As Britain leaves the EU I am left disappointed in my county

I write this on the morning after the night before that many thought and hoped would not come. Yesterday, at 11pm, the United Kingdom left the European Union. Whatever happens next, that cannot be undone. We are now outside the EU.

Those of us who thought that Brexit was a bad idea have lost the argument. Whether or not Britain should leave the EU has been the defining political question since David Cameron won a surprise majority in the 2015 general election. It has now been settled. We have left.

Now it’s up to those who supported Brexit to show the tangible benefits of leaving the EU. Whatever happens over the next few years, the victorious Leave side cannot fall back on “we have left so everyone has to live with it” or just saying: “The benefit is that Brussels is no longer telling Britain what to do.” Well, sure, but how does that help anyone? We cannot eat our sense of pride in our nation, we cannot be employed by national self-determination and we cannot exert leverage in the world by simply being outside of a political union. It’s up to those who voted Remain to remind Leavers of this.

Frankly, I'm disappointed

Frankly, I’m disappointed that my country has not seen that Brexit is a bad idea over the last three years. The chaos and paralysis Brexit has unleashed should have been enough to convince people this was a waste of time. Brexit was born out of a need to settle a dispute in the Tory Party. It’s not a means to serve the national interest. However, most people have either not noticed this or don’t care, so we’ve got Brexit anyway.

I’m also disappointed in my side, those who advocated against Brexit and have failed to come up with an argument that has made a difference. From Remainers, there has been a complete lack of willingness to reach out to the other side. Instead, we have fallen back on insults and denial. Us Remainers are more interested in expressing our Remainyness through pointless gestures (like hiding 50ps) than in convincing the people who voted for Brexit that it’s a bad idea.

Remainers are more interested in being angry at Leavers than we are in stopping Brexit. We would rather post on Twitter or Facebook about how stupid the other side is, than do anything that would stop the thing we hate so much. I have watched in despair over the last five years as the anti-Brexit cause has gone from smug, to ineffectual, to bitter, to laughable and finally to irrelevant. We have learned nothing and it’s completely depressing.

We have to do better on the next big debate: what to do about the looming environmental catastrophe or it will be the human race that is lost, and not just Britain’s standing in the world.

Why Brexit happened...

There are a lot of reasons why we have left the EU: a nostalgia for a lost Britain that never really existed, the economic impact of neoliberal globalisation, some people’s unease at the cultural change over the last few decades, rising immigration, some outright racism about wanting there to be less brown people or less people with funny languages in the country, and a cultural backlash to socially liberal, metropolitan values that lots of people find alienating. Some of these are valid complaints about the way the country has been run for decades, some are small minded prejudices, and some are both.

If the grievance at the root of Leavers’ desire for Brexit is that people outside London and other big cities have done badly out of the last 10-15 years (or longer) then I can understand that, but I would say to Leavers that Brexit is not the solution to their problems. But what is? People haven’t wanted to give moderate social democracy a chance to sort out their problems. Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband both lost elections.

People also don’t want socialism (or Scandinavian social democracy, which is what the manifestos of 2017 and 2019 were really offering) either, as Jeremy Corbyn was rejected by voters twice. Do people really want a social democrat who is draped in the flag and who isn’t a vegan, craft beer drinking, Picturehouse membership holder, who doesn’t care much for what the London Review of Books thought about the new John Lanchester novel? I doubt it. Do they want a socially conservative, borderline nationalist, bag of flag-waving hot air who will bellow about the glorious history of Britain in lieu of finding a solution to our current problems? It looks like it.

If most people really do think that nostalgia and nationalism are the solutions to all our problems than anyone whose political views are anywhere in the space