Flipping mess

THE proverbial has really hit the fan in the UK. Brexit has split the country in a way hitherto thought to be impossible.

It has divided a nation and, as has become almost de riguer in First World countries, the government of the day and the opposition parties have no idea what to do next.

My son Sam, who lives in England, was a committed Remainer in the referendum held some 2½ years ago. I have always supported leaving.

At the time of the vote, the battle lines were drawn broadly as follows: the young wanted to stay in the European Union, the old wanted to leave; London wanted to stay, the rest of England didn’t.

Scotland wanted to leave and, if possible, leave the UK as well. Wales and Northern Ireland voted to stay.

When Sam visited us a few weeks ago, he said he had changed his mind and now wanted to leave the EU.

This is something of a milestone as no one in the family can ever remember him changing his mind about anything.

I wanted to know what changed his mind and caused a 180-degree shift, so I asked him to put his words on paper and this is what he said.

“As an Australian-born dual national and proud millennial, it’s easy to see why I was a remain voter when two years in to my move to the United Kingdom the now infamous Brexit referendum was held.

I was 28 when the vote took place, which makes me Gen Y. We are a generation that is worldly, that travels with impunity, that are in the main liberal (small L) and open-minded and that spend a lot of disposable income on smashed avocado.

We fight for the environment, and for people’s rights, and are much more in favour of peace than any war.

So it comes are no surprise that we are a demographic that firmly voted to remain in the EU — heck, we want to travel and work without restriction and we want to buy things online from overseas cheaper!

All my friends whom I hold in high regard also exclusively voted to remain and have not moved from there.

Yet I am writing now because I am a rarity in the Brexit wilderness — I have changed my mind and now support leaving the EU.

I now simply believe that as a political system the EU doesn’t work.

The larger an entity gets, the further away the policy and decision-makers are from the effect of their decisions.

I mean, we are talking about over 700 essentially unelected members of European parliament (MEP) centrally making policy decisions for every country in the EU.

To coin a phrase from Nicholas Nassim Taleb they have no skin in the game. I can tell you right now that no-one in the UK has any idea who their MEP is let alone vote for them, so it’s difficult to hold them to account.

But worse, these people making top-down decisions have no idea what the real world is like in any given location — so is it any wonder you end up with policies that destroy through unintended and mal-understood consequences?

But we fall for this all the time, it happens in all political systems. I am just saying the larger they are the worse it is. A baker is accountable to his customers, a local mayor accountable to his constituents, but an EU MEP?

Finally, I believe now the EU is not a well-functioning institution, it no longer serves any of its member states the way originally intended.

The lack of flexibility has hamstrung them and it is almost impossible to change now.

While the UK may experience short-term pain while it finds its feet, I think it will be stronger in the long run, especially as I think the EU is liable to implode.

The EU needs us too and I think they have acted poorly (matched by us acting incompetently) in the negotiation so far.”

Well done my boy. I have always maintained Brexit was not about trade, economics, tariffs, defence and a political bloc of like-minded peoples or any other of the lofty geo-political ideals.

It came down to — and still is about — national identity. It’s about retaining a sense of being English. It’s about controlling immigration. It’s about being responsible for your own destiny and not being directed by faceless and anonymous bureaucrats sitting offshore. Is this the worst sort of jingoistic, nationalistic and anti-immigrant rubbish you don’t want to hear?

Well it isn’t and Australia needs to have the same conversation now — not when it’s too late.