The "Will of the People" and other things.

As a diversion from my normal ramblings and waffle I would like to write a blog centred upon what has become known as "Brexit". i.e. The UK leaving the European Union. First a word of warning for those who like a neutral voice, who believe in "fair play" and all that sort of stuff. What is said here is said by a convinced "Remainer", one for whom hearing the word "brexit" is a trigger for indigestion and an almost uncontrollable desire to disappear beneath the blankets or retire to a monastic community. That said, I shall continue.

First, just to say that for me the "Will of the People" is a theatrical fiction. (See "Related Quotes" below)

For many of those driving Brexit, the Will of the People was set in stone for all eternity about two years ago - 23/06/2016, when precisely 26% of the total population of the UK voted "Leave" in an ill conceived referendum. Ill conceived? Indeed it was. After 40 years of in-fighting within the Tory Party fold between the "Eurosceptics" and the "Europhiles", PM Dave Cameron, having won an unlikely majority in the General Election (using the out-dated "first past the post" system which in effect makes the majority of the votes cast inconsequential) called a Referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. Well done Dave. After 800 years of the organic growth of the British Constitution, with all its nooks and crannies, points and counterpoints, weights and counterweights; yes, after all this, what would be the greatest constitutional change ever known to our islands would be decided by a one off Referendum, without a percentage set either way to give it true weight and validity - often 60% or more in other countries who know how to do these things. Unlike Dave, who, supremely confident of a Remain win, sought only peace within the Tory fold.

Having lost the Referendum (Dave campaigned for Remain) and having said during it that whatever the outcome he would remain to carry out the will of the people, he promptly resigned. Last heard of he was writing his memoirs in a new garden shed, built at the cost of £25,000. Many voting Leave at the time claimed to have done so merely to give Dave a "black eye." However, I see no sign of one. 

Dave and shed. No sign of a blackeye.

Another architect of the referendum was our "man of the people" Nigel Farage, who had campaigned tirelessly over the years to get the UK out of Europe - as is his democratic right. Part of his strategy was getting himself elected as a UK Euro MP with the hefty salary that goes with it - plus a good pension pot to tide him over when he loses his job after Brexit. (Not quite a "turkey voting for Christmas" then, as he likes to pretend). Nigel was one of the ones who assured people during the Referendum Campaign that to vote Leave was not necessarily a vote to leave the Customs Union or the Single Market; "look at Norway" he said, "they are happy", speaking of a country that is non EU yet in both. Once the vote was in and Leave had won, his tune changed - "Leave MEANS leave" he insisted, "anything else would be a betrayal of the British People" (for whom he speaks, loving a glass of ale when on camera)

Another of Nigel's gambits was his "I think Remain has shaded it", said not long after the Polls closed on Brexit Night, though he admits that by this time he had already seen a Survation Poll predicting a Leave win. No, nothing to do with seeking to strengthen the Pound ahead of its inevitable fall once the actual results began to come in, something he has strenuously denied. Anyway, Nigel, who has many good friends in the Hedge Fund business, can be seen later that night pointing at graphs on screen showing the plummeting Pound, chuckling happily to himself.

Nigel calls attention to the plummeting Pound on Brexit Night

Yes, a true "man of the people", who claims now that he never said that Brexit would necessarily work out well in economic terms.

A truly tragic thing about all this is the apparent apathy of the "people", whoever they are or are not, or what their Will is or isn't. There seems to be an air of "why is it taking so long", "the vote is over, why can we not just leave". Mention the many complications and eyes tend to glaze over. Mention any of the many long term consequences, still predicted by many intelligent and concerned people, philosophers, the business fraternity, and others who - despite the accusations of same arch brexiteers - do in fact love our country and are as proud of it as any other British citizen; mention any such thing and it is dismissed as "Project Fear", a project apparently long dismissed as just so much hot air by those who voted Leave.

The justification for apathy

Oh, I have mentioned the word "intelligent". Which makes me think of a very non PC point that just cannot be mentioned in polite society. Surveys carried out by very reputable organisations since the Referendum have revealed that there was a direct correlation between educational qualifications and how people voted - the more educated, the more likely they voted to Remain. Whisper it. Unless you fancy a black eye yourself.

Another correlation was between age and voting trends - this being that the older a person the more likely they were to have voted Leave. Which has its very own tragic implications if thought is given to it.

