I have been ruminating for some time over what to write about this wretched, binary, reductive Referendum. I’ve read and read all sorts of articles and opinion pieces; I’ve looked at the statistics used by both sides and considered their viewpoints as best I can. Of course there is no way of knowing exactly what will happen in the next few years, whether we decide to Leave the EU or Remain part of one of the world’s most influential clubs.
It is mere speculation of course, but I heartily disagree with a popular view that politicians have presented the public only with spin and no facts. Facts are there but far too many people reject out of hand or choose to ignore things that don’t fit their own viewpoint. This enrages me: you present people with facts or expert opinions and then they deride the expertise of the people presenting them. Or it becomes some sort of Establishment conspiracy. Or it’s scaremongering.
One person on Twitter memorably presented me with, “I am fed up of the educated elites making decisions for us ordinary people.” An expression of the culture of mediocrity into which we have descended, as if all opinions, no matter how uninformed, no matter how crass or simply plain wrong were as valid as informed comment from PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
As it is, I voted with my postal vote almost as soon as I received it, almost three weeks ago and, it’s no secret, I voted Remain. On balance of probabilities, and not being a top economist or EU Commissioner or CEO of the NHS or a Global bank or Head of State myself, I’d rather trust those people who know much more than me about these things. Here’s a list as a reminder. It’s not definitive:
NB. This is an updated list as at 19/6/2016
Anyway, many other people far more articulate and well-versed in these things than me have written at length on their views and I have reposted them on Facebook and retweeted them on Twitter in order to make the information available to those people who say it is not available. I think there is no point me going over them again here and it’s not what I’d wanted to write anyway.
***************************************
My thoughts eventually started to crystallise in my head yesterday morning, after a truly horrible week when the escalation in tension and mutual loathing between Leave and Remain became palpable. But then the murder (killing, manslaughter?) of Jo Cox, a young MP, mother of two tiny children, with a career record of standing up for the refugees and people of Syria, made it seem tasteless to give yet another view.
There’s no point in wishing that good will come out of the the gunning down of a defenceless woman who wanted only to help people and make the world better. I can only hope that grief over what has happened and the respectful pause in campaigning will give people time to think about how this nation has become so divided and so stupid, so spiteful, so reckless with the truth, so content to perpetuate downright lies. Jonathan Freedland’s piece in today’s Guardian sums this up beautifully. I never want to see a referendum again, pitting neighbours against each other, splitting families. We have a parliamentary democracy, imperfect as ours is: let us rely on that in future.
Goodness, I’m struggling with this post. There’s so much I could write and I’ve typed and deleted, typed and deleted so many times.
I have been horrified at the antics of Boris Johnson – I actually voted for him to be Mayor of London TWICE: what a disappointment – who has thrown away his erstwhile “progressiveness” and resorted to populist racism in his quest for power. President Barack Obama is advising us to Remain in Europe because his father was Kenyan and he’s therefore got a grudge against the British? Really? Who else would you tar with this same brush, Boris? All the sons and daughters of people invited by the Mother Country from the Indian subcontinent to help run the NHS? Are we somehow a fifth column of malcontents with a grudge against the UK, just waiting for our moment to sabotage it? I can’t believe my ears.
The problem with this sort of rhetoric, which often seems like merely a game of spin to those with their eyes on real political power who can change direction on a sixpence, is that it taps into a nasty, latent undercurrent of xenophobia. With one or two, easily refutable exceptions, all conversations I have had or heard about or witnessed have come down to xenophobia and thence to raw and crude racism. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe that racism ever disappeared, but at least people realised that there was something less than respectable about it. Now it’s overt, crude, loud and shocking, culminating in this disgraceful, mendacious poster above, with its direct references to Nazi propaganda, launched only a few hours before Jo Cox MP was killed.
I have spent my life second guessing people, excusing them for repeating the anti-foreigner filth in the Daily Mail; trying to ignore patronising remarks about massing Romanians or not being able to wear crucifixes or lamenting the lack of Gollywog tokens. In many cases, people who say these things have never had to consider the implications of their words or actions because they’ve never been directly affected by racism themselves. They’ve never had to think or imagine what it’s like to be shouted at by drunks in the street; to stand in the changing room of an exclusive West End boutique and hear the assistant serving you referring pointedly to “Paki shops” BECAUSE YOU ARE THERE; to sit at the backwash in a high end West End hair salon and hear Lady This and Baroness That suddenly change their conversation to “IMMIGRANTS” just BECAUSE YOU ARE THERE.
You might never have been excluded from a neighbours’ party to which everyone else in the street was invited; you might not have had a neighbour turn up on your doorstep with a basket of dirty clothes assuming that you took in laundry. You might never have had to hear an elderly woman at the brush counter Boots remarking, loudly enough for you to hear, “Who would want that if THEY had had their hands on it?” You might never have witnessed the look of disgust on the face of a cleaner meeting you for the first time after previously having spoken to you only on the telephone. You might not, but I have.
