So a month on, a few more
thoughts on the aftermath of the referendum.
Why did we vote (narrowly) to
leave? The truth is that there is no simple answer, and not everyone voted
LEAVE or REMAIN for the same reasons. (So please don’t read what follows as
claiming they did.)
My feeling is that the dominant
issue at the heart of this referendum was immigration. I think it boils down to
a stark reality, our personal experiences of immigration and our perceptions of
immigration is starkly different.
For many of us, including myself,
our experience of immigration has been overwhelmingly positive, I’ve friends
who are immigrants, I’ve travelled to other countries, I’ve lived in France. I
like the fact that I could live anywhere in the EU, I like the fact that other
EU nationals have been able to move here. For me immigration is a social Good.
The economic benefits are a secondary concern. I like being European. That is
the experience of many people I know.
But what this referendum has made
clear is that there is another side to Britain whose view of immigration is
very different. Their experience of immigrants has been negative, they have not
made friends, they have not enjoyed travelling to other countries, they have
not lived in other EU nations. Their perception is of immigrants who take their
jobs and are too often involved in crime.
One of the difficulties I’ve been
pondering quite deeply over the last month is how to have a constructive
national conversation.
The Referendum campaign was
extremely divisive. Big lies were told on both sides. Where is this £350m a
week for the NHS then Mr Johnson? Where is your emergency budget Mr Osborne?
For weeks we were bombarded with a few lies, a lot of half-truths, and a
mountain of spin. None of that makes an honest constructive conversation
possible, all it does is make people angry and shouty.
This is nothing new. For decades
our governments have not attempted to rule by consensus. We have in effect been
ruled by the biggest minority. In 2015 The Tories won on 36.8% of the votes, in
2005 Labour won on 35.2%; in neither David Cameron nor Tony Blair’s victory
speeches did either acknowledge that a majority of voter did not vote for them.
No, they proclaimed a majority government and proceeded to implement their
policies without a passing glance to the 60%+ who did not support their
manifesto, nor to the great number who did not vote.
To me such leadership is weak.
And I think it is at the heart of what has brought us to the divisive
referendum on the EU. As a nation we have no culture of consensus building
discussion. We either shout at each other, hurl abuse, and treat any kind of
compromise as a betrayal. Or we retreat into liberal platitudes, ”everyone is
entitled to their views” or “all views should be equally respected” simply
stating our views without listening to anyone else or challenging each others
lines of thinking. Our media doesn’t help, political interviews are either
about catching politicians out or are completely superficial. Often all we get
is the soundbite or the slogan, our attention span has been trained to get
bored with more than a minute of well constructed rational argument.
In his book “The Pedagogy of
Education”, the Brazilian education theorist Paulo Ferriere makes the case that
whenever someone has the freedom to make a decision they must always be allowed
to experience to full consequences of that decision. I think this point has
relevance for our politics. For too long we have allowed a minority (just less
than 40%) to elect our government. Then we all walk away and the consequences
fall where they will; sometime they touch us sometimes not. But on the whole
our blinkers are put on and we take only a fleeting interest in that which
doesn’t pertain to our daily lives. We are not listening to those who feel the
pain, and when it’s us that feel it no one is listening to us. Hence we have a
sense of disconnection. When election come round again all we consider is our
own narrow corridor of experience. Our politicians know they only need to
appeal to their favoured 36% (ish), so who cares for the experience of all the
others?
This is where we are. A nation of
shouters who have never learnt how to listen. We have not listened to those who
felt afraid (rightly or wrongly) by immigration, we have condemned before
finding out why. We have not listened to those who’ve felt like they have no
voice, those who are never among the winning 36%, and so live frustrated that
they are never consulted or even have explained to them, decisions which
transform their lives. We have not listened to those who been denied stable
jobs and permanent contracts, finding themselves stuck on zero-hours minimum
wage jobs. We have not listened to those who work long hours in jobs that give
them no satisfaction, year after year. We have not listened to those who can
find no meaning beyond longing for the next consumer possession. We have not
listened to those who feel like they’ve failed in life because things haven’t
turned out as they’d hoped.
We have not listened! When no one
listens to us some of us get frustrated. “why is no one interested in me!”
Others shrink away into solitude.
We have not listened; but equally
we have chosen to ridicule privately rather than challenge openly. So we allow
the racist joke to go unchallenged. We allow the made up statistic to stand as
fact. For the sake of peace we choose to accept the received wisdom we don’t
really believe. When open disagreement appears we quickly change the subject to
something less controversial, or we make the proponents feel as if their being
antisocial or a bit boring.
None of this makes for a healthy
national debate! Nor is it really democracy.
How we change things? Now that is
the real question.
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