And so the whole miserable fiasco stumbles on, with the latest joke (funny if you like an edge of tragedy to your humour) is our PM Theresa May stating that she hopes progress can be speeded up on "both sides" towards a Brexit Agreement. "Both sides"? Surely she can only mean between the two sides within her own Tory Party, as divided as ever despite the efforts of Dave, incapable of any agreement on what they actually want or even what Brexit actually is - despite it being the "Will of the People".  Alas no, she means between the UK and the EU! 

Well, I have not mentioned Foreign Secretary and Arch Brexiteer Boris Johnson, Bojo to friends (and enemies), the man whose latest contribution to the debate, following the warnings of the business community over Brexit, was "fxxk business". This from a man still hoping to become the next leader of the Tories, the "Party of Business" and thus our new PM. Anyway, I have now mentioned him. Perhaps enough.

Boris Johnson - yes, perhaps enough

 

Yes, it stumbles on. Mention the illegal overspending by the Leave Campaign, mention the Russian interference, the questionable contribution of Cambridge Analytica , the sheer number of lies that were peddled during the Referendum Campaign - all dismissed by the majority of the UK Press and Media, for whom nothing must stop the inexhorable march of the "Will of the People". A Press and Media owned mostly by multi-millionaires/billionaires, some foreigners. Those whose vision of the future of the UK, I suspect, bares very little resemblance to that of those who would love to live in a true democracy, a true meritocracy, where "freedom of speech" would be aligned with a heartfelt ethics of empathy seeking the communion and welfare of all. (Not the "freedom of speech", I would add, advocated by the Far Right, a "freedom" in the name of inevitable conflict and division) Alas I suspect and fear that the agenda of this Press and Media is of another order entirely. 

As a slight aside, I must mention the notable absence in the past couple of years of any mention of Sir Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - both would seem to be quite natural playmates of any seeking to invoke and glorify the "Will of the People" - those who during those two years have called any who dare seek to stall Brexit in any way the "enemies of the people", even "traitors" and "saboteurs".  Strange - and yet perhaps not so strange.

Here is Mrs Thatcher on Referendums:- "a device of Dictators and Demagogues" ( and Daves, I might add ) And Sir Winston Churchill, voted the greatest Briton off all time? There is a statue of him in Brussels where he is looked upon as being one of the "founding fathers" of a United Europe, this based upon a number of his speeches made after the Second World War. Churchill is also on record as declaring that our national sovereignty is not necessarily inviolable. So the ardent Brexiteers have put both of their previous heroes away for the duration, perhaps to get them out and dust them down later when our "glorious country" needs a lift. 

The statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Brussels

Yes, the EU is not perfect. Far from it. It has problems which may even prove unsolvable. But it DOES have an electoral system which when investigated is far superior to our UK's "first past the post" system - this latter system supposedly bringing "strong and stable" leadership (!!!) 

As I see it the problems besetting the EU are also world wide problems. They are age old problems; of just how human beings should live together and share our world. What vision shall we hold in our own ages quest for solutions? The vision of One Earth (which we have now seen pictured gloriously in space - see below), our earth as a Global Village? Or one of individual Nation States, closing borders ( and I think, minds ) to anything other than looking after "Number One", insular and at heart afraid? Our choice. 

Our Global Village

"The Tao can be shared but not divided."

Related quotes and comments:-

Regarding "apathy", Bonnie Greer, writing in "The New European", suggests that in the context of the current Brexit negotiations the "possibility of some sort of moral fatigue can set in...…...In our increasingly desperate need now for peace and order and for 'just getting on with it', we are beginning to lose clarity". In which case "we ourselves can have contributed to our era of lies, and we too can help make it impossible, in time, for literature to be written, books, plays, poems, essays and newspapers to be edited and promulgated. Because we will lose the ability to understand and break down what is being told to us, what is being sold to us."

In her article, entitled "Big Brexit is Watching You", she concludes:- "We lose the ability to say new things, make new connections, forge new worlds. We lose our grace and our rigour, our real freedom and our taste for adventure. We just want it 'all to be over'; knowing in ourselves that once we give up our ability to think for ourselves, to fight back, then it IS all over."

"Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority.

For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction."

Thus wrote Umberto Eco far back in 1995, long before the "will of the people" became the "law" of the UK on 23/6/2016.




The Referendum result by numbers:- Not on the Register of Electors:- 18, 099, 999. Did not vote:- 13,948,018. Voted Leave:- 17,410,742. Voted Remain:- 16,142,241.