We’re not in Kansas anymore
After Britain says, “see EU later”, how will the dust settle?
Well, well, well. That got your attention, didn’t it Britain?
I don’t think anyone really expected this outcome when they went to bed last Thursday. I was getting ready to go to sleep when the Sunderland result came in, and found myself unable to sleep for a few more hours as a Leave victory began to look increasingly possible.
Even still, when I woke up the next morning I was stunned. Delighted — for reasons I have explained — but stunned. Shortly afterwards the announcement came that David Cameron was stepping down as Prime Minister, and I found myself unable to contain my smile.
I’ve never been on the ‘winning’ side of any election or referendum before. One of the joys of winning an ordinary election — I imagine — is celebrating with the people you’ve fought and campaigned alongside. Unfortunately, that experience still eludes me. Instead I have enjoyed the bizarre situation of being a member of the majority, and yet still feeling as though I’m swimming upstream. As a 25-year-old, privately educated, university graduate living in London, I am more-or-less the only one in any of my friend circles who voted to leave the EU. And from the state of my news feed since Friday — it shows.
I’m a relatively hopeful person. It might not often seem that way, because I am inclined more than most to focus on the world’s more depressing happenings. Some would call me a pessimist, but in the words of Rust Cohle: I consider myself a realist.
Part of my hopefulness derives from the fact I feel privileged to be part of a generation that seems unusually compassionate towards others. That, coupled with the serendipity of developing in the internet age, makes the prospect of seeing revolutionary transformation in our lifetimes uniquely probable.
That said, within a few hours of Cameron’s resignation, the reactions of many of my peers — for whom I hold the utmost respect — sapped me of all joy I had felt that morning, as well as much of the faith I had in our collective capacity to achieve greatness. I was left feeling deflated, dismayed, and disappointed.
We was robbed!
Cries from young fans of the EU that their futures have been robbed by older generations ‘who don’t have to live with the consequences’ are as pathetic as they are misguided. According to data from Sky, only 36% of 18–24 year olds cast their ballots – half the national turnout of 72%. If you really believe your future to be derived from membership of the EU, then it was not stolen from you by your elders; it was thrown away by your peers.
Many of my friends have posted statuses lamenting the way our generation has been “screwed over” by racist geriatrics, though some went further by insinuating that older people who “won’t have to live with the consequences,” should not have been allowed to vote—a truly revolting thought to have, let alone express publicly. Not to mention the fact it ignores which age group has lived both with and without the EU for the longest. As much as I am glad that Britain voted to leave, I feel very let down by the disgracefully low turnout of my peers. However the solution is not to disenfranchise the elderly — it is to engage the young.
While it is true that the older one is the more likely one was to vote Leave, the most revealing demographic indicator was social grade. The upper middle and middle class group (AB) was the only one to vote in favour of Remain.
Shameless
Over the last week there has been an overwhelming outpouring of comments regarding people’s fitness to vote, suggesting that some people hadn’t done their research, or were too ‘thick’ to understand the issues. Some questioned why “we let stupid people vote”. The pervasion of classist snobbery and righteous condescension from Remain voters has been a disgusting phenomenon to behold.
Will Self — the most sanctimonious snob of them all (say that quickly five times) — declared confidently, “not all Brexiters are racists, but almost all racists will be voting for Brexit” (confirming in the process that his grasp of the field of racism hasn’t escaped the dictionary). That line has been doing the rounds for weeks (minus the word ‘almost’); Will Self and his parrots are apparently oblivious to the the hypocrisy of the slogan’s origins.
I sense that much of the hysteria from my peers has been a product of their false belief that this referendum result represents an insurrection of the far right; it does not—for instance, according to polls from ICM/The Guardian, support for UKIP has fallen by over 20% since the referendum (in terms of voting intentions).
Many readers will be surprised to know that, according to the Lord Ashcroft poll, the primary motivation for Leave voters was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”, with immigration being the second biggest motivator. Nobody can deny that rhetoric around immigration — much of it poisonous — has been an important factor in this referendum, but painting the vote to leave as a triumph of xenophobia is unsubstantiated sensationalism. More than anything, this was a working class revolt against the establishment.
