The EU Referendum

For the first time that I can remember in my 56 years I was not too sure who was in charge of my country this weekend. I am a very open minded person, proud to be British but I do not just accept the established order as part of being so. I have the deepest respect for the Queen, and for her years of duty to the country and to the Commonwealth, but I have been known to feel that she and all that comes with her costs us an awful lot of money when we have a government denying essential financial benefits to sick and to disabled people and forcing them to seek work, in many cases dropping dead in the process or committing suicide, and the government does this on the basis of the need for austerity to reduce the national debt. However, the Queen brings in to the country a huge amount of money in tourism and while a constitutional and not an absolute monarch, with no official political powers, she is a symbol of constancy and we can never doubt her commitment to the people and countries of The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth while our governments come and go and rarely deliver what they promised while trying to get elected to govern.

Many times I have seen the view across Westminster Bridge and looked in awe at The Houses of Parliament , feeling for all the faults Parliament can have , not least the entitlement of its members to claim thousands in expenses and allowances, a sense of pride and reassurance that we have a parliament that governs the country and that indeed this is a country where anyone at all from any background can educate and work themselves up to being a member of that parliament and so be in a position to represent and help their constituents …but this weekend it felt like nobody was home and like the movie, we were home alone  . The Prime Minister is resigning and the Labour Party, many MP's on that side are trying to force their leader to step down as they feel he did not fight a strong enough remain campaign ...and some people are even saying they voted to leave the EU never really thinking this was serious business and it would happen ...

I am the biggest defender of democracy and the right to a vote that is then abided by ..but not in the case of something it now turns out many people did not understand and was fought largely on a platform of lies and dirty racism and not what it was supposed to be, a referendum on whether or not we remained in the EU. The far right leave campaigners were telling people that if we left then loads of money we now pay to be in the EU in our tariffs would instead go to the health service, but they are now admitting it was never going to happen.... we are a big nation and a generally open minded people, it would not put us to shame to admit this has all been a big mess and not our finest hour and for our MP's to do what it takes to stop this going any further....and reject the referendum.

One of the biggest  and most significant issues is that the leave campaign conducted from many members of it a campaign that had little to do with what would actually happen to us and indeed the global economy if we left the EU and they conducted instead a campaign based, on nasty dirty exaggerations about immigration and racism leaving the people who wanted to believe it that immigration to the UK would all suddenly stop if we left the EU ...we are having reports of for example polish communities in some places here having letters put through their doors calling them Polish scum and telling them to go back home !!! Other race related hate crimes have increased in just the four days since the referendum. This became a referendum based not on economic facts but on racism and as we all around the world know, led to the murder by a right wing mentally ill fanatic, of a mother of two small children going about her civic duty as an MP.
 

                                                   

 This vote, the result of which within only a few hours devalued the £ to its lowest level for years need not be legally binding. Legally it carries no more weight to change the entire economic position of the United Kingdom, taking other currencies with it for years to come, than does one of the YouGov polls I do on my computer, do we live in a world where major decisions are made on the back of an opinion poll? If the example of the UK referendum to stay in or leave the EU is allowed to set an example, we may end up doing so, since other parts of the European Union now want to have a go as well.

The referendum really was of no more legal standing than an opinion poll of the type I often fill in online. However, David Cameron promised to be bound by it whatever the outcome and now he didn't get the outcome he wanted and thought was coming he is resigning and no doubt will soon be seen in the papers on his holidays!!! It may well be that his offering the referendum was actually a ploy to guarantee the re-election in 2020 of a Conservative government, since UKIP, the right wing anti -immigration UK independence party are hot on the heels of our mainstream political parties and gaining ground in elections. I have read that some people who voted out are even now that the reality of it has hit them, saying they wish that they had not voted that way ...I think a lot of people didn't really know the full implications of what the results would be of coming out, we were warned about all this but a lot of people maybe did not really follow the debate. Party political broadcasts are not really the favourite TV viewing of many people sat in front of the telly in the evening after a day’s work and while many are strong political campaigners, the unemployed are often not politically active because they do not feel engaged with politics, though there are exceptions. I spent a lot of time in Yorkshire in the north of England, where whole communities had lost jobs and other businesses as a result of the government policy to close the British coal mines and turn instead to cheaper coal from ~ as it happens, Europe. The same happened to our mining industry in other parts of the United Kingdom too and the resulting miners strikes split families and communities between those who supported the strikes and those who did not, even members of the same families stopped speaking to each other …in most of these old mining communities, you mention the name, even today of Margaret Thatcher at peril. Old miners are certainly politically opinionated.

