ordinary folk felt that immigrants were favoured. Not by the government, certainly. But  many British people felt belittled and undervalued in their own homeland.

"Give us back our country" was the slogan, but they chose the wrong target. The real thieves are the one per cent who own the land of Britain, a country which has a long history of monopolization of land by a minority; the thieves are those who pay miserable wages  and who charge exorbitant rents; but these characters are good at deflecting blame onto the immigrants and the foreigners.

Forty eight per cent of Britons voted to stay in Europe, there is a petition for a second referendum signed by over three million people, with the numbers still rising;and Scotland voted to stay by a high margin, so now it is restless about its future. Not  a bad epitaph for David Cameron's prime ministerial career, to have destroyed two unions,  one of which he claimed to love. The younger the age group,the more likely they were to vote remain, so the demographics are in favour of a majority to re-enter the EU in future. But the UK could break up over this issue, and the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who  has come out of this referendum with her credibility enhanced, [as has her fellow Scotswoman Ruth Davison, the Scottish Conservative leader] bats off demands from Leave campaigners to get behind the government, for Nicola rightly says that she has a responsibility to Scotland. The irony of the petty nationalists of the Leave campaign telling Nicola, the Scots Nationalist leader,  that she should not put her country first  should not be lost on people. 

The referendum is advisory, so parliament has to ratify it, though it will. Parliament will also choose a new prime minister. The Leave campaign leader Boris Johnson is aiming to be the new prime minister, but many rightly or wrongly believe that he did not really believe in leaving the EU, but  opted for the side that furthered his ambition to  be prime minister. It was quite pleasing to  see him booed and jeered in London, the city of which he was once mayor, but which voted to stay in the EU.He may have scuppered his  chances of having the job that he craved, for many say that he sacrificed his country for his career.

The European ideal will not, cannot die, for it grew out of the high aspiration that the continent that had been so riven by wars and which gave us the holocaust would never again be at war. The ideal was that the European peoples had a common identity which did not replace national identities,  but which supplemented, enhanced and enriched them. The  ideal is too great to be killed off by one defection. But the British exit, Brexit as it is known, has fueled not only latent xenophobia in Britain, but also separatist pressures in other countries, such as France and the Netherlands.Is it any wonder that instead of the good exist deal we were promised by the Leave campaigners, the embittered Europeans give us as little as they can.   

As for me, as a Liberal Democrat I am a member of the only fully nationwide political party to commit itself to rejoining the EU. We are small and struggling, but we recruited five thousand new members after the referendum defeat. I am also a Roman Catholic, a member of a church whose political thought emphasizes the importance of international institutions and which always wanted European unity as a means of avoiding war. We keep on trying.