We must work to annul Brexit
Now is the time to get angry: why are more people not standing up and speaking out against the referendum result?
The United Kingdom has 46 million registered voters. Of these, fewer than 38% voted to leave the European Union. The other 29 million voters, plus 3.3 million EU nationals within the UK, did not vote for Brexit. They should not accept this calamitous outcome sought by a minority of the voting population, in a campaign marked on both sides by dishonesty and fear.
Less than a month following the result, we’ve seen the leaders of the Leave campaign jump ship: Johnson, Leadsom, Gove and Farage have all given up (presumably realising that in promoting Brexit they were defending the indefensible, and collapsing in a heap of cognitive dissonance). The promises that were made, for £350 million a week to fund the NHS, for single market participation but controlled immigration, for a land of milk and honey, of hippogryphs and unicorns, and Elgar playing over the wireless — these promises have gone.
Instead, the British people have seen a 10% reduction in the pound’s value, a five-fold rise in hate crime, and hiring freezes as investment stutters.
Parliament will debate the possibility of a second referendum in September, but why do it all again? We should never have been in this situation in the first place.
The referendum was a gamble by Cameron in order to appease his Europhobic backbenchers and lessen the impact that UKIP would have on his marginal seats. So much for ‘not banging on about Europe’. As a tactic, it sucked, and it wasn’t even effective: UKIP trounced the Tories in the 2014 MEP elections.
Where are the voices denouncing this? May, like her predecessor, has capitulated to the right-wing of her party by saying “Brexit means Brexit” and committing to the triggering of Article 50. Why should the future of the country be decided by an unelected Prime Minister, according to the whim of a minority section of her party? Where is a strong, effective opposition offering an alternative path?
More to the point, why should the people of London, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar accept this state of affairs?
I came to London in 2007 to found my business here; due to the political stability, economic prosperity and single-market access, London was the obvious choice to come start a technology business, for which access to a large pool of talented computer science graduates is key. Already, I have seen the chilling effect of the threat of Brexit on hiring, with job candidates concerned about reports of abuse against migrants, and worried about the future status of EU nationals.
On top of the message the UK is sending by voting to Leave, the country now has a Prime Minister who even UKIP has found to have a distasteful rhetoric when it comes to migrants. ”Go home” anyone? Maybe we might.
People in Britain need to act and act fast. There is still time to prevent an unelected Tory administration from gambling away this country’s future. No blueprint for a post-referendum Britain has been proposed, and an unelected and unchallenged Prime Minister has no mandate to implement one. It’s time to be active and hold our political leaders to account.
We must fight Brexit, not just accept it and hope for the best.
