Written on
Monday 27th June, four days after the results came in.
My Facebook feed is divided into two groups
of friends. Friends who are bewildered
and horrified that we have just voted ourselves out of Europe, and are trying
to make sense of it and dig heels in to stop it from coming to pass - and
friends who are fed up with the people who are still talking about it and want
everyone to accept it and move on to making Britain great again.
I am beyond happy that my friend list
doesn’t include one single person who wants anyone sent home or who advocates
racism in any way, no matter which way they voted – and more of that, later.
It’s important to me to explain why this is
so important to me, because I really value my friends and I am aware that some
of them must be sick to the bloody back teeth of me. I also want to try to articulate what it is
that makes some of us feel so strongly about this.
In the run up to this referendum, right up
until the day, I felt thoroughly nauseous at the possible ramifications but I
worked hard to comment on the debate as calmly, informatively and in as
non-partisan a manner as I could.
This is hard for someone in my position,
who believes with every fibre of her being in a unified Europe, but I really
believed that not ramming my views down people’s throats, while explaining
where general reporting and understanding was either deliberately or
accidentally erroneous was the way forward.
I just really wanted to help.
Still do.
I think one of my mistakes in the way I
approached debating this before the referendum was in being wholly logical,
tackling the facts and deliberately trying not to get heated about it. I didn’t want to scare anyone away from
voting to remain in the EU with my sheer all-encompassing passion and belief in
it. I tackled the Big Lies which the
Leave campaign employed, and which they are now having to admit were indeed
whoppers, but I never addressed the emotional side.
So here it is.
In January 1974, my family moved to
Brussels, where my dad was one of the first wave of Brits working out
there. We weren’t rich or privileged, we
were just an ordinary working class family from the UK. My Dad’s dad was a Kent coal miner and my
Mum’s dad stoked coal into furnaces in a hospital, in eight hour shifts,
morning, noon and night. My dad, and all
the people out there, had simply seen an ad in their local paper and sat a
series of exams, followed by a grueling interview process. In other words, ordinary people had applied
for a job in an ordinary manner.
We, however, had a deep belief in the ethos
of the EU from the start. The mood in Europe at that time was one of
hope. A wholly optimistic belief in a
bright future with a fundamental emphasis on no further wars within and between
the countries of Europe. No more young
men would be sent to fight and die on the battlefields of France, Belgium, Holland
– you get the idea.
I, and my school friends, were bought up as genuine children of Europe. We believe in it wholeheartedly.
The implementers of this ideal were mostly young families from all over
Europe. Their parents had lived through
and fought in the Second World War, and they wanted a better future for their
children - and believe you me, they worked their arses off to ensure that
neither they nor their compatriots, nor their opposite numbers from other
member states (aka EU countries) would ever have to send their children, the
children they had travelled across the continent to bring to Brussels with them,
off to fight the children that they were meeting and befriending, going to
school with, playing with.
I spent my entire school life, bar my very
first term, in Brussels. My school was
set up by the EU to cater for the kids coming from all over Europe to build
this bright new world.
I don’t have much recollection of life in
England – I was four when we moved to Brussels.
I clearly remember my first day at school in Brussels, however. The school was enormous. All on one site, the age went from
kindergarten right up through primary through to the European Baccalaureat –
A-level age. There were at that time six
language sections – English, Franco-Belge, Nederlando-Belge, German, Danish and
Italian. So take infant school, add
primary and secondary school, put it all in one place then multiply by six and
you’ve an idea of the size of the place.
Thirty to a class and more than one class per year group per language
section, in some cases. There were some
3,500 students there by the time I left – at which point we also had a Spanish
and a Greek section.
Because philosophy is a compulsory subject in Italian schools, it was a
compulsory subject at the European school.
All the language sections had to study it. The same with economics. The UK’s contribution to this was compulsory
RE. (My mum’s contribution was to add an
Ethics option to the Religion thing.)
From the age of four, my playmates were chiefly British, as in primary school
most of our lessons were conducted in our mother tongue, so we sat alongside
our own countrymen for most of the day.
Playtime, however, we were all mixed.
Hundreds of kids of different nationalities, playing together in an
enormous playground. We really didn’t
much notice whether someone was English, Italian, French, German, Danish,
Belgian – we didn’t CARE! We either
liked them or we didn’t, and their nationality never once had anything to do
with that.
As we grew up together, the national distinctions became even less marked, as
we all learned each others languages. By
the time we left school at 18, there was a definite European School lingo. Because everyone spoke at least four
languages, you would find the mot or phrase juste in whichever language first
sprung to mind.