A 22% majority of Leave voters believe that children growing up today will have a worse life than their parents, whereas a slight 4% majority of Remain voters believe the opposite; and a 16% majority of Leave voters believe that life in Britain is worse today than it was 30 years ago, whereas 46% of Remain voters believe it to be better (including — more than likely — many who weren’t alive then). Simply: those who feel hopeless voted Leave; those who feel hopeful voted Remain.
And so, the reactions on social media of many young professionals in the privileged London bubble is not only reprehensible, but exemplary of a driving reason behind the referendum’s outcome.
Why you always lying?
Whichever way you voted (or didn’t) last Thursday, I think we can all agree that neither side covered themselves in glory whilst campaigning. Both sides told an awful lot of lies, half truths, and misrepresented facts in trying to persuade voters one way or the other. And yet, it seems, only the 52% of voters who voted to leave were gullible enough to believe any of them. Or at least, many disheartened remainers seem convinced that is the case.
Remainers voicing concerns that their victorious counterparts were deceived by Boris and co. are as patronising as they are disingenuous. Much has been made across all forms of media of the lies told by Leave campaigners. this is somewhat explained by the referendum’s outcome, but I think it is important that some of the lies told by Remain campaigners do not fade from memory, unscrutinised.
For months, we were beaten over the head with story after story about how badly a vote to leave would hit the economy. The IFS told us it would necessitate 2 further years of austerity — as if austerity had ever ended. Gideon warned us that house prices would fall by 10-18%, and households would be £4,300 a year worse off. The Treasury declared that “GDP will be 3.6% lower after two years than it would be if Britain votes to remain” (notice the opportune us of the definite article, in declaring a hypothesis that is entirely untestable), the Chancellor adding that a vote to leave would cause a year-long “DIY recession”.
After a week of hysteria caused by understandable market volatility, these warnings/threats appear increasingly hollow given the rally of UK markets — with the FTSE 100 now higher than before the referendum, and credit ratings agency Fitch having explicitly forecast that there will be no recession in the next 18 months.
Perhaps the most hollow threat of all was Gideon’s $30bn black hole, which would require a savage emergency budget — $15bn of cuts, $15bn raised through higher taxes. He quickly backtracked on that threat three days ago, after reappearing from a weekend in-hiding.
“As a historian I fear Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety”
- Donald Tusk
Other outrageous scare tactics included Cameron’s threat that voting to leave could lead to World War 3, his claim that ISIS wanted Brexit, and Donald Tusk’s warning that a Leave vote could cause the destruction of “Western political civilisation in its entirety”.
And ironically, given the generous concerns of Remain voters that less intelligent Leave voters had been duped by lies, it seems Remain voters were the more susceptible group to their campaigners’ deceit; the primary reason given by voters voting for Remain was that “the risks of voting to leave the EU looked too great when it came to things like the economy, jobs and prices”.
More democracy, not less
From the petition calling for a second referendum — which was subject to fraud — to pleas for MP’s to ignore the will of the public, Iam very concerned by the many desperate attempts to prevent an exit from the EU. My own preferences aside, it is deeply troubling how many people are clamouring for the referendum result to be ignored. To those people doing so, make no mistake: you are asking for an end to democracy in Britain. An unavoidable feature of democracy is that you will most likely be unhappy with the results sometimes. You have to accept that fact. There is no room for contesting the results (except where fraud is committed); as soon as there is room for results to be ignored or overturned—because some don’t like how the majority voted—democracy is no more
Doublespeak is no longer a dystopian trope as much as a staple of mainstream political discourse. Still, the fact that the leader of the Liberal Democrats has pledged to ignore democratic will as his signature policy in the next general election, truly tolls the end of political satire in Britain. It would be funny if people weren’t lapping it up.
In case you’ve forgotten, our sitting government is currently under investigation far widespread election fraud. The evidence made available thus far suggests that there is little chance the Tories will not be found guilty. Where were your petitions for a new general election?
