Tribune. When I woke up on the 24th June 2016, the day after the Brexit referendum, my initial thought was that I had been dreaming – that it was a grim political nightmare. Alas, no. It was all too horribly real. And now when I contemplate the gamut of emotions I've gone through since that day – as the Brexit chaos has lurched on and on and on –, my emotional range has responded accordingly.
First shock, incredulity and despair that then gave way to fatigue, dumbfoundedness and anger as I saw the faltering, inept negotiations taking place led by incompetent, woefully unprepared negotiators. And now, two and a half years later, having arrived at the endgame fiasco, what I am currently experiencing is something closer to shame. Shame that this country, Great Britain, should find herself in this abject, needless mess; shame at the third-rate quality of our prime minister, Theresa May, our third-rate leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, our third-rate Conservative government and most politicians (there are some exceptions) and shame at the self-serving mendacity and reckless propaganda of the Brexit-ultras.
The Brexit problem, however, is an old one and goes back many decades. It's to do with a particular cast of mind, a pervasive fantasy of England and the English (rather than Britain and the British) that certain people, men and women, hold with a bizarre, iron certainty. The interesting aspect of this national delusion is that it transcends class and socio-economic barriers. Poor working-class Labour voters and extremely rich Conservative voters feel the same. Collectively they could be described as « Little-Englanders ».
They cohere – vaguely, emotionally – to a fantastical myth of England and her place in the world. Part nostalgia for the days of the British Empire when the globe was coloured half red; part built on militaristic legends of England's solitary heroism (the Armada, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz), part fuelled by personifications of nationhood – Boudicca, Britannia, Richard the Lionheart, Good Queen Bess, John Bull – this amorphous creed has all the ingredients of a cult or outlandish faith like Theosophy, Scientology or Zoroastrianism, let alone orthodox religions.
You can't engage meaningfully with people who possess these beliefs: they and their convictions are not subject to reason. It's a mind-set, not an argument. All your cogent, logical rationality melts in the face of these fantasies of shrill, fervent patriotism. We can do it alone; we don't need anyone else; we are the Bulldog Breed. You see the same effect across the Atlantic with Trump's fervent, mindless sloganizing – Make America Great Again. It is an appeal to the basest, most atavistic instincts and it can be very alluring to a certain type of person.
History will not be kind to David Cameron
And it is alluring because in some cases it is fuelled by genuine grievance. The bourgeois Conservatives of the « shires », as we term them, have always been complacent Little Englanders with patronising attitudes towards Johnny Foreigner that will never change. What is new is the Europhobia of the formerly socialist working class. There is, in working class Britain, a real sense of grievance. A deep feeling that they are being spurned, that no one cares for them and that their values are ignored.
The Brexit campaign craftily tapped into this resentment with its xenophobic exaggerations (« The Turks are coming! ») and its downright lies (£350 million a week for the National Health Service) – resentment against the South and London, against bankers, against industrialists – and offered the downtrodden and neglected the perfect scapegoat of the European Union (EU). The EU is the cause of everything you are complaining about, they said. Leave the EU and enjoy a future of bright British tomorrows.
The vote to leave became a form of protest against the injustices that were seen as being forced upon this segment of the population. Genuine injustices, as I say – lives are hard; the people least able to afford it are still paying for the financial crash of 2008. But it was now cast in a different light: everything wrong with their deprived lives, their shabby towns, their horrible jobs, their meagre services, was the fault of Europe -- and immigrants. Simply get out of Europe, the Brexit campaign lied to them, control immigration, and your life will be immeasurably better.
History will not be kind to David Cameron, the ex-prime-minister, now nowhere to be seen. In promising a simple in-out referendum as a way of pacifying the anti-Europe right wing of the Conservative party he made the biggest, most grotesque political blunder of his career and he will go down in the annals as the man who changed Britain irrevocably – for the worse. Brexit won a narrow victory – 52% leave to 48% remain –, but 28% of the population didn't bother to vote. It is hardly a sensational mandate for radical change. Only one third of the British population is getting what it wants. The « British People » did not speak.
A week before the referendum, my local butcher in London asked me how I was going to vote. « Are you "in" or "out"? » he questioned, in all candid seriousness. I'm « in », I told him, emphatically, and added that I believed it would be utter insanity to leave the EU. « I'm voting to leave, » he volunteered. I looked at him incredulously and I think he sensed my unspoken baffled judgement. He's a nice man and I didn't want the argument to go any further. « Don't worry, » he said, smiling reassuringly, secure in his faith. « We can do it. No problem. We'll be fine. » I asked him again last week if he was happy with the way Brexit was going. He wouldn't answer my question and changed the subject. Bitter Brexit reality is beginning to dawn on the dreamers. Only Europe can save the rest of us.