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Adnan Khan

The EU Referendum — a story of revenge, opportunity, and chaos!

On Jun 23rd, 2016, people of UK decided to leave EU via a referendum. It was a huge surprise for the whole world. Fair to say, no one was actually expecting that people would opt to leave the EU. The morning after the referendum, a shockwave hit the nation when people woke up to some truly unwelcoming news, such as:

  • David Cameron, current Prime minister of UK, resigned.
  • GBP hit its lowest value in 30 years the morning after the referendum, falling down to 1.35 (against USD). A day ago GBP’s value was 1.53 against USD.
  • FTSE (UK stock exchange) went into a plunge, wiping nearly 10% off the stock market value.
  • Global stock market went into a sharp nose-dive too, wiping $2T+ in a single day of trading.
  • Numerous companies in UK’s financial sector announced strategical restructuring. In other words, warning about future job cuts.
  • EU committee made clear that there will be no special treatment for UK.
  • And last but not the least, Leave campaigners started back tracking on some of the promises they made days before the referendum. For example: Nigel Farage, one of the two main leaders on the Leave campaign, stated that £350M weekly saving by exiting the EU, would not be spent on NHS. This was an implicit promise from the Leave campaigners during the lead up to the referendum.

By any count, this was the worst outcome anyone could expect. A day that, people were promised, would mark sovereignty and independence of their motherland, turned out to be a catastrophic failure. It sent the nation in a state of shock, and many who voted to leave questioned what they had actually done.

Let’s look at what happened in the referendum. But first a brief summary of arguments from both sides.

The Remain campaign was led by David Cameron, current Prime Minister of UK, and by Labour party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn. They came up with a very sophisticated and complex approach to convince people to stay in the EU. Their message was:

  • UK is safer (from terrorism) by staying in the EU.
  • UK’s economy will suffer by leaving the EU, because UK will lose access to single market of 500m people for trading without any excise duties. FYI, at present 60% of UK’s exports are sold within EU.
  • UK would lose all the trade deals and strategic partnerships that are in place due to its membership in the EU.
  • Leaders from UK ally countries have warned against leaving the EU. For example: Barack Obama warned leaving EU could be catastrophic for UK’s economy and jeopardise the current deals it has in place with the US.
  • IMF, Bank of England, and various other expert institutes also warned strongly against leaving EU.
  • Immigrants add a lot of value to UK’s economy. Having controlled immigration is good for UK.
  • At present, UK’s economy is thriving. There are more jobs than ever. There is more investment than ever.

The Leave campaign, on the other hand, kept their message simple, and aimed for the emotions of people rather than logic, stats, and warnings. Their message was:

  • Take back control of UK borders i.e. stop free movement of EU immigrants into the UK.
  • Stop sending £350m a week membership fee to the EU. (BTW, this figure was highly contested by the experts and later proved to be outright wrong)
  • Stop giving state benefits to immigrants, such as: free medical care, job allowance, housing, schooling, etc.
  • Stop EU making policies for UK. Roughly 60% of the UK policies are made up by the EU. Again, this was an outright lie. Actual figure was 13%.
  • And lastly the knockout punch: Stop immigrants from taking your jobs.

In the end, people fell for the trap. They voted for side that gave a clear and simple message, regardless of how bad that message was, or the severe consequences that would follow Britain leaving the EU. The Leave campaign, very smartly, played with people’s emotions and called upon them by saying: Hey, you have a chance to make Britain great again! Take your job back, or get paid more for same work if you already have a job. Get you and your family the medical attention. Have your children go to school without waiting months or years in the queue. And finally: Get rid of immigrants. Make Britain the way it was in the golden age (of 1970’s and 1980’s).

This was a too good of a chance for Brits to let go. With one simple stroke of a pen, they thought they could correct all the wrongs in their country.

Here’s what I think actually happened when people voted UK out of the EU:

  • All the warnings from the experts didn’t mean anything when people could not understand the financial implications and warnings. They didn’t really know a way to quantify the damage if they voted to leave. Leave campaign made up a number, literally. They told people that EU membership costed each household in UK roughly £250 annually. That’s one easy number that anyone can understand, and get upset about. (Btw this amount was made up and highly contested by the experts, it didn’t take into account the investment EU made back into the UK or benefits locals received implicitly through EU membership).
  • People saw warnings of external world leaders as interference. It played to the key message of the Leave campaign: stop external influence and let Britain make its own mind.
  • A lot of people in Britain saw this as an opportunity to kick the establishment in the rear, by doing exactly opposite to what the current government asked. This was people’s way of telling that they were not happy.
  • People saw this opportunity to remove non English people from UK and save their society and cultural values that they are so proud of. A big fear of modern UK is that its culture and values are changing due to immigration. At least by voting out, they will fix some part of the problem.
  • A lot of non-EU immigrants (Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, etc) also saw an opportunity to remove competition. If there were more chances of them finding work at the local grocery store then, why not.
  • London is the hub of UK. Rest of the country gets second class citizen treatment. London is the golden child who gets all the attention, all the shiny new toys. It gets major investments both from local government and by multi national companies. Rest of the England, felt neglected. This was a chance to vote against London’s will, and show rest of the UK matters too.

As I see it, for the people, this referendum was never about leaving the EU. It was about getting their greatness back and showing the establishment that they weren’t happy. And it meant a perfect storm rose against the Remain side.

I feel there is a lesson to be learnt here. People get motivated by emotions. They support the problems that they can understand and comprehend. Explicit is better than implicit. And perhaps very disappointingly, politicians can use whatever lies they can to get their message across, and manipulate people’s minds. When they get the desired results, they can backtrack without any accountability. People will forget about lies and broken promises. There will be a new issue, and in a short period of time, people will move on to the next issue.

Perhaps this is the kind of world we live in now. I feel both sorry and sad.