When I first moved back to the UK – to London, to study Law at King’s College –
I realized that it was going to be an effort to speak just one language at a
time. There were a few of us Eurobrats
at King’s, and there was some resentment to begin with, as we appeared a little
elitist, with our European manner and our peppering of our conversation with
whole sentences in any old language we chose.
It wasn’t deliberate – we didn’t think we were better than anyone else –
it was just how we spoke. In fact, it
now occurs to me that the only time in my life when I have felt awkward, alien
and out of place was that first six months back in “my own country”. Until now, that is. Anyway.
Moving along! This misunderstanding
soon settled down and we integrated well enough – we were, after all, used to
adapting to people.
The language thing is a microcosm of the
whole thing, of course. As much as we
pinched words and phrases from one another, we pinched bits of culture that we
liked, and, without realizing it, all sorts of other bits and pieces. We became intermingled, European, unified. However, we all still spoke our first language
primarily, and we all knew that we were British Europeans or Italian Europeans
or Belgian Europeans, and there was plenty of partisan banter. We identified with both our home nations and
our EU status.
The idea of going to war against our schoolmates, in the past, present or
future, was wholly – wholly – argh!
There isn’t a big enough word.
Anathema. Not strong enough. Alien.
Nope. Unthinkable is what it was
- but really think about what unthinkable means. It means it is so apart from your
understanding that you can’t even think it.
Does not compute. “Going to war
with those guys – is that even a thing?”
By the way, in case you think the school sounds like a hotbed of elitism, I
think I should at this point explain how it worked. Anyone who worked for the EU, EC, EEC,
whatever it was called at the time, was entitled to send their kids to the school,
for free. An enormous organization such
as the EU doesn’t just employ Director Generals and highly paid boffins. The cleaners, security guards and canteen
workers had the same right to send their kids to our school as the Director
General.
I have always been immensely proud of this. Very democratic – part of the ideal they are
striving for.
I grew up knowing that I could work in any
country in the EU. As an adult, I could
just up sticks and go and live wherever I chose. Once I had a family, I could take my children
and my husband, all of whom had that right as much as I did. My children could choose to study art in
Italy or engineering in Germany – or the other way around. Or just go and live in Paris for a couple of
years, working their way.
This right, which my dad worked almost his
entire working life to create and nurture and protect, has just been taken away
from me and from my kids, and I feel bereaved and very angry about this.
The belief that we are one united Europe,
which was so deeply held in my very soul, has been destroyed. I feel like someone reached in, ripped it
out, tore it to shreds in front of my eyes, hurled it to the floor, dashed it
with petrol and burnt it in front of my eyes, and I am reeling to my core at
this.
It may sound overly dramatic to you, but I
am not exaggerating my feelings.
And while they’re doing it, they’re
cheerily telling me to stop moping, it will be fine.
I have tried a thousand analogies in my
head, and I can’t make them work, but imagine that the village or borough, where
you live and which you love, decided to take a vote as to whether you stay part
Britain. There’s 100 people in your village. 28 of them don’t vote, for any number of
reasons – maybe one of them didn’t get home from work in time due to trains
being totally effed up and major commuter stations actually closing (can’t even
remember the last time that happened).
35 vote to stay part of Britain.
37 vote to go it alone.
Going it alone means that your kids HAVE to go to the village school, and if
the next village has a better degree course in something than yours does, it’s
tough. If they just fancy going and
living in the next village because the view is nice from there and there’s a
company there specializing in an area which particularly interests them and at
which they are particularly skilled, they can’t. As the votes have finished being counted, it
transpires that the people who presented the case for leaving Britain
lied. Quite a lot. They’re actually not going to look after the
little cottage hospital in the village, for a start, and they didn’t expect to
win so they don’t have a plan as to what to do next. Despite the fact that they said they know
there’s not a lot of houses left in the village and they’ll make sure they stop
people from outside the village buying the ones that are available, or working
in the village shop, they now admit that actually they are not going to be able
to do this, and they never were. A few of those who voted to leave come out and
say that they did so because they don’t like the parish councilor, and they
thought this was a good way of showing that.
Some more say that they voted that way because they wanted their taxes
to go to the cottage hospital, and they feel that they were lied to, and want
to change their vote. More yet say that
they hadn’t realized that they were actually voting to leave Britain, and that
they never thought it would happen, and that they want to change their vote.
Basically, that very small margin of two
people (as you’ll have worked out, this is based on the percentage of turnout,
then votes for and against) has potentially been heavily eroded.
But don’t worry, those of you who didn’t
want to leave in the first place, we’re pretty sure it will work out in the
end. Probably.
As it stands, in the UK, 28% didn’t vote.