I have spent my whole life second-guessing people’s actual feelings toward my brown face, my Indian name. So I find myself wondering about people’s real intentions in this wretched Referendum of dog whistles and innuendo, where xenophobia has become somehow almost respectable again.
Now, you might have an entirely reasonable concerns with our membership of the EU which makes you side with the Leave campaign. If you do, though, remember that you are putting yourself on the same side as people such as Michael Gove and George Galloway and Ian Duncan Smith and Katie Hopkins and the Rupert Murdoch and the Sun and the opportunistic Boris Johnson and, most odious of all, Nigel Farage. There is no escaping that. You might be holding your nose for the sake of democracy but you are making a conscious choice to be on the same side as these people. Which means that you are willing to excuse, or even endorse, the lies that they have told; the vicious racist atmosphere that they have regenerated.
I can’t get past this.
You might not be a racist yourself but you are on the same side as these people. You are on the same side as people who are voting for them because they have made their own racism less egregious, more acceptable, more easily voiced in public. As many have said, not all Leave voters are racists but all racists will vote Leave.
If you vote on the side of the obnoxious, squalid, odious Mr Farage and his seedy UKIP companions I’ll have to question how racist you are. I no longer want to smile and indulge you when you forget yourself and say “Oh we don’t mean you!” or “I’m not racist: I have black friends,” or “We know you. You’re OK.” I shall say something, to make sure you know I don’t approve and I don’t agree. To make you uncomfortable, for a change, instead of meekly accepting your filth. I shall take myself and my custom elsewhere. I am 50 years old. I don’t need to take this any more.
Powerfully expressed, Gita. X
An eloquent and passionate post, much of which I endorse. My muddled thoughts follow.
I can’t wait for this referendum to be over. I am getting more and more angry about it, so much so that, for the first time ever, I am considering not voting. I take your point that there is information out there, but so much of it is conflicting or the degree of difficulty is too challenging for me to grasp. We elect MPs to deal with these layers of complexity, I feel deeply uncomfortable having such responsibility to bear.
There are odious people on both sides, but I take your point that all racists will vote Leave. However, people like Dennis Skinner MP, Kate Hoey MP and Dame Jenny Jones and the leaders of the RMT union (all of whom, incidentally, do not appear in the table above) are voting leave and are not racists and do not excuse or endorse racists. Two people I respect hugely are voting Leave. One runs a foodbank in Deptford and works unceasingly for social justice. Another is a qualified medic with London Ambulance, ex trade union rep for his colleagues, ex Labour party member – and became a member of UKIP when it was first formed because he genuinely feels Britain is better out and he felt alienated from the Labour party. I know – you couldn’t make it up.
It has always troubled me that EU accounts were so often not signed off. It troubles me the way Greece was treated. It troubles me that the far right has raised its ugly head again in the EU. It troubles me that the EU has not come remotely close to offering any workable solution to the refugee crisis and may have made it worse. Sangatte is a blight on the EU conscience.
Over the last two years campaigning about a local issue I have seen how even at local government level those in power abuse that power and have little regard for those they are supposed to serve. If that is the case in local government how many times is it magnified at national level? And magnified again at EU level?
But is all this enough to make me vote Leave or should I vote Remain because better the devil you know with the status quo?
What I find really, really depressing – and it was evident long before the referendum was announced and the subsequent campaign – is the complete intolerance by so many people to another point of view. I see it so often on social media. It is this that has alienated us as a society and driven normally tolerant people into the arms of UKIP, or who have been swayed by Bojo style rhetoric.
My only hope is that, whatever the outcome of the referendum, we all pull together to make the outcome work. In the meantime, the swingometer is still swinging and will probably continue to do so right up to the last minute.
I agree with your post, Gita, but while there is a ghastly racist element, like Carole above, I don’t believe everyone on the Leave side is racist. I’m horrified to read about the racism you have suffered.
Hello and thanks for your comments. I’ve taken a little time to consider them, hence my slightly delayed response.
Carole, I understand what you are saying but I did say that not all vote Leavers are racists. I’m not keen on some of the people you mentioned, but possibly for different reasons. I do think, however, that if you actually join UKIP from whichever party, then you are choosing very strange bedfellows if you can still manage to ignore their disgraceful attitude to people who don;t fit with their mindset.
I understand your point about the local authority: my neighbouring one, in the opposite colour is as entrenched and possibly has a little accountability before its voters as yours. As I have said on many occasions, a donkey in a blue nappy would be elected here: how is that accountability?
I don’t think anyone on the remain side is saying that the EU is anywhere near a perfectly democratic and accountable organisation but we can try and influence it if we are at the table. If we vote to leave we shall probably have to abide by all EU regulations if we want to trade with the EU bloc but without any influence at all in the world. Look at some of the literature put out by UKIp and other Leave campaigners that relies on, in my view, wild optimism for a simultaneous step into the unknown and a reliance on the influence of the old British empire.