                                                 

The ghost of Silverwood Colliery

What was once Silverwood Colliery, it closed in 1994 after 94 years of production. Link

© Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Certainly, the referendum showed that people are unhappy with lots of things, immigration and border control, housing, the jobs market, and austerity measures and have blamed it all on the EU as an easy available scapegoat. Not so surprising when the exit brigade campaigned on such claims as immigration would cease, even giving to some the impression that immigrants would be sent back where they had come from, money that we paid as part of our membership of the EU would instead be available for the National Health service and for welfare.

However, almost as soon as it became clear that the unexpected had happened and the exit vote had won, those who campaigned for it were trying to distance themselves from their responsibility for it by saying that they knew these promises were never going to happen.  The reality rather is that this referendum has not just thrown the £ into the lowest value it has had for years ...it has played havoc with other country's economies too and we didn't have a right to create this uncertainty ..especially if indeed people are saying ohhhh..I didn't realise this was what it would mean and I would not have voted leave had I known ..to many this was a vote all about immigration and against the current government full stop ....maybe many did not really understand or even listen to and read what we were warned would happen to the economy. What a lot of people heard was a very emotive subject that the as it is known Brexit campaign played to ‘Immigration will end !!! get the immigrants out, send them all back!!! ‘. That this referendum became more about racism then the economic pros and cons of leaving or remaining was evident on Social Media as we saw more and more of such extreme right wing groups as Britain First ……and a mentally ill fanatic shot and stabbed to death a member of parliament and mother of two small children ….

I wonder too how much the tragic shooting of Jo Cox had to do with the outcome, I said that the referendum should have been halted at that moment ..because it had lost sight of what it was about .I fear that many felt like him who shot Jo,  and though they would never have gone out and shot someone themselves , they felt that voting leave was a vote FOR her because someone  had wanted out and wanted it so badly  he was willing to shoot an MP for it , so they thought he was right in principle and feelings  and was fighting for something good , though being mentally ill , the extreme happened ....but  it must be good because he wrong and misguided as it was, was willing to kill for the ideal ...a sort of perverse view if you see where I am coming from ..they felt WOW someone felt so strongly about coming out of the EU and putting Britain first that he killed a mother of two small children for it ..so we must come out to honour that...BUT we know that Jo Cox was a strong remain supporter. People were saying no more, no more killings for this ideal and they voted to come out … The referendum was lost on emotions ...not on common sense and informed decisions and should have been postponed and rethought as soon as Jo was killed ...no rational decisions were really possible so soon after that tragic event.

Older people were a lot to blame too, many viewed voting out as some kind of return to the days of The British Empire !!! that is what they imagined coming out would be like. They are still remembering that they fought or grew up in a war with Germany and do not see that Europe has ever done us any good, that the United Kingdom does not need Europe ...or rather England does not, we have to remember that Scotland, while being a proud nation steeped in its own wonderful history, a leading player in the reformation, has long enjoyed a friendship and history with France going back as far as the thirteenth century. Scotland while represented at Westminster has its own parliament and looks to the interests of Scotland, this includes outwards towards Europe, and they want to remain a part of the EU …Scotland has already had one referendum of its own, on the issue of withdrawing from the United Kingdom and becoming an independent nation, they are now considering another referendum for this very matter …

Where I live , we were blessed with even if we did not already know the score, being able to make an informed decision thanks to the mailings and meetings held by our MP . Where I live is a strong Labour held area with a much respected MP who is listened to , but many areas are not so fortunate and of course while a lot of literature about the pros and cons of the EU was delivered to every home before the vote , much of political literature does in many homes go straight in the bin unread and sadly as we know, there are far too many people only too willing to believe these days that if we are given a vote like the referendum and told that immigration will stop if we just vote leave the EU ...they are very happy to vote leave ...the reality was that having done so, the £ dropped overnight to its lowest level for thirty years , the dollar and other economies suffered too, we are going to lose jobs, trade and investments in our country and Scotland who voted to remain in the EU are talking about another referendum for independence, which if successful and the Scottish people do vote for independence will see the end of the United Kingdom . Ireland, where the south is independent and the north part of the UK, as if not a fragile peace between the two already is now thinking about the possibility of reunification because Southern Ireland remains in the EU while the north comes out with us, and the two parts of Ireland are not easy bed fellows as history has tragically shown.

