BRITAIN’S SORE BREXIT LOSERS
TO MAINTAIN THE PRECIOUS BELIEF IN THE SANCTITY OF THE POPULAR VOTE, WE HAVE TO STOP THIS UGLY LIBEL OF THOSE WITH WHOM WE DISAGREE. — COREN THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY MUST RECOGNIZE THAT MANY OF THOSE WHO VOTE THE OTHER WAY HAVE LEGITIMATE OPINIONS, RATHER THAN DISMISSING THEM AS STUPID AND RACIST.
Let me make it abundantly clear that if I had still been a resident in the country where I was born and raised, I would have voted for Britain to remain a member of the European Union, for all sorts of reasons. My daughter Lucy, for example, is a British passport holder, who lives in Britain and France. Her boyfriend is from Germany, but studies in Paris, and they both work in all three of those countries, as well as Italy, Romania and the Netherlands. In other words, the result of the EU referendum was not good news for me and mine.
But at the same time, I am sick and tired of the followers of the current virtue fetish taking to social, as well as mainstream, media to dismiss those who voted to leave as being stupid, racist and selfish. It’s precisely that smug, contemptuous type of attitude that resulted in the Leave side winning this referendum.
The reality it that we all vote, to varying degrees, out of selfinterest and emotion, whatever the cause may be. The Scots voted overwhelmingly to remain, but was this because they genuinely cared about the well-being of the United Kingdom, or because they merely feared the English having more power over them?
In Northern Ireland, it was Sinn Fein and the nationalists who urged their largely Roman Catholic constituency to vote to stay in Europe, but, again, this had as much to do with their links to pro- European Ireland and a general dislike of Westminster, than any objective analysis of the conversation. Within moments of the vote, leading republicans — many of them with strong links to Irish Republican Army terrorism — demanded a full vote on Irish unity.
In England itself, it was without a doubt the young, the more educated and those in London who wanted to remain in Europe, but the older and those without a university education cannot be sud- denly ignored or abused. One could argue that decades of paying taxes and contributing to society are a little more important than the desire to work in Milan or Madrid and feel cosmopolitan.
As for the alleged stupidity factor, MP John Hayes, the country’s security minister, is one of my oldest friends and was a leading voice in the Brexit campaign. He is highly intelligent and astute. Former cabinet minister Michael Gove, another Brexit stalwart, is one of the brightest politicians I know, and Boris Johnson, whatever one may think of his antics, is no Donald Trump ( people should read his works of history before diving into their snobbish and, yes, elitist comfort zones).
About a third of visible minority voters supported leaving Europe, and the Welsh voted to leave as well. I suppose we could mangle and torture our logic to explain that the brown and black Brits who wanted out were not sufficiently race-conscious and that the Welsh didn’t understand the choice, but that sounds like the very racism now being thrown at last week’s winning side.
Then we have the majority of the white working-class favouring a Brexit. This is deeply significant and the reaction to it is eerily revealing. These men and women — and the gender divide in the national vote was virtually tied — form the foundation of the Labour Party and the union movement. They are the very people whom so many of the Remain supporters usually claim to care for and want to help; but suddenly they are being told by those same Remain types that they are dumb and bigoted and that their opinion and vote do not have any genuine value.
Of course, immigration, though perhaps not race as such, was an issue in the referendum and of course some of the Brexit support was visceral, rather than intellectual. But then politics and democracy have always been that way. There were people who voted for U. S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau without being able to name a single one of their policies, but they weren’t marginalized as being second-class electors.
As I say, I wish the vote would have been different and I genuinely worry about the future unity of Britain, the European project and how Russia might be a great beneficiary of all this. But love for democracy is more important than this and if we are to maintain the precious belief in the sanctity of the popular vote, we have to stop this ugly libel of those with whom we disagree.
The great challenge for Britain now is partly its European future, but also its self- healing. The genealogy of democracy has roots deep in the British culture and psyche, just as in Canada. There are those who would dig away at them and label opponents as being lesser and baser. Shame on you. It’s hard to be noble in defeat, but for democracy to flourish, it is absolutely essential. What happens now is arguably more of a litmus test for British liberalism than was the referendum itself.