So the Country has chosen to leave the EU. As I travelled on the London tube in the morning, past the City, (who got their predictions massively, entirely wrong as b##### usual) and Westminster (where Cameron was probably explaining his career prospects to his wife over a Continental breakfast) the mood seemed to be amazingly sanguine: it was a surprise, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Of course, the sluice gates of another round of vitriolic witch-hunting were suddenly re-opened: torrents of radical revolutionary fervour were swirling amidst stoic institutional pillars of the status quo. But that was nothing unusual, those are the normal undercurrents of London life; tidal flows as old as the frothy brown sewers of the Thames.
I was attending a conference at the Tavistock. Nearly every speaker commented on the previous night's events. This was an interesting vantage point, from which to view the unfolding drama. But my attention was drawn to one important theme that was close to my heart. How could the Labour Party have got its 'traditional voters' so wrong? So I would like to try and answer that question. But I want to try and avoid rehashing the same old worn out rhetoric about 'young Oxbridge career politicians who have never worked a day in their life.....'. They are not going anywhere and they are still in need of an education. So let us look at some of the rhetoric from the Leave campaign that seems to have 'won the day' and try and explain that.
First up: "it's all about immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs" comes from the sort of protectionism that has characterised both sides of American politics for decades. Protectionism is considered to be the default position for the American consumer, even if the rest of the world sees America as an imperialist power. Looking at the official statistics for the UK, the number of immigrants who are working in this country is almost exactly equal to the number of British workers who are actively looking for work. So there is a political argument here. However, this is not a reason to leave the EU because during the campaign it was revealed that 70% of immigrant workers are from the Commonwealth countries, the old British Empire. Thus, if the Leave campaign were serious about reducing immigration they would have been trying to undo our links with the Commonwealth, not the EU.
Second: "it's not racist to want to discuss immigration". No, it's not, but it is xenophobic to blame immigration for your child not getting into the school of your choice, you getting stuck in traffic on the way to work, the price of milk in the shops, and your grand-daughter not being able to afford a mortgage. And it is narcissistic to believe that you have a right to something that should be denied to others based on their place of origin. Taken together, xenophobia and narcissism are powerful emotional tools that can be used to overcome the intellect during a democratic campaign. People who study the history of conflict in Europe, and I assume there are a few of them who have passed through the doors of the Tavistock in their time, have written about how xenophobia and narcissism were important parts of the racist ideology of National Socialists of 1930s Germany, aka the "Nazi" Party. What makes Farage's rhetoric different to Hitler's is the absence of fascism, the belief that power comes from military power not the exercise of democratic choice; I suspect Farage, like the rest of us, does not want to repeat the mistakes of history; but others, like Boris, are much more aware of what a dangerous game he is playing.
Third: "I don't want the EU controlling our country and telling us what to do all the time". This issue is generally referred to as nationalism. Fair play - the British have an honourable and noble tradition in deposing foreign dictators and promoting 'liberal free market democracies' acrossthe British Empire, I'm sorry, I mean, across the known World, including the rest of Europe. As a citizen of the UK you are bound to feel a certain loss, or a massive gain, of sovereignty, if you have moved from a democracy of 60 million to a democracy of 500 million in the last few years, depending on who was in charge in your own country previously. What I think amazes Corbyn and the rest of International Socialism, is that the Leavers blamed the EU for all the things that have gone wrong with this country rather than those in charge, i.e. the Conservative Party. The Old Etonians must be laughing all the way to the bank as their mates in the City reap the rewards of the post-war Austerity Agenda. It wasn't the EU that caused the credit crunch, it wasn't even New Labour, it was the greedy psychopaths who rule the international money markets through Machiavellian subterfuge and a forensic mastery of the detail. It wasn't the Bullingdon Boys who had to go to the Food Banks, it was us; in the same way that the Polish, the Romanians, the Syrians, etc, came to this country to escape the poverty and terror that had been caused by our honourable and noble pursuit of our own "national interests".
So here we are, alongside the Thames in an old Roman settlement, with its French nobility and German monarchy, trying to vote our way out of, what has the potential to be, one of the most powerful democracies this world has ever seen. Perhaps it is the madness of the British that gives us our humanity, our humour, our freedom. I hope that, just like the Thames, it never stops, only that its rolling thunder will respect the stone monuments that our ancestors erected in its honour.
I was attending a conference at the Tavistock. Nearly every speaker commented on the previous night's events. This was an interesting vantage point, from which to view the unfolding drama. But my attention was drawn to one important theme that was close to my heart. How could the Labour Party have got its 'traditional voters' so wrong? So I would like to try and answer that question. But I want to try and avoid rehashing the same old worn out rhetoric about 'young Oxbridge career politicians who have never worked a day in their life.....'. They are not going anywhere and they are still in need of an education. So let us look at some of the rhetoric from the Leave campaign that seems to have 'won the day' and try and explain that.
First up: "it's all about immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs" comes from the sort of protectionism that has characterised both sides of American politics for decades. Protectionism is considered to be the default position for the American consumer, even if the rest of the world sees America as an imperialist power. Looking at the official statistics for the UK, the number of immigrants who are working in this country is almost exactly equal to the number of British workers who are actively looking for work. So there is a political argument here. However, this is not a reason to leave the EU because during the campaign it was revealed that 70% of immigrant workers are from the Commonwealth countries, the old British Empire. Thus, if the Leave campaign were serious about reducing immigration they would have been trying to undo our links with the Commonwealth, not the EU.
Second: "it's not racist to want to discuss immigration". No, it's not, but it is xenophobic to blame immigration for your child not getting into the school of your choice, you getting stuck in traffic on the way to work, the price of milk in the shops, and your grand-daughter not being able to afford a mortgage. And it is narcissistic to believe that you have a right to something that should be denied to others based on their place of origin. Taken together, xenophobia and narcissism are powerful emotional tools that can be used to overcome the intellect during a democratic campaign. People who study the history of conflict in Europe, and I assume there are a few of them who have passed through the doors of the Tavistock in their time, have written about how xenophobia and narcissism were important parts of the racist ideology of National Socialists of 1930s Germany, aka the "Nazi" Party. What makes Farage's rhetoric different to Hitler's is the absence of fascism, the belief that power comes from military power not the exercise of democratic choice; I suspect Farage, like the rest of us, does not want to repeat the mistakes of history; but others, like Boris, are much more aware of what a dangerous game he is playing.
Third: "I don't want the EU controlling our country and telling us what to do all the time". This issue is generally referred to as nationalism. Fair play - the British have an honourable and noble tradition in deposing foreign dictators and promoting 'liberal free market democracies' across
So here we are, alongside the Thames in an old Roman settlement, with its French nobility and German monarchy, trying to vote our way out of, what has the potential to be, one of the most powerful democracies this world has ever seen. Perhaps it is the madness of the British that gives us our humanity, our humour, our freedom. I hope that, just like the Thames, it never stops, only that its rolling thunder will respect the stone monuments that our ancestors erected in its honour.
