‘And so the justification for Britain pulling up the shutters begins to crumble away.’
Jayne Dowle
I’VE HEARD that a working men’s club in Barnsley is planning to put the flags out for the visit of President Donald Trump. Apparently, members are being urged to sport t-shirts bearing the stars and stripes, and even wear Trump masks.
There is always going to be a contingent who support his pro-blue collar, antiimmigration stance and who feel more kinship with the disaffected inhabitants of America’s Rust Belt communities than with other more prosperous parts of Great Britain.
If you nipped down to this particular working men’s club tonight – or indeed to any similar establishment in South Yorkshire – and did a straw poll, you’d probably find that many are still in favour of a hard Brexit despite the Cabinet shenanigans of the past week,
Two years ago, in the EU referendum itself, Barnsley voted more than two to one in favour of Leave on a turn-out of almost 70 per cent. That was pretty resounding.
Here are the people who believe in closing borders, protecting our own and preserving a version of their country which probably never existed in the first place. The weird thing is that many of these men and women would identify first and foremost as being left-leaning, if not out and out socialist.
Still, their desire to see their interests represented by politicians is why some of them find themselves chiming unexpectedly with a billionaire property developer with no apparent political creed except self-preservation and an ego greedy for hero-worship from the “common man.”
For decent working-class British people to find more political affiliation with a belligerent American head-of-state than with their own elected representatives is surely proof that there is something very wrong with democracy in this country.
And this, above all, is what Theresa May and her vacillating Cabinet must understand. Their entire mishandling of the Brexit negotiations has done absolutely nothing to persuade the British people to trust them, or to retain any faith in the political process.
We have no choice but to allow politicians and civil servants to carry out business as they see fit. However, we do expect them to do so in the spirit of honest representation, by reflecting the will of the British people as voted for in a democratic process. Frankly, for many of us, that’s all we expect them to do.
We don’t need to be party to every single element of every single piece of legislation and the minutiae of each trade deal. We just expect those in charge to sort it out on our behalf, and for the general good of Great Britain.
When this doesn’t happen, we have a right to feel aggrieved. And when it becomes clear that the promised extra £350m a week for the NHS was a figure conjured entirely out of the air by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, when our holidays to Spain suddenly double in price thanks to the weak pound/strong euro and when a bunch of well-heeled Cabinet ministers squander our taxes on endless “away days”, we start to ask questions and, perhaps, reconsider our position overall.
I’d wager that behind those Trump masks in that working men’s club also sit plenty of individuals who question whether they still believe truly that our best place is out of the European Union altogether.
I was talking to a lady the other day who has been a Labour party member all her adult life. She’s in her seventies now, so can certainly speak with authority and hindsight. And like thousands of other people from around here, she voted Leave two years ago. Now, though, she’s rethinking her decision.
If a hard Brexit at the hands of selfseeking right-wing politicians who don’t understand her concerns about the cost of living and the price of food is our only option, she now asks whether we’d be better off staying in the EU.
And let’s put her personal dilemma in a wider context. Immigration was a huge factor in the EU referendum campaign. The scare stories and false facts about the scale of this issue do not bear repeating.
Whatever the truth, two years is a long time in politics. Things change. Indeed, the new British Social Attitudes survey says that the number of people in the UK who believe that economic migrants are good for the economy has risen sharply to 47 per cent from just over a third in 2015 and only 21 per cent in 2013.
And so the justification for Britain pulling up the shutters begins to crumble away. Couple this with our natural tolerance and desire for political stability and it all begins to look decidedly wrongheaded.
There is no stronger indication of these new schisms in British society than the sight of the stars and stripes flying above a working men’s club. But a straw poll in the taproom is not a national democratic vote. For the sake of the country, the Prime Minister must show leadership and call a second referendum. It is the only way to salvage any kind of respect for her Government and to restore pride in our own country.
For decent working-class British people to find more affiliation with a belligerent American than their own elected representatives is surely proof there is something very wrong.