When you give voters the chance to vote on something for which their vote counts the same as everybody else’s (unlike general elections under First Past the Post), and the result is the biggest voter turnout for 24 years, there is a message to be heard if you listen: give people a vote that counts, and they will use it. We need to quickly move towards a system of proportional representation.
Project fear lives on
There has been a huge amount of concern expressed online about xenophobic incidents and hate crimes since Friday’s referendum results were announced, as people fear a surge precipitated by the vote to leave. Rightly so; any hatred or prejudice towards somebody because of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or disability is always deplorable and never tolerable. One hate crime is one hate crime too many, and it is for this reason that I think many people need to be careful before drawing inaccurate, facile conclusions about recent events.
A press release from the National Police Chiefs’ Council on 27th June announced an alarming 57% rise in hate crimes reported to True Vision — 85 in the four days from Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th, up from 54 four weeks earlier. The release clearly stated that the data “should not be read as a national increase in hate crime of 57%, but an increase in reporting through one mechanism”. And yet, The Independent led with a headline clearly intended to be read exactly as that:
Fairly innocuous you might say — if you read the article then you can see what they meant by it — but that would be a naive interpretation. First of all, the vast majority of people who see a news headline and click through don’t actually read the article, and that even ignores the many more people who see the headline and don’t click through at all. Additionally, even if you do read the whole article, there’s no suggestion whatsoever that the figure should not be taken as a national increase.
Let me be clear before we go on: i’m not suggesting for a second that hate crime hasn’t increased in the last week; i strongly suspect it has*. What I am saying, however, is that a widely shared (and quoted) article from a national newspaper, reporting on the only statistical evidence to support the claim that hate crime is indeed rising, was — intentionally or otherwise — exceptionally deceiving. It’s just one of many such cases and by no means the most deceptive; that prize goes to this one:
Why is it that an article hinged on the statistic that offline Islamaphobic incidents reported to Tell MAMA rose 326% in 2015 from 2014, leads with the headline: “UK entering ‘unchartered territory’ of Islamaphobia after Brexit vote”? That is quite simply a lie. UK entered ‘uncharted territory’ of Islamaphobia in year before Brexit vote would have been an honest headline — though even then one would have to scrutinise the mention of Brexit at all. There is no possible way that the framing of the rise in Islamaphobia last year as being connected to Brexit is an accident; this is undeniably propaganda.
Here’s the thing: Islamaphobia, hate crime, and xenophobia in general are all on the rise — but that has been true for a number of years. And it’s hardly surprising, given the hateful bile that has filled tabloids day after day: last year there was a cartoon in the Daily Heil associating Syrian refugees with rats, while one attention addict (whose name should be given no further oxygen) referred to the same refugees as cockroaches. There have been worrying signs for years; the group dedicated to documenting them is a tardy (though important) reaction.
Between 2013/14 and 2014/15, hate crime offences increased by 18% to a level that meant there were on average over 1,010 offences a week. Religiously motivated hate crimes in particular have been sharply on the rise: 44% from 2012/13 to 2013/14, and 43% from 2013/14 to 2014/15 — a 107% total increase over the two year period. A large part of this dramatic rise has been caused by the spread of Islamaphobia, which has been following a deeply troubling upward trajectory.
Often there are dramatic spikes in hate crimes after major events with a racial or religious factor, such as the murder of Lee Rigby, the publication of the Jay report, and the Charlie Hebdo shooting. In the two weeks following the terrorist attacks across Paris last November, the number of attacks on Muslims in London rose 217%.
This was a significant, statistically confirmed increase in violence towards Muslims. The article describing it, published on Friday 4 December, 2015, has been shared just 13 times to date. The article insinuating an as yet unconfirmed rise in hate crimes nationally, published Monday 27 June, 2016, has already been shared over 10,000 times. The article which tries to mask a huge rise in Islamaphobia last year as a product of Brexit, also published Monday 27 June, 2016, has already been shared over 9,000 times. Perhaps one has to affix the #Brexit tag for anybody to take notice of the terrifying rise of Islamaphobia in this country?
