Anger, respect and democracy
Daniel Hannan is undoubtedly a man of considerable intelligence and persuasive ability. The regrettable fact is that he utilises these skills to brutally eviscerate a conveyor belt of straw men, rather like Bruce Lee filming ‘Enter the Dragon’ with cardboard cuts outs.
“On what basis do Remainers deny the legitimacy of the ballot? I’m sorry to put this so bluntly, but it boils down to snobbery. A bunch of dimwits and bigots, we’re invited to believe, were whipped up by unscrupulous demagogues.”
You can find this straw man, and others filled with utter grade-A horseshit between the stalks here. It captures so many of the canards that a host of Leave backing commentators and campaigners have been peddling. ‘Stop being so angry. Get over it. Respect the democratic result and the people.’
Let me be clear. I’m not disrespecting the democratic process or the voters who participated in it. I have no principled antagonism towards Leave voters en masse. I’m not angry at voters for being lied to. I am angry at campaigners for lying to them.
I’m not angry at my fellow citizens for voting to take back control. I understand why alienated and disconnected people want a sense of ownership over their own lives. I’m angry because they did not vote for sovereignty in the abstract. They voted for politicians to take control of specific policy levers and use them in specific ways. These politicians don’t even have a plan on what policy levers they must retain, let alone how they would use them.
I’m not angry at my fellow citizens who voted to give £350m extra in funding to the NHS. I’m angry because people like Daniel Hannan don’t even believe in the NHS in principle, let alone want to give it extra funds in practice. I’m angry because prominent politicians were content to be photographed in front of this promise, and then backtrack on it as a ‘possibility’ within hours. I’m angry because it was a blatant lie.
I’m not necessarily angry at people who have concerns about immigration, even though I do not share them. I’m angry at economic liberals and libertarians, whose worldview is rooted in the idea of stripping back restrictions, willingly hosting parasitic nativists and racists. I’m angry about dog whistling about Turkish immigration and the demonization of over seventy million people whose civilisation traces back millennia.
I am angry because Daniel Hannan is right, people are not dimwits. They may not be political junkies, but they are most certainly not stupid. And over time they are going to see that this referendum campaign was a gigantic fraud. They are going to realise that these promises were bogus and these threats contrived.
They are going to recognise that this wasn’t a blow against the establishment, it was just a civil war between the political classes. And when they understand that this was just one part of the elite trumping the other, how do we think swathes of the population are going to feel? How are they going to feel when the mutually irreconcilable visions that sit at the heart of the Leave campaign unspool? How are they going to feel when immigration doesn’t magically reduce or NHS waiting lists decrease?
The aftermath of the referendum is going to compound the bitterness and cynicism that is rotting away the link between the electors and the elected. The sense of betrayal will further atrophy the foundations of trust on which the very legitimacy of representative democracy sits. The corrosive anti establishment sentiment in this country could multiply rapidly. The vacuum this could leave for the far right and populist right to strike at the checks and balances of liberal democracy genuinely frightens me. The parasite may well subsume the host.
At the first PMQs after the referendum result, the Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash had a question where he lauded “the value of that great principle, the principle of democracy.”
I am not angry because I do not value the principle of democracy. I am angry at the cowards and charlatans who abused it. I am not angry in spite of my respect for democracy, I am angry because of it.
