Five lessons from the Brexit vote
5x5 I’m not falling for the “positive steps forward” post-Brexit nonsense. This isn’t Frozen. But here are five things the referendumdum has taught me.
1 Something needs to be done about the bullshit Neither Leave nor Remain can claim to have fought an honest campaign, but Leave took the biscuit and then shat in the biscuit jar with its claim of £350m per week for the NHS, retracted while the ink was barely dry on the referendum result. The claim was independently refuted by organisations like Fullfact.org at an early stage, but they were still driving that fucking bus on voting day. There needs to be a body which can field complaints of dodgy claims and act on them rapidly during the campaign cycle, or impose punitive financial penalties on the campaigns after a vote if that isn’t possible. The media is so comfortable with spin that it just shrugs and accepts it, while voters stop listening to any factual claims and rely on the emotional claims instead.
2 Britain is divided by age and education as much as location Under-45s alone would have voted to keep the UK in Europe, perhaps because young and educated people see much more opportunity in being part of Europe than on our own, and many younger voters have grown up with cheap travel across Europe as part of their lives. A trip to Amsterdam, Croatia or the Balearics is as cheap and easy (if not easier with British trains) than travelling from one end of Britain to the other. The turnout from young people was also much lower, and may have swung the vote for Leave.
3 There is an immigration problem It’s not a crisis but it needs attention. Rural towns such as Bolton in Lincolnshire have seen a rapid and dramatic influx of workers from Eastern Europe at the same time as the recession and the subsequent austerity project of Cameron’s Conservatives. It’s simply frightening to see your world change around you so fast, and it’s easy to see “them” as being at fault, especially when the work is seasonal and leads to unstable employment for the new arrivals. In the short term these areas deserve more funding for public services, in the long term the farmers may now need help to replace their seasonal workforce or there needs to be more help or paid community work for the seasonal workers. (And if these workers return to Europe, will food prices rise?)
4 Austerity needs to end Labour needs to focus its attacks on the Conservative austerity project and its cuts to public services, which seemed to have strengthened the need for many voters to register a protest (see above). Immigration is a nightmare topic for any party of social equality, but equality of opportunity is a natural battleground: education, social care, healthcare, and social housing are all in an appalling state, and the Conservatives have just lost a bruising battle with junior doctors on which Labour failed to capitalise. I hope they don’t need to change leadership, but if Jeremy Corbyn can’t unite the party then it would be better that he made way for someone who can.
5 Nigel Farage can fuck off Conspicuously absent since he admitted his campaign’s major claim was a load of bollocks, there is now no need for Nigel Farage to do anything but sit by the bar on his special stool, moaning about how he likes going to Spain for his holidays but there are too many foreigners. You’ve thrown your stick into the wheels of progress, now take your fat braying face back into the shadows.
