Get out of my life

We live in a time of prejudice and fear of the other. I myself, in a London street or on the tube, have tensed up when confronted with an elderly white person. Leaving the capital in the past few weeks to visit Wales and the north of England, I’ve caught myself peering with suspicion at the middle-aged Telegraph reader in the tea shop and the red-faced codger in Wetherspoons, wondering, is this the face of Brexit? This would be a joke, if it were not partly true.

The demographics are striking. On average, Leave voters, who made up about a third of the adult population, were significantly older, more provincial, less educated, less diverse and less familiar with diversity. This was a howl of distress, some liberal commentators rushed to explain, from people suffering the ravages of post-industrial decline and the lopsided punishment of austerity, the victims of globalisation who feel abandoned by Labour. No doubt. But it was also a snarl from the hangers and floggers of Little England, nostalgic for a mythical past of sturdy independence.  

This unlikely coalition of left and right was pulled together, with the help of the more unscrupulous newspapers, by a ragtag group of politicians who made extravagant promises that they would never be in a position to keep and that they walked away from as soon as the result was in. Within days there was a new word, regrexit, for what it felt like to realise you’d been duped. Polls suggest that the people of Wales, a region that can expect to lose almost £250 million a year in EU subsidies, would now vote to Remain if they had a second chance.

Too many people were induced to vote not only against their own interests but against the common good. Little thought was given to how Brexit might affect Scotland, divided in its attachment to the United Kingdom but overwhelmingly supportive of the EU; and even less to Northern Ireland, whose delicate peace agreement depends on a soft border with the Republic under the umbrella of Europe. Concerns about constitutional problems, along with predictions of economic damage, were dismissed as fear-mongering spread by ‘experts’. 

The choice was reduced to two words, Remain or Leave. We knew what Remain meant – we’d been living with the evolving reality of European cooperation for 40 years. But it turned out no one had a clue what Leave meant, not even the people selling it. A month on, we’re still none the wiser.

The electorate spoke cryptically, in the manner of the Apollonian oracle, but the self-appointed high priests of Brexit are officiously eager to interpret. According to back-bencher John Redwood, ‘We voted to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders.’ For others it’s all about keeping out immigrants. For Bill Cash, any plan to stay in the single market – even if a deal can be done, as proposed by Boris Johnson, to ‘slash immigration’ – would be a betrayal. ‘If you’re out,’ Cash gnomically explains, ‘you’re out.’ Yes, indeed. And Brexit means Brexit. But what does Brexit mean? What is the model for what we hope to become? Norway? Canada? the Cayman Islands?

To add to the muddle, the anti-EU tabloids have been getting worked up about the suffering of Brits holidaying on the continent. Families rushing to France at the end of the school term were delayed by heightened French security in the wake of the Nice attack. ‘Dover hell’ the Express called it, claiming it was ‘revenge for Brexit’. More bizarrely, The Daily Mail has blamed the plunging value of the pound, as experienced by British tourists, on dodgy foreigners selling Euros at rip-off prices. Trade with our European neighbours? The free movement of people? We’re finished with all that. But why should it stop us hopping over the channel and buying their stuff whenever we feel like it?

There’s a book by Anthony E Wolf on coping with teenage children called Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall. That’s the level of thinking exhibited by the Brexit movement. This would be a joke, if it were not entirely sad.

Brexit stage right? I hope we don't.

An old friend sends me this contribution to the referendum debate, titled June 2016:

Observe the condescension and disdain

Of those Important Men who urge ‘Remain!’

We want the thing that they appear to hate:

An Independent Democratic State.

The time is come to cast off foolish fears

And loose the shackles of the wasted years:

Let’s be again the people we have been

- Ah! what a birthday present for The Queen!

I don't suspect irony. My friend is a monarchist. His first verse reminds me that the Leavers have mastered what George Bush senior once called “the vision thing”. They are fluent in the language of sovereignty and freedom, while the Remainers seem to speak only of money. Business leaders understandably emphasise the financial consequences of Brexit. Carolyn Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI says, “The message from our members is resounding – most want the UK to stay in the EU because it is better for their business, jobs and prosperity” (1). But we might expect our leaders to offer something more uplifting.

Chief among those “Important Men” urging us to stay are the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. “Condescension and disdain” come naturally to them. Cameron adds a note of desperation, having, in defiance of his own pro-Europe convictions, gambled the nation’s future for short term political gain. If this referendum were simply a vote of confidence in the Tory leadership, I’d be queueing for the exit.

I’m not blind to the difficulties the EU faces. The 2008 crash exposed the weakness of the Eurozone. The refugee crisis has done the same for the Schengen area. There are no simple solutions to these problems and I understand the impulse to walk away from the whole complicated mess. But where to? The past is no longer available. In the world of cutthroat global capitalism, plucky little Britain going it alone is a mythical island. If we can’t make our voice heard in the European Parliament, what chance do we have in the boardrooms of ExxonMobil or Pfizer or Amazon?

June 2016 characterizes such thoughts as “foolish fears”. Its second verse slides into reverse gear, hinting at a Golden Age of independence and democracy when we had only ourselves to take care of. But it was never just us –not since the first Elizabethans began colonising America. For centuries we were part of a larger entity on which our wealth and power depended. The Empire worked as long as the illusion could be maintained that our exploitation of other peoples, who had neither democracy nor independence, was for their own good. That’s over and few people feel nostalgic for it.

At its best the Leave campaign appeals to our courage and sense of heroic independence, but the drive to get out of Europe is mainly fueled by less noble ambitions. To the powerless, suffering the effects of austerity piled on top of recession, Brexit is sold as a way of closing our borders, as if the paucity of public housing, the creeping privatization of the NHS and the widening gap between rich and poor were the fault of EU migrants, a group who in reality, according to recent HMRC figures, paid 3 billion in tax for the year ending April 2014 and claimed only 500 million in benefits (2).

We're told we could have a new hospital every week with what we pay the EU. Is that the plan, then? Even if we saved anything like this amount, would a Tory government under Boris Johnson invest it in public services? There’s no reason to think so. Johnson has been Mayor of London for eight years during which global developers have run amok. New towers dominate the skyline and thousands of luxury apartments are left empty by foreign property investors while working Londoners are priced out of the market (3). As Prime Minister he would be likely to pursue a similarly aggressive free market agenda.

In the face of Government opposition, EU law has brought us cleaner drinking water, cleaner air, and less polluted rivers and beaches (4). A report commissioned by the TUC notes that the EU has provided “access to paid annual holidays, improved health and safety protection, rights to unpaid parental leave, rights to time off work for urgent family reasons” and “equal treatment rights for part-time, fixed-term and agency workers” (5). The British Human Rights Act, which brings us into line with European law, establishes rights to free speech and personal privacy that were not previously protected (6). The shackles that the Brexit leaders want to be liberated from are regulations such as these.

There’s a danger that the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, added to decades of fake news stories about EU bans on everything from curvy bananas to bagpipes, will induce people to vote against their own interests, and not just financially. This would be a good time to celebrate the wider vision of the EU, how British lives are enhanced by the freedom to travel, study, work and settle in other European countries, and the many ways we benefit from the free traffic of ideas and culture among nations bound together by proximity, tangled history and shared interests. 

1 Telegraph: Business sends resounding message

2 Guardian: Number of migrants working in UK rises to record level

3 Daily Mail: Towers of Greed

4 Guardian: The environmental consequences of leaving would be huge

5 TUC: UK employment rights and the EU

6 Amnesty: 8 reasons why the Human Rights Act makes the UK better