SO, WHAT’S THIS REFERENDUM ALL ABOUT, THEN?
by Hazed
As you may have heard, the UK has just had a referendum about whether we should leave the European Union – the annoyingly named Brexit (which sounds like a cross between a breakfast cereal and a laxative). Unexpectedly, the Leavers won by a small margin, after a fractious campaign with big fat lies told by both sides. As a result, the UK economy has been trashed, with a knock-on effect on finances around the world, and the country is mired in uncertainty as to what the future holds. Both main political parties are having internal battles over who should be their leader. Meanwhile, unpleasant idiots have taken the vote as an excuse to be openly racist. It’s all very depressing.
So what’s brought this on?
Note that this is my opinion of what it’s all about – I am no political expert, and plenty of people disagree with my views.
The History
First, a quick history lesson. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to be boring, I promise.
The bunch of countries that together make up the United Kingdom (that’s England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) are geographically considered to be part of the European continent, but politically we have never belonged. For hundreds of years we were at war with one or more European country. Other European countries fought each other too. At one point Napoleon conquered most of Europe, except for the UK.
This constant warfare culminated in WWII, and after that horrific conflict the countries of Europe decided that enough was enough; they needed to make sure such a war could never happen again, so in 1957 they formed a group called the Common Market, an economic grouping of six European countries, including France and Germany. Later it was renamed the EEC, then the EU (European Union).
In 1973, the UK joined too. But since we have a national propensity to hate Europeans – particularly the French and the Germans – it was always an uneasy alliance. In particular, the Conservative party (the Tories), which are currently in government, has always been divided in support for the EU.
Over time, the EU changed from being just a free trade economic entity to something more like a United States of Europe federation. The idea was to harmonise the laws of the member countries, which made sense because most European countries had legal systems that were broadly similar – a legacy of them all being ruled by Napoleon at one point. However, the UK’s legal system didn’t mesh so well since we’d avoided being subsumed into Napoleon’s empire.
Things got more fractious when the EU expanded and eastern European countries joined. The free movement of people between countries in the union brought a lot of people from the newly admitted countries to the UK, economic migrants moving here because job opportunities were better.
So We Had A Referendum…
Right-wing Tories hate the idea of England being subject laws being made by the EU. They hate even more the idea of multi-culturalism so the influx of Poles, Bulgarians and Rumanians made them deeply unhappy. Dreaming of a non-existent past in which England was for the English and they didn’t have to cope with people speaking foreign languages or eating strange food, they actively disliked everything about the EU.
Recently a new right-wing party was formed, called the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) whose sole platform consisted of “Bloody foreigners. Yuk.” They wanted us to leave the EU. But since for all the noise they made, they never gained any power, it didn’t look like they’d ever amount to much.
However, in the run-up to the 2015 general election, Prime Minister David Cameron got worried about the possibility of disaffected right-wing voters defecting to UKIP, so in a bid to appease them and stem the anti-EU grumbling, he promised to hold a referendum on whether we should stay or go.
Big mistake.
You see, he thought the people would vote to remain, and that would draw a line under the issue. It was a gamble, using our country’s future as the stake, and he lost.
He didn’t count on the anger and hopelessness a lot of the people were feeling after a long period of so-called “austerity”. The people who voted to leave included people who genuinely thought the country would do better outside the EU; it included racists who wanted to kick out all the immigrants; but it also included a load of people who used the vote to express their disgust with the government, the elite, the ruling classes, who were out of touch with the problems they faced.
Of course, really this was a battle between two elites: the ruling government, and their colleagues who were just as elite but wanted things to be different.
During the campaign, both sides used fear tactics and lies to persuade the voters. Unfortunately, the leave side’s lies were more convincing, and we awoke on Friday June 24 to find that the country had voted to leave the EU. It didn’t take long for their campaign promises to unravel, but by then it was too late: the pound had plummeted, the stock market crashed, and the country was in a mess.
The Aftermath
Then things got weird. Having lost the referendum, David Cameron resigned as PM. It was expected that the most vocal of the Leave campaigners, Boris Johnson (ex-Mayor of London) would replace him. But then the politicians that had campaigned so hard for the leave result seemed to be shocked that they had won. It turned out they had no plan for what would happen after the vote, or how the process to leave the EU would work. One by one they stabbed each other in the back, or resigned, or walked away. Clearly they didn’t remember that, “You Brexit, you fix it!”
What’s Going to Happen?
Frankly, nobody knows. It’s not even certain that we will leave the EU because the referendum was only advisory, which means the government is not obliged to go along with it. It’s not clear whether the PM can make that decision alone, or if it needs a full vote of Parliament, but if the house does vote there’s only about 120 MPs who are in favour of leaving so who knows how it will actually pass.
Economically, the London stock market has recovered and is actually higher than it was a few months ago. The pound is still very low, which is good news for tourists wanting to come the UK because your dollars, euros or yen will go a lot further. Not so good for British holidaymakers wanting to go abroad, and mixed news for businesses depending on whether they import or export more stuff.
I’ve just read an article that says the price of chocolate is going to rise so, of course, that’s terrible news!
Socially, the leave vote has empowered a small number of noisy racists and we are seeing an increase in reports of racist abuse, and vandalism of property such as a Polish cultural centre.
In case you couldn’t guess from the tone of this piece, I feel angry and bitter about this whole situation. I voted to remain in the EU. While I think it’s a flawed, corrupt bureaucracy, I think being inside it benefits us and we are going to suffer if we leave. The EU is not going to be nice to us as we negotiate the terms of the Brexit; they are going to want to make us suffer, not out of spite, but in order to discourage any other countries from trying to leave.
Whatever happens, we will probably weather the storm and things will turn out OK eventually. But we’re in for a rough time for the several years.
