Some thoughts on the Brexit fallout

It’s been a few days since the Brexit vote dropped a metric (damn you, EU bureaucrats, with your pesky decimal systems) shit-ton of depression and uncertainty on the UK, European, and global economies, and after a few more pressing matters were attended to I have now had time to think about it in a bit more detail.

Frankly, I'm very worried.

I'm worried that my country has voted in haste without understanding quite what they were voting for.

I’m worried that the political leaders of the Leave campaign have no tangible plan for the future of this country outside the EU - certainly nothing more defined than Charlie Croker’s last line in The Italian Job as all of their futures hang precipitously on the edge of a cliff and their golden finances slide ever closer to the edge in response to any tiny movement of the previously jubilant gang of thieves:

"Hang on, lads; I’ve got a great idea..."

I’m also worried that the Leave vote has emboldened a vile minority and brought an undercurrent of racism, xenophobia and hatred to the surface - a mentality that I had thought that if not gone, at least it was much diminished in the 21st century.

Farage and his jingoistic gang seem to think that they can take Britain forward by taking us back to a "better time", a time when we were an empire, masters of the oceans, and an economic and political powerhouse - the envy of the world.

It’s a rose tinted time-out-of-time where Wellington, Churchill, and Enid Blyton take tea with the vicar while the village cricket team in their crisp whites provide a gently bucolic soundtrack of leather on willow and polite applause.

A time when the wealthy captains of industry retire to their country piles for the weekend, never having to cross paths with the simultanously inferior yet irredoubtably stout yeomen who sup their pints of best British bitter in the bar of their traditional English country pub, contented with their menial lot and fully aware of their place.

A time where all foreigners are regarded with casual, universal suspicion, and where skin tone indicative of anything more than a fortnight of pleasant weather at a nice little bolt-hole in the south of France is the perfect prompt for funny accents and lighthearted ribbing of the "darkies".

A time that sounds lovely if you happen to be white, male, heterosexual, wealthy, and landed.

Remind me — how many of the prominent proponents of the Leave campaign are rich, straight, white men?…

That time, if it ever truly existed, is long gone.

In truth, we live in an ever more connected world.

A world where our former collonies have rightly shrugged off the yoke of conquest and had their own Independence Days.

A world where we purport to value all people equally - man or woman, pink, beige, brown, black or any colour in between, gay or straight.

A world where anyone can make their way and build a successful life by dint of hard work.

Yet we also live in a fractured world, a world where those values are wildly, unevenly applied.

A world riven by competing mythologies and ideologies.

A world where the richest and most well educated people of the most powerful nations are unable to recognise or reconcile the cognitive dissonance of wanting to own the latest technological bauble that happens to require scarce resources mined from some of the poorest nations and assembled by low paid workers in countries with a less than glowing human rights record who also aspire to (and are very well along the route to achieving) the up-ending of our perceived position as one of the pre-eminent economic powers on this blue marble of ours.

A world where our success is righteous, well earned and wholly deserved, yet emerging nations are treated with condescention and mistrust.

A world where white folk who often believe in one particular mythology can be trusted with the power to destroy the world yet brown folk whose ancestors discovered much of the science, medicine and philosophy that helped build our understanding of the world are not trusted in like fashion because they subscribe to a different mythology.

I find it particularly soul destroying to see the rise of racist rhetoric that has followed the leave vote - people are being abused on the street, on public transport, and in places where they gather together. Hard-working people are being screamed and jeered at, being told to "go home" whilst in their home country, people who contribute to our economic and social success are being told "we voted to get rid of you".

The people making these statements, threats, and curses seem to be emboldened by the Leave vote, operating on the assumption that the 37% of the eligible electorate who voted to Leave also share their values, and the leaders of the Leave campaign have done nothing to challenge this.

They have not (yet) taken an effective stand against this evident xenophobia.

They have not taken a stand against this resurgent racism.

They have, however unconsciously, given it their tacit approval.

Many of the racist bigots seem to want to return to a "white" Britain, a Britain that "we fought for in the war", a Britain for a certain type of people of a certain tribal descent. A Britain very much from this side of the channel. Dare I say it, an english Britain.

I have got some late breaking news for these people: we're a mongrel nation.

We're no longer a nation of what historians would call "Britons", and we haven't been one for thousands of years.

We've been invaded by various of our northern european neighbours over the past few millenia - hell, the Romans built roads that we're still using!

The "Anglo-Saxons" that they call "British" are basically "Germans" - they're the Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain after the withdrawal of the Romans.

We've had Danes and Vikings popping by too, and we've inter-bred with all of them.

If you think about it, we've also been French for 950 years.

You remember learning about the Norman conquest in school - 1066 and all that, the fella with the arrow in his eye on that tapestry? Basically French.

The xenophobes view of "us" is basically diverse blend of the tribes of Europe, the very place that they seek to withdraw us from.

Oh, and we didn't fight for England in WW2.

We may have been on the verge of invasion in the latter stages of the war, but fundamentally we fought for the French, the Poles, the Jews, and the oppressed and threatened of every nation.

We fought on a matter of principle alongside people who were fighting for their very survival.

We fought against xenophobic nationalism; against isolationist politics; against oppression, unchecked aggression and genocide.

My maternal grandfather took his place in that fight in Burma - 5,500 miles away from his Warwickshire home.

We fought alongside like-minded people of every race, colour and creed against the machinations of a vile, hateful (democratically elected) menace and its allies, and we won, for a time at least.

The EU was formed in the wake of that bloodshed and chaos.

It was formed to foster peace and collaboration in Europe; to help Europe rise from the ashes of the widest, most destructive conflict that our species had ever borne witness to.

Is it perfect? No.

Has it fallen prey to an excess of bureaucracy and economic self-interest? Yes.

Could it be better? Certainly.

Can we fix that from the outside? I doubt it.

Why? Because it is made of people. Humans. Largely hairless, higher-order primates who currently sit at the top of the food chain on this planet.

We are not infallible.

We are fractious and tribal.

We are proud and intransigent.

We are painfully unaware of (or unwilling to accept) the true negative impact that we are having on our own precious planet.

We are, however, adaptable.

We are self-aware.

We can improve.

I for one intend to do so.

I intend to take a more active role in shaping my country.

I intend to take a more active interest in the political and democratic process, to engage more fully and not just when a ballot paper lands on the doormat.

I intend to hold my political representatives to account and to demand that they work towards a better future for us all.

I hope you will do so too.

Originally posted on Medium