Brexit, Bognor and bamboozlement

I grew up in Bognor Regis, a seaside town best known for Butlins holiday camp and people throwing themselves off the end of its pier dressed as chickens. It is also the sunniest place in Britain. Bognor, like so many seaside towns, voted to leave the European Union.

According to the 2011 census, around 10 per cent of the town’s 24,000 residents come from so-called EU enlargement countries such as Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. A town that was once overwhelmingly white and English is now dotted with shops and services for immigrants. This is a safe Conservative seat in an area where unemployment is slightly lower than the nationwide average. But Bognor is far from prosperous.

The town I grew up in is at the end of a railway line from London. Its promenade, once a romping ground for the moneyed elite, is now a jumbled mess of shabby hotels, ugly apartment blocks and tat shops. A 2008 government report into England’s failing coastal communities ranked Bognor as one of the 10 least disadvantaged seaside towns. Yet young people leave Bognor in their droves: 34 per cent of people living there are 60 or older; across the whole of England that figure is 22.4 per cent.

I left Bognor a decade ago, returning only infrequently to see family or lose at minigolf. I now live in London, but when it became clear the UK had voted to leave the EU my mind returned to where I grew up. Our country’s decision to secede has bamboozled Londoners — and that’s part of the problem.

Like much of the UK, Bognor has lashed out at a government unable to grasp its predicament. The majority of Britons didn’t vote to leave the EU because they are small-minded racists, they did so because it finally gave them a voice. It was a protest vote on a shuddering, ruinous scale. People forgotten by disconnected, careerist politicians were given an opportunity to lash out at an unfair and unfamiliar world.

When the status-quo has seen millions of people lose their jobs, forced an effective freeze on wages since 2008 and ushered in devastating austerity, why wouldn’t you vote for change? And unlike in a general election, where a rigged political system leaves millions voiceless, an in-out referendum offered a rare moment of power and protest. For Bognor, as with countless towns, cities and villages across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the referendum was a chance to stick up both fingers at a common enemy. Tragically, it was the wrong enemy.

These people are not idiots. But nor are they, or any of the electorate, best-placed to vote on the UK’s membership of the EU. You wouldn’t ask the electorate to vote on increasing interest rates, you leave that decision to experts. The same goes for issues of incredibly complex political reform. Culpability for our current predicament lies with the small clique of politicians who thought it wise to play chicken with our future for the sake of hushing backbench disquiet.

For all the EU has done right, the UK’s referendum came at a time of weakness. The bloc’s handling of the migration crisis has been pitiful and inhumane, as has its treatment of member states on the brink of economic collapse. But irrespective of its flaws, the EU is a phenomenal force for good; it has ensured unprecedented peace, prosperity and created a culture of inclusiveness across borders and cultures. The referendum campaign gave it no chance.

Post-truth politics, fueled by a well-educated, metropolitan and xenophobic press, has coerced the electorate into thinking the enemy is from without, not from within. People don’t understand why they are getting poorer and sadder. In the coming years, as Britain risks sliding further into isolationism, perhaps people will begin to understand why they are poorer and sadder still.

Image: Pam Goodey CC 2.0