So, The Prime Minister has resigned and a vote of no confidence has been motioned by some MP's to Jeremy Corbyn leader of the Labour Party, not that he exactly needs a vote of no confidence because most of his cabinet members have resigned since the referendum, blaming him and refusing to work with him, that is a pretty effective no confidence vote in itself!!! I do not think he will be able to hold on much longer though so far he is refusing to resign and saying that if forced to, he will stand again for election, and last time he won on a huge mandate not from the parliamentary Labour Party, but from the ordinary members …. including my own vote as a party member. I like him ...I liked his principles for the less well-off and fortunate, I think his heart was in the right place there, even if he does remind many of a Trotskyist and seems no great lover of suits, ties and haircuts ~ but then what many Labour MP's really want in their leader is to bring back Tony Blair .... or find the closest replica they can. Image actually counts for a lot in politics, that Jeremy Corbyn has the backing of  so many of the ordinary party members who are the voters and of the unions who largely finance the Labour Party makes no difference to his MP’s who just think he doesn’t look the part, the fact that the ordinary members want him and his kind of left wing politics does not matter , because the modern day Labour Party is right of its old centre on which they feel they lost the support of the electorate , in other words , though it is a slogan some Labour MP’s now want to distance themselves from Labour is now New Labour and has been since Tony Blair . In the UK the Labour and Conservative parties are made up of people much closer to each other in background than they used to be, and Labour has distanced itself from being the party that represents, even the one that supports the working class people and those needing the support of a welfare state, because they feel that being seen as the party for welfare by those that resent it was what cost them the past two elections.  At the last general election Labour made it clear in their manifesto that they were going to be as tough, if not tougher than the Tories on welfare …. very alarming for those who have no option because of medical needs but to have to claim it. The Labour Party these days along with the Tories talk a lot about helping as they keep referring to hard working families, not a lot at all about the disabled or elderly person living alone.
                                                              

   Jeremy Corbyn really messed up on the referendum, the labour Party were campaigning on a remain ticket but their own leader was going about saying he was a reluctant stay voter!!! The Labour MP’s who want him gone are saying that he lost the remain vote, but is this actually true? The remain vote did fail in the north of England, Labours heartlands, but maybe the voters saw it as they were following their leader, because after all he appeared to have doubts about remaining in the EU. What he was really trying to say was that he was voting remain but felt that the EU needed reform, it does, but it is possible that not being committed to the EU cost the referendum remain campaign many votes.

What we now face is a long period of financial uncertainty. Having elected to leave the EU, Brussels seems to want us to get on with it and go, but David Cameron who has actually resigned does not want to set the wheels in motion to start the process of withdrawing, this is done by triggering article 50, concerned with a member state leaving the EU, he wants instead to leave it to the new leader, who will not be in power until at least September .Meanwhile the Labour Party look very likely to have a leadership contest too and if the election of new leaders results in a General Election the process of leaving the EU could take even longer than the predicted two years . In the meantime, the £ devalues, EU workers in the UK do not know where they stand, European banks and other financial institutions may well withdraw staff from London, which has been a financial centre for us and for Europe, businesses may well not feel so confident about investing in the UK, The United Kingdom itself faces break up with Wales too now joining the debate for independence along with Scotland and pension funds and investments drop in value. We face the possibility of losing a lot of trade exports and imports from Europe and it is forecast that property prices will drop too. My hope is that the delay in triggering article 50, allows time for a complete review of the process of the referendum and as has been revealed already, the real implications for the United Kingdom and indeed the world, of leaving the EU. Let’s hope it is maybe not too late to undo this very as it has turned out already unwise step ...we are far better in than out.