What I Wish I’d known before I Voted Brexit
Sharpen your pitchforks, people. You’re gonna hate me for this one…
Yes, I voted Brexit. Was that a good decision? I don’t entirely know yet. I am not massively politically educated. I try my best to stay involved but as an incredibly sceptical person, it is hard to know what to believe. Some half-true statements, which I heard during the referendum were that George Osborne blames the EU for the tampon tax, Yanis Varoufakis blames the EU for the collapse of the Greek economy and Jeremy Corbyn blames the EU for forcing austerity on the public services of Britain. I also heard that, having left the EU, the economy would be worse, immigration would be strictly controlled and that the environment would no longer be protected under the laws of the EU — all of these I consider to be bad things.
The way I saw it, there were reasons to leave and reasons to stay, but both sides of the campaign blew everything out of proportion, in an act of fear-mongering and populist demagogy, so that their side could ‘win’. That is politics in a nutshell — everything is made up and the facts don’t matter. So you can see why, when confronted with the deceptively simple vote of “in” or “out”, a 21 year old student such as myself, would have difficulty choosing. While I can’t say that I made the wrong choice yet, I have a great deal of regret, because I failed to predict some of the troubling changes in our country since the referendum. And here they are:
1. The public would believe that leaving the European Union justifies racism
This one was the biggest regret for me. The morning after the referendum result was announced, there were reports of racist hate crimes. I go to one of the most diverse universities in the country. I have loved meeting people from across Europe — across the world even. You can trust me when I say, I was hoping that the media were exaggerating and this vote was not about immigration. For me, it certainly wasn’t.
The day after the result, my heart sank. I felt like I had put my friends and even some of my family at risk because of my ignorance. It’s easy to dismiss these things, when you’re white and privileged as I am. I don’t experience the struggles of European immigrants firsthand and my campus is loving and accepting towards European people, so it’s kind of like living in a bubble, where racism doesn’t exist. I want to apologise for voting the way I did because I never considered the possibility that people felt that leaving the EU justified violent hate crimes towards immigrants.
2. The Prime Minister would step down because he didn’t get his way
I consider myself a moderate Labour voter. I supported Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the party, not because of his radical ideas, but because I believe that he can rally the people like no other person in our generation. As I have said, I am skeptical of politicians, but he seems less disingenuous than other politicians, and I believe that his party will be able to reign him in on his more extreme views. He seems less inclined to, say, call a referendum on a major decision, leaving the fate of Britain in the hands of the public, allow his party to mislead and misinform the people, and then step down when his political gamble goes wrong.
Just to reiterate, I am only 21 years old and I have lived through two Prime Ministers stepping down, because of their own misconduct. This is not good enough. If you make a mistake, you stick around and deal with the consequences. If the referendum had the power to do damage the country, it should have never been promised in a bid to win power. Now the Conservative government is shifting further to the right, and all because David Cameron couldn’t clean up his mess.
3. There was (and is still) no solidified plan for leaving
“Have our cake and eat it too.” Well fantastic. Glad to know that the government had a plan for this whole thing after all. The vote was between two hypothetical situations, one of which required no new plan, as the negotiations made within the EU are always ongoing. The other required plans for trade negotiations, economic strategy, a great deal of research into what EU regulations would still continue to be enforced and which were going to be scrapped, and in fact none of that had been done. The Leave campaign, didn’t even have a leader until the verdict was announced, contrary to the popular belief that there was some indication of what Brexit meant. Since the referendum, the only agreed understanding was that “Brexit means Brexit.”
Perhaps I should have decided not to vote, considering I never saw a plan for Brexit, and never heard anything from the Leave campaign that said they knew exactly what they were going to do when Britain triggered article 50, but I assumed that the government could be so arrogant as to launch a referendum and only prepare for one of the outcomes under the assumption they knew what would happen.
4. Trump
I don’t have much to say here except, Donald Trump, reality TV star and incompetent businessman, thinks that “Brexit will be tremendous for Britain.” In the words of Gob Bluth…
I have had a lot of people tell me I’m an idiot for voting the way I did without knowing every fact. I knew what I knew at the time and I believed that to be the truth. With hindsight, I can say that there are many negative outcomes to the referendum, which I did not think about and for that, I am sorry. I only hope that from reading this, you can at least understand where I and many other voters like me were coming from when we voted. We’re not all xenophobic, nor are we anarchists, nor are we stupid. We’re just people, trying to make a decision that was bigger than we are.
