Fear, but don’t loathe
“What is done cannot be undone”, says Lord Hill, as he resigns as UK EU Commissioner.
Like many, I am hoping and praying that this is not true. After yesterday’s heartbroken status updates, my Facebook feed is increasingly filled with Remainers citing the likelihood of a currency crisis, the misinformation peddled to voters, the break-up of the UK, the need for an Act of Parliament to execute the decision, as reasons and ways to hit the rewind button. Surely it can’t be argued that Britain voted for this? Surely there is some way back.
I hope there is. I hope some legal or constitutional loophole gives us another go. I will sign every petition that there is to request that. I will go on every march. Wishing for a state of emergency is a funny thing.
Yet I fear we have used the last of our nine lives. And seeing the educated liberati expending so much energy on the constitutional mechanics of undoing what is a symptom of a much more vicious and deep seated problem, frightens me even more.
We need to invest just as much, twice that, in considering how on earth we can reach back out to, motivate and mobilise the people — old and young — that voted Leave on Thursday. The cries of racism, of xenophobia, of stupidity, the calls for a “state of London” infuriate me.
These are communities that less than twenty years ago voted resoundingly for Blair. Even a decade ago they gave him a lukewarm endorsement. The people living there are not relentlessly anti-optimism, anti-progressive, anti-education. They have been let down by the complacency of a metropolitan elite of which I must accept I am a part.
I am not ashamed of Britain. I am ashamed of my inaction.
These accusations of “turkeys voting for Christmas” miss the point that in many of the communities where Leave triumphed, festivities are a distant memory. Their state of emergency arrived some time ago. As we posted images of ostrich burgers, prosecco and sunsets, as we took comfort in an economy that was “recovering”, we let things get pretty bad for them. So bad that worse seemed inconceivable.
Of course, it can get worse. The Leave vote stands to decimate London, the “cash cow” of the country, powered as it is by the service industries we cannot hope to sustain, at least not without recourse to expensive tax breaks which would see the Treasury’s coffers run emptier still. The fear I feel today — for my financial future, my job, my political freedoms– is one that is all too familiar for many communities around the UK. The vague sense of helplessness that I have felt for years — but what can I do about inequality? — has grown to panic as the security blanket that I have buried my face in for too long is torn from my hands.
And perversely, therein lies my glimmer of hope. In crisis, there is a unifying potential. In many ways, it is that sense of unity that I believe many Leave voters, especially the older generation, have voted in the hope of recovering. That unity has got us through war. It’s helped us through terrorism. Damn, it got us the vote in the first place. It founded the Labour Party.
I am 30. I am not very young, nor am I very old. I have more power and more privilege than either of those groups, and now I must exercise it more actively than ever to try to build back from a terrifyingly low economic base and fight for the rights and public services which must now surely be in jeopardy.
Walking through our capital city today — the multicultural melting pot I love with all my heart — I have found myself exchanging teary eyed smiles with strangers. I feel endless compassion for my fellow Londoners. I now challenge myself and us to extend it to the rest of the country too. I will need to make sacrifices, compromises, accept less to give them more. Which, after all, is no more than many of us have been asking of them for years.
Clearly, we dispute Brexit as a means of recovery. It is hopelessly misguided. The consequences are already alarming and will become more so. But we cannot ignore one another any longer. A country that is full of fear is a dangerous one. We can divide further in fear, or we can unite against it. No longer can we afford to watch from the sidelines (or rather our director’s box). We just sold our best player. Now we need as many people on the pitch as possible, and we need to get organised.
Let us grasp at straws to undo this. Let us work as hard as we can to mitigate the disaster that is Brexit, and probably the end of the United Kingdom, as we negotiate our deal. Let us powerfully and positively make the argument for the freedom of movement we will need to concede if we are to remain part of the European Economic Area — a small comfort, but a critical one.
But we mustn’t rest once we have patched the wound as best we can. We must get at the vicious inequality that is eating us from within.
�=�*