37% voted to leave. 35% voted to
stay.
Is it democratic to blindly stick with it
and push on, forcing the view of 37% of the eligible voters on the other 63%?
Or is it more democratic, before making this irreversible change – because make
no mistake, there is no going back – to jussssst check one more time?
If the result comes back the same, so be it.
If the people who want to leave still believe that it is right to do so,
in the same numbers, the vote will stay the same, so where’s the harm?
If it turns out that it goes the other way because people now realize that is
NOT what they want – how is that undemocratic?
But on that tiny margin, with a lot of
people now changing their minds, with the Sun and the Mail and the Express
finally printing what will happen next with an unprecedented degree of
accuracy, and their readers going “What? What? Why didn’t you tell us before? We didn’t know!”, with the Leave campaign
admitting that two of their three major platforms – increased spending on the
NHS and reduced immigration– were just bollocks (the others are largely bollocks,
too, by the way – they just haven’t admitted it quite yet), with this increase
in racism which has fundamentally shocked all right thinking people whether
they voted to leave or remain, I think the democratic and sensible thing is to
re-examine this.
Is it not sheer pig-headedness to ignore
the hundreds of thousands of people who are no longer sure they want what they
voted for? I think so.
Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. That’s all the people. Not 37% of the people.
We have a very adversarial culture in the
UK. We are very black and white. The very layout of the House of Commons is
adversarial – face to face, head to head, us and them, rather than circular.
First Past The Post sets up a system where everyone in the country is ruled by
a parliament almost always elected by less than half the country, rather than
by a parliament who represent the proportion of each party that people actually
voted for. Everyone therefore has to toe
the party line. Tories have to back Tory
policies most of the time whether they like it or not. Labour the same.
The deep rifts opening up in our society at the moment are a result of our view
that you are either with us or against us – what’s it going to be?
And so now we have US and THEM, and I don’t wonder that so many people just
want the fighting to stop, but I also don’t wonder that so many others are
desperate to make sure – really sure – that everyone knows what we’re doing and
is not prepared to lie down and say die until we all know this is what we
REALLY want. It’s not inevitable. It’s still fluid. There is still, potentially, a little wiggle
room. Let’s make sure we know what we’re
doing before we slam any doors and turn the lock.
Back to our adversarial nature - as a result of the fact that we tend to back a
side and fight our arses off for it, nobody really questioned that there was a
campaign for Leave and a campaign for Remain.
Question that!
There should have been nobody pushing an agenda! There should not have been a campaign for OR
a campaign against, there should simply have been a campaign of
information.
As it was, virtually all of the independent information pointed towards
remaining a member of the EU being a damned good idea. But because we are used to this adversarial
system, everyone believed that that independent information and analysis was
part of the Remain campaign, and as such dismissed it as electioneering.
Meanwhile, Leave clearly had no intention of winning, or having to fulfill
their insane promises, but they put on a good show and Boris, whose plan was
almost certainly simply to use the campaign as a platform to raise his
political profile, was dismayed to have won and has spent the entire time since
he won looking shell-shocked and back-pedalling like the committed cyclist he
is.
It was all jolly exciting and jolly good
fun sticking it to the man, but now the party’s over and we’re left cleaning up
the mess, suddenly a significant portion of people are questioning what they
were told, they are angry that they were lied to, they are shocked that their
protest vote is actually going to change their (and my) world, and they deserve
to be heard.
I am as angry on behalf of those people as I am for myself.
There are some things that I would like to
state categorically, and stand by.
I do not believe that everyone who voted to Leave is ignorant. I know and have debated with some very
intelligent and eloquent Leavers, and I respect their right to their view and
their vote.
I do not believe that all Leave voters want to change their vote, but I believe
that a significant and growing portion, in the light of new information, do.
I do believe that all of my friends, both for and against, did their very best
to inform themselves and make what they absolutely believed would be the best
choice for them and their children.
I do also believe that many Leavers based their vote on a dishonest campaign
and now know that they were lied to on a large scale, but I know that is not
the case for everyone, and I know that it is patronizing to suggest otherwise.
I do not believe that everyone who voted to Leave is a racist. I know this not to be true, and I will stand
up for that. However, I must temper this
with the statement that the Leave campaign was incontrovertibly fought on both
overtly and subliminally racist platforms.
The tit Farage standing in front of the Breaking Point poster is a case
in point. That should have been a
breaking point, indeed. I’m surprised
that it wasn’t the moment at which people became sickened by the campaign and decided
not to ally themselves with racism, precisely because they themselves are not
racists. I don’t understand how that
didn’t happen, but I still don’t believe that all, or even most, Leavers are
racists.