The heightened interest in hate crime post-Brexit is not at all surprising, given the referendum was framed by the media’s Project Fear as a clash between economists and fascists: vote Remain, and we carry on getting by despite the EU’s many faults, they said; vote Leave for economic armageddon and the rise of fascism. The public was primed for panic, and hasn’t Project Fear worked a treat? Much of London seems convinced that both are around the corner.
Undeniably there has been a burst of xenophobia and hate crime directly motivated by the referendum result. Taking these incidents to mean the referendum has ‘unleashed’ these incidents, however, is a dangerous over-simplification. The attacks and abuse were happening a week ago, a month ago, a year ago; the words “get out” just weren’t preceded by “we voted to Leave”. Scapegoating a referendum result for a toxic problem in this country that has been ignored for too many years is a cop-out.
It seems that as far as the media is concerned, whether or not Brexit has actually opened Pandora’s box of hate crime is irrelevant; what is important is that we believe it has. One reason for the flurry of articles with misleading headlines might simply be the increasing pressure to ‘clickbait’ in the age of Internet, falling profitability for news outlets, and short attention spans — something we should be very concerned about. When our news sources become reliant on sensationalist headlines to compete for our attentions, they risk losing our trust — and that’s a lot harder to earn back than it is to lose.
One undeniable positive in all of this is that right now hate crime is front and centre in the minds of many – we must make sure that those newly conscious of the hatred that exists in our country remain focused on an issue that we should have been tackling years ago.
*since I began writing this article, True Vision have released further data which shows that there were 331 cases of hate crime reported through their channel in the last week, a 425% increase on the weekly average of 63. this shocking figure reflects the disgraceful level of intolerance that exists in Britain — we must stand up to, confront, and oppose prejudicial hatred wherever and whenever we see it. it is not enough to not be racist yourself, we must all be actively anti-[racism/Islamaphobia/homophobia/sexism/ableism/transphobia/xenophobia/anti-semitism/…prejudicial hatred in general]
Follow the yellow brick road
Some might find this hard to believe, but I posit that we find ourselves in one of the most exciting windows of opportunity for British left wing politics in generations. The Tory party is in disarray: aside from the divisions caused by the referendum, there is a good chance they will be found guilty of electoral fraud. And this week there came the news that their austerity policies had breached international human rights law. That’s right — while everybody has been fanned into a state of post-referendum frenzy, our government has been accused by the United Nations of human rights offences against its own citizens: us. You might not have heard, since the The Independent is the only national newspaper to have picked up on the story — no national broadcasters have as yet. Overwhelmingly, these policies have affected the most vulnerable in society, the ones most likely to have voted to leave the EU, the ones people have been victimising for having supposedly risked our country’s future.
Clearly, the Labour party is hardly a picture of unity at present. Nevertheless, the feeble attempts to overthrow Corbyn have fallen at the first hurdle. He has pledged to stand firm, and we have pledged to stand beside him. This coup attempt is a transparent Blairite plot to prevent Corbyn from campaigning for Blair & co to stand trial for war crimes after the Chilcott report is published next Wednesday. The more he is attacked by establishment figures, I suspect the more popular he will become.
He’s going nowhere, and the hatred both sides of the house and the media have held for him since before he was elected leader speaks volumes. When they call him ‘unelectable’, they mean he is incorruptible. He is anti-establishment embodied — making him attractive to many people who have been disengaged for years. While our current government’s austerity policies have fallen foul of human rights laws, he is and has been campaigning on an anti-austerity platform. And he has just formed an exciting, young, progressive cabinet to help deliver his message.
Ao to my liberal friends who aren’t happy with the referendum result — there is no gentle way to say this—you need to get over it. There are more important matters to deal with. Are you happy to have human rights abusers for a government? No? Then strike with us on Monday (if we were Icelandic they’d be out of jobs by now). Will you sit by idly as racism continues, or will you shout loudly and proudly over the voices of fear and hatred? Will you stand up, stand beside Corbyn, and fight fearlessly for a fairer future Britain. Or will you wallow in righteous self pity, and accept whatever comes your way?
The choice is yours.
