Clearing up the toxic mess of Brexit

I don't, as a rule, 'do' politics. On this blog and its predecessor, I have studiously avoided an institution I have little time for, one whose practitioners have - whether they like it or not, and whether warranted or not - the reputation of being self-important egomaniacs.

Of course, that's not to say there aren't diligent and hard working politicians who have something to contribute of genuine benefit to the communities they serve. It's just that those are the politicians you rarely see, let alone hear of, largely because they're busy getting on with their actual jobs, rather than trying to position themselves for a job they would very much like to have next.

Taking this further, I've also stayed well clear of the build-up to today's EU referendum. One reason is that I have genuinely been conflicted by sound arguments from both sides. Another is that I've also been revulsed by arguments which have been seriously flawed. A third reason is that I don't, actually, have any formal say in the debate, having lived outside the UK for more than 15 years and am therefore ineligible to vote. But, as Britain goes to the polls, it's hard to resist some reflection, particularly as the referendum is one of the most important decisions my country will have made in my lifetime.

One further reason is that the debate has brought out the very worst of the institution of politics - and its worsening state of being. Neither campaign, frankly, has been particularly impressive. Both sides have overplayed on emotion and frailty rather than hard, stand-up facts. And even when the factual approach has been pursued, Pinocchio's nose has visibly extended. My natural instinct is to support the Remain position - I couldn't really countenance any other view, having benefited in numerous ways from being an EU citizen. My employers have benefited greatly from trade within the EU, as well as employing me in two EU member countries, with the freedom of movement between them. This freedom, moving between the UK, the Netherlands and France (with a two-year sojourn in the US), has enriched me professionally, culturally and socially. And immeasurably.

Later this year I will be returning permanently to the UK, and I worry what country I'll be coming home to. For the last ten weeks it has been dragged into a pit of toxic political division, with towns, communities and even individual families split along rival referendum lines which, in earlier centuries, would have amounted to the conditions of civil conflict. The blame for this must fall on the politicians and the political rivalries at the root of the Brexit debate, who have, from their central positions in their respective campaigns, spun and even lied to achieve their aims.

Twitter may not be the most faithful barometer of rational thinking, but it has also opened the window on the very worst of the sniping, carping and cynical snidery that has been part and parcel of the referendum. Social media has accentuated and worsened its toxicity: to spend any time on Twitter over the last few weeks is to have observed an encroaching, rabid madness, worsened by the extremes of the right and the left in equal measure. I was left in utter despair the other day by a tweet posted from an account festooned in nationalist sentiment which concluded with a call to the new mayor of London and the Remain-endorsing prime minister, "FUCK OF SADIQ FUCK OF CAMERON". That an argument could have been expressed this way suggests both the unrestrained lack of respect afforded by social media platforms as well as truly appalling standards of spelling, grammar and punctuation. EU or no EU, what kind of moron is being turned out by British schools?

I don't wish to trivialise, however. The EU referendum is too important. It will be a decision that will have very real ramifications for British prosperity. Yes, the UK will still trade with the rest of the world if it leaves the EU, but at what cost to manufacturing jobs in Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Sunderland or Swansea when tariffs impact the business of trading? Will Nissan, Honda and Toyota - Japanese companies all - still want to invest in British factories making cars for export? Will London remain the world's financial capital? I would, though, disagree with the idea that the arts and culture would suffer - The Beatles did perfectly alright in Hamburg before the old EEC came along. But these are the arguments we should have been examining, rather than xenophobic nonsense about Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives or Latvians taking British jobs that British people didn't want anyway.

There's no doubt that the European Union can be its own worst enemy. In my work I've seen at close hand how bloated and bureaucratic Brussels can be; I've bought into the argument that a community formed to facilitate free trade has allowed itself to oversee issues about things it has no need - or right - to be involved in. But as a European citizen in every sense, I've also seen what European political and economic unity has achieved, and what the UK stands to lose if it goes it's own way.

This, however, has been masked from view by the sheer crassness of the Leave campaign, and for that we must lay blame at the feet of its leaders: a former London mayor, who extolled the brilliance of his city's multiculturalism while in office only to dive into the murky waters of immigration control while bumbling his way through the Brexit debate, attacking "the agents of Project Fear" while spreading fear himself. Boris Johnson built his personality cult around his Bunteresque, public school clown persona. It was amusing, seeing him on Have I Got News For You, with his manic blond hair and his classical Latin quotations, but throughout this campaign he has too often let his guard down and shown both his naked ambition as well as his unsophisticated, unreconstructed self.

Then there have been the outright lies that Johnson and the equally duplicitous Michael Gove have peddled: the claim that the UK sends £350 million each week to the EU, apparently; the lazy comparisons with pre-war Germany and Nazi scientists discrediting Einstein; the preposterous idea that 78 million Turkish people are preparing to suddenly leave their homes for the UK (any more so than 81 million Germans or 66 million French would). Worse, though, is the Leave leadership's tacit endorsement of that bombastic golf club bore Nigel Farage, a man whose xenophobia is eclipsed only by the outright racism of the swivel-eyed Little Englanders who dote on his every word.

The immigration issue isn't one that can be taken lightly. I've seen the best of immigration and the worst of it. It's a thorny topic, and no amount of saloon bar philosophising from me will even scratch the surface of how to resolve it. But its presence in the darker pockets of the EU referendum has depressed me, and its manifestation within the Brexit debate by those at supposedly the unacceptable extremes of the Leave campaign has been deeply troubling.

Which brings me to Jo Cox. At the top of this post I said that my disdain for politics is largely the result of those who practice it. I've rarely met or seen a politician I like. But in Jo Cox - an MP I hardly knew anything about since she entered Parliament in the 2015 election intake - you sensed something rare and good. To earn the sort of genuine cross-party outpouring Cox's murder stimulated said more about her than any cause she may have stood for or against. She was just doing her job, and by all accounts doing it well - representing her constituents, helping them, supporting them. 

It is right that the Leave and Remain should not have exploited this for their own interests, and for the most part they haven't. But the sight, yesterday, of a Vote Leave campaign banner being flown over Trafalgar Square, not once but three times, during a memorial rally for Cox, in full, cynical knowledge of the hurt and upset it would cause, is a sign of just how far British politics has sunk during the Brexit debate. We've seen something similar in the US, with a presidential election running along even more extreme lines, with one candidate in particular trading hate, fear, paranoia and division for votes. But the US election is not for me to worry about until November. The more pressing event is today.

I can't vote, but I implore those who will to think as long and hard about their choice based on those who presented it. Because, really, would you want a country to be handed over to the likes of Gove and Boris, their lies and misinformation? Worse, their dirty little secret Farage, yapping away from the 19th hole, pint of IPA in one hand, rancid views about immigrants (of which he is one) in the other? It's not the Britain I want to move back to, frankly.