As to the assertions that it will all be okay, because Britain is Great, nobody
knows what will happen next, a country that won two world wars and one world
cup is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet and we should stop
harping on about what happened last week and get on with this week etc etc – I
do need to address my attitude to that.
First, I really, really, really hope that everyone who believes this scenario
to be correct is right. I have no desire
to be proved right in this instance. I
want our economy to boom and our nation to thrive – of course I do! I’m not an idiot. I’m not optimistic at this stage that it
will, but I will do everything in my power (which is very little – same for all
of us average Joes) to ensure that it is.
It’s like your teenage daughter hitching a lift home from town despite
the fact that you’ve told her there’s a chance that’s not going to pan out too
well. If she gets home in one piece,
you’ll rejoice. If she doesn’t, you’re
not going to go “I told you so”.
I’m not being pessimistic – I just believe that when a bunch of people who
study this stuff and who have no axe to grind tell you in overwhelming numbers that
one course of events will almost certainly have a good outcome and one will
almost certainly result in years of struggle, it’s sensible to pay attention to
them, and to acknowledge that they know what they’re talking about.
If it’s a question of people saying “I realize that there’s a 99% chance that
the economy is going to be in a dreadful state for the next 3-10 years (as
virtually all sources predicted), and I’ve looked into the reasons for that and
into what we will lose and gain, all of which I now broadly understand, but I
think it’s a price worth paying” – fair enough.
If it’s a blindly optimistic “ah, what
do they know, anyway”, erm, well, sorry for not playing. That is a huge gamble to impose on the 63% of
eligible voters who did not vote for this
I agree, nobody knows what will happen next, and nobody has a crystal ball to
tell us what would have happened if we hadn’t done whatever we choose to do
next, so there will be no point in “I told you so”, either way. It’s not something I intend to indulge in,
should things go horribly wrong.
If I have accept being asked to stop harping on about how devastated I am about
this, I really think we should also stop harping on about world wars and world
cups, especially disallowed goals in world cups. That was a bloody long time ago and people are
still moaning. All we lost then was a
football match. We have lost so much
more, now – even if the economy does well.
So, my loves, I will continue to harp on, I’m afraid. I hope you will see that what I’m doing is
not moaning, but posting relevant information.
Where the Leave campaign is shown to have
lied or been economic with the truth, I will be posting that.
Where there is hope for a way to address
whether it is right, in a democratic society, for 37% of the population to be
given a mandate to strip a whole shitload of actual rights from themselves and
the other 63% (35% of whom actively voted to keep those rights, and 28% of whom
didn’t vote at all but definitely didn’t vote their rights away), especially
when an emergingly significant portion of that 37% has now come out and stated
that now that it is in possession of the facts, it would like to change its
vote, please, thank you very much, I am going to keep hoping that the dream of
a unified Europe can continue, and because I am an open book, those hopes will
continue to be expressed in social media.
Petitions will be shared and clear
statements about the effect that this has had already on the food industry,
banking, jobs and the £ - I’ll still be posting those as long as there is any
hope that people will realize what is happening and demand not to be bound to
this minority vote.
I believe in not blindly following the
result of this referendum precisely because I do believe in democracy. There is plenty of precedent for referenda on
important matters, carrying slim slim margins, being set aside.
I don’t think we can ignore the result of this referendum – that’s not what I’m
suggesting. I believe it would be
downright dangerous to do so.
The result has surprised a great many
people (not least the Leave campaign) and it shows that people need a
voice. I don’t argue with that. I fear that not triggering article 50 and
taking us out of the EU will cause anger and unrest, but we appear to have
those right now anyway.
Addendum.
I forgot to address the “unelected,
undemocratic” issue. I will try to do it
briefly. Not my forte, clearly! :D
I also believe, for what it’s worth, that it is worth considering this.
There is a very strong argument that fact that legislation can be proposed
either by experts in a field, who work for the European Commission (like my
Dad), or other EU bodies, or any citizen of the EU (like you or me) as is the
case in the system we now have with the EU, is altogether a more democratic
system than one in which legislation can only be proposed by a Member of
Parliament who, while he WAS elected by the people, inevitably has his eye on
being elected once again next time. And
is therefore not going to propose any legislation which may be unpopular in his
constituency.
So you get that? A massive point for
Leave is that laws are proposed by the unelected European Commission. They can also be proposed by YOU. As you sit reading this – YOU. Not a notional you, YOU!
Not some MP you almost certainly didn’t
vote for (because you only voted for one out of the 651-odd of the buggers,
after all) – YOU!
Sounds pretty fucking democratic to me, my
loves.