Anyway, as I said, the list was not exhaustive and all of this has been discussed more fluently, more eloquently elsewhere. The main point of my post was to try and articulate how much more threatening and obscene the atmosphere has become towards immigrants and people like me. For a while people suppressed their racist attitudes, now they seem to be gaining respectability again.
Also: scratch the surface. Many people would never call themselves racists. I have friends who I would never have thought of as racist, sexist or homophobic but I’m amazed what people will say when their think/say filter is turned off. And I think the current atmosphere is ore likely to permit this.
For me, this means even more second-guessing and even more worrying before social situations about whether someone is going to make things awkward by their words. And it’s horrible.
Annette: I’ve had to edit this down. There is oh so much more. But if I talk about it too much, I’m accused of being “over-sensitive,” and some people have even told me that they consider “racism,” to be a manufactured concept.
I can understand people being sceptical if they’re in the privileged position of never having to be disadvantaged because of their age, sex, ethnic background, region, disability….what have I missed? And one certainly doesn’t go looking for it. But that does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
But thank you very much, all of you, for reading and for your considered comments. xxx
Eloquent and passionate as always, but I must add that siding with the stay vote puts you in the pot with murderers like Tony Blair. There are also many eminent, independent economists who have put their cases for leave so I will add a link for sake of balance http://www.economistsforbrexit.co.uk
Lynda, that was then, this is now. I don’t support Tony Blair’s lie about WMD but I supported many of his other policies. And I have had a look at that economists foo Brexit thing. Patrick Minford is well known for his previous and continuing disdain of the EU. He hasn’t published much recently. It’s analogous to trusting Lord Lawson on climate change, in my view.
It is all supposition anyway. I still firmly believe that we are better on the inside urinating out than the converse.
I would rather drive the dodgy car with my family on board than risk the wheel to a stranger. But I suspect the remain vote will win with a landslide. Not many exercising their right to vote, who are not totally swayed either way will not vote for change. I suspect preying on this uncertainty will be the closing salvo from the leave campaign this week.
‘will vote for change’ that should read.
Gah, from the remain campaign!!
Thank you for the original post Gita and to Lynda and Annette for their comments. This thread is an example of how people can have a civilized conversation about a contentious and complex matter. If only others would follow suit.
The Leave supporters who are not racists and who welcome immigration need to do everything they can to distance themselves from the racist element of their campaign, otherwise, as you say Gita, we will assume that they too are racist.
And I agree with you, Gita, about Tony Blair. Wouldn’t call him a murderer either but that’s probably a whole other subject for discussion.
I am indeed in that privileged position of never having been subject to racism but try hard to imagine how it must feel.
Yes Carole, a good, civilised conversation. Thank you.
It is all interesting stuff. X
Somewhat off topic, but I wonder if other nations that have referendums, especially Switzerland given how often they hold them, have the same problems with political discourse and people getting nasty or do they manage to have reasonable debate without rancour? Ireland has had many referendums. I can think of at least 5 that I voted in, and while I wouldn’t say they were all civilised and without rancour, certainly they never seemed quite so personal. Passionate, yes. On the other hand, I noticed that with the marriage equality referendum last year, there was quite a few personal attacks on social media. So perhaps it isn’t a question of the referendum in itself bringing the worst out, rather the lack of thoughtful and meaningful debate in an era of soundbites and 140 character tweets? I personally think referendums are a sign of a healthy democracy and that perhaps if the UK had consulted the people more often, they would possibly be more nuanced now?
Disagree. The problem is that a referendum question can’t usually reflect the nuance of the debate. Maybe it works in Ireland but here it is perfect acceptable to despise education and work on gut instinct only. Post-fact, post-truth Britain there for you..
That’s true. By nature, the referendum will always be a simple binary Yes/No I’m not sure what the ballot paper says, but in Ireland, any referendum has the actual wording of the amendment as it will appear in the constitution, which hopefully clarifies the issue for the voter. And we have plenty of cranks in Ireland also, and because of broadcast regulations, which are murky at best, there must be “balance”, which often means people with no relevant qualification holding forth on an issue, pulling “facts” out of thin air with no evidence, citing “studies” that they have no copy of and have never been heard of by the relevant experts and when all else fails, simply making ad hominem attacks on their opponents. Hmm!!! Maybe we aren’t so different to UK after all 😉
Lol. But you’re actually in the UK!
True. Referring to Ireland can be confusing. I meant the Republic of Ireland, where I was raised and lived for the first half of my life so far 🙂
Hence my confusion. You tweet like you’re in the ROI when you’re actually in NI. They say that if Brexit happens there will have to be a new border etc.
Yes, I must try to be clearer about that. I still feel Irish, so it gets a bit tangled. Not quite sure what will happen as there are already treaties between UK and Republic re free movement etc. There will likely be customs posts though, both static and mobile. A lot of livestock smuggling went on in the days of the border controls and a large and lucrative black market would be up and running very quickly. Especially for illegal diesel.