The Brexit vote has divided Britain down the middle, what is the next step?
- In Current Affairs
- 03:10 PM, Jun 29, 2016
- Jay Jina
Viking invasions of our small island may be distant history, but ignominious Engxits from international competitions are nothing new for the England football team, the only difference being that, in Euro 2016, the boys have been well and truly hit an all-time nadir by the ambush of a well drilled band of Norsemen.
To follow so sharply on the heels of the Brexit vote has left many in a divided nation now dejected. The only good omen currently is that Engxit, like previous failures, will soon be forgotten as the Premier League splashes millions in readiness for the kick off of the new season in a few weeks.
The contusions from Brexit seem to be more pernicious, causing widespread commotion spilling out into heated exchanges and recriminations on Social media and also within families. Many young people, including my own children feel that they have been badly let down by many elders who themselves are immigrants and therefore ought to know better.
Yet, it seems to be forgotten that, in what everyone at the time that the referendum was announced agreed would be a good thing to let the people decide upon, the ensuing campaign was fuelled by negativity and emotion by both sides. Neither the “Better Together” nor “Get our Country back” mantras were accurate or objective.
In a debate that has been brewing for decades across the political spectrum, it is also forgotten that this was never purely a Left Vs. Right thing; nor was it simply about immigration, xenophobia or an economics thing at its core. It was and continues to be a much bigger thing than is acknowledged.
Different people saw different reasons for Remain or Brexit. Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, the respective post war icons of xenophobia and socialist internationalism were both anti-EU whilst Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, both free market Tories were at opposite poles of opinion on the EU. None of these names may have strict ideological inheritors of their core politics in mainstream British life today, but at least on the matter of the EU, there are many who bear their respective torches.
The award of prime culprit in this fiasco must go to PM Cameron. Like Chamberlain nearly 80 years ago, he returned from his continental negotiations with a wafer thin package and then, in the interest of parochial interests of his party, proceeded to stake his career to sell snake oil in the guise of gigantic wins and concessions when they were nothing of the sort. Now, he and especially his Chancellor, George Osborne are both having to wriggle to literally un-explain the post-Brexit doomsday scenarios that they painted for the British economy.
At least Cameron has had the good grace to resign, albeit with the politically selfish proviso that he wants a smooth transition of the UK government to maintain his party in power. Whether he manages to get this or not will depend largely on how adeptly the Tories manage the transition internally and create a viable Brexit team who can negotiate and broker an agreement which the EU is also happy to buy into.
Meanwhile there is a populist wave, fed by public figures in the arts and media, contending that the referendum was conducted on false premises and that many did not know what they were asked to vote on. The petition has topped 3 million and still going. As to whether this will hold sway remains to be seen, though there are precedents of re-runs of similar EU referenda in Ireland and Portugal which reversed the original results.
Whilst the ruling Tories are in a fix over what to do next, the opposition Labour Party are in total meltdown. Leader Jeremy Corbyn, after sacking one of his senior Shadow Ministers at the weekend has lost half the shadow cabinet to resignations and is facing a parliamentary revolt of epic proportions. The last time the party faced internecine warfare a fraction of the magnitude of the present one, several leading lights broke away to form the SDP and the party remained out of power for 15 years.
Despite these potentially seismic events of the last three days, the fact that Labour had long ago abandoned its White Working Class vote base seems to figure little in the party’s machinations. Whilst happy to side with the champagne luvvies in the arts and media who support Remain, Palestine, and many other “popular” causes, the middle class leadership of Labour have not only abandoned the hapless WWC’s but left them to the wolves of UKIP.
The fact that 4 million of the 30 million votes cast in the UK elections last year went to UKIP should have been a dire warning. But, hey! Which professional politician wants to deal with inconvenient truths?
Is it not embarrassing that none among the proponents of Remain, who feel so peeved and superior that they brazenly insult the “xenophobic whites” who voted Brexit but do not pause to ponder that they have done nothing to give the WWCs a stake in their own society.
Whilst immigration is feted as an absolute good, the worries of WWCs are brushed aside like Gordon Brown did to “that bigoted woman”. Whilst skilled professionals are imported from countries that can hardly afford to lose their best brains, British youngsters have to pay extortionate university fees to get an education.
And now, to make their point, some of the home grown middle class internationalists who, though happy to employ foreign nannies and be served by EU waiters on minimum wage, seek out every street insult and project it as the personification of evil racism and claim it to be sweeping the country, but conveniently overlook the fact that many aspiring immigrants who also are middle class and international, but who crave an unbiased immigration system and value direct democracy over the power of an unelected centralised bureaucracy, voted Brexit.
Some of the Brexit crew are ecstatic in their pathetic gloating over "independence" to the point of riling EU career federalists like Commission President Juncker to respond with barbed threats of “consequences”, “punishment” and kneejerk demands for a quick exit by the UK or the removal of the English language in EU affairs.
Amidst this furore, if the logical conclusion to the referendum it to be enacted, it is going to be vital for British national interests that the right framework is in place before Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is invoked. Despite the emotive bluster on both sides threatening to cut off noses to spite faces, it is to be hoped that commonsense will prevail.
It is also possible though highly unlikely, that Britain will somehow negotiate special terms and remain in the EU. A little more likely but still unlikely to happen would be a re-run referendum that results in a Remain vote with some revised, common, EU-wide agreed flexure of the articles of membership.
Pragmatically, and most likely, the divorce, when it happens, will have to be conducted with mature sensible heads on all sides.
There will be short term turbulence of the markets and the economic consequences will have to be managed. The inter-twined nature of communities, trade and commerce between Britain and the EU will help to ensure that a semblance of sanity.
Many of the politicians that have lost the referendum will disappear; many among those that have won will have the tough job to broker a post-exit peace.
Those who think they won and yet continue to gloat in their myopic “little England garb” will also disappear – our society is too civilized to mistake their brazen xenophobia for anything else.
Britain will still remain in Europe, geographically, culturally and economically. Britain will not suddenly turn into a white supremacist state; she will still remain a magnet for the EU’s and the world’s best and a haven for tolerance and cultural diversity.
Done right, Brexit will not weaken Britain’s affiliation to the continent, but free the country up to strengthen economic and cultural ties with the Commonwealth and especially SE Asia, India and Africa.
Britain never really felt that it “belonged” in a federal EU club anyway: The short interval of the EU years between being a global colonial power and something new is simply the passage of time before the start of something new.
It is now time for Britain, and that includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to reinvent herself and redefine what it means to be “Great" again, and it is for passage of time and the unfolding of history to determine this.
The EU too will be the better as a result of Brexit. It has been at the crossroads for the last couple of decades – the new global challenges cannot be looked at in the paradigm that gave birth to the EU in a post-war Europe with semi-detached members forever scrutinizing every move.
This vote is a one off; it should NOT be viewed as the first of many national referenda for the EU’s demise; instead it should be one for EU reform. Already, there are waves taking shape. A new generation of leadership will cause the organization to seriously introspect and reinvent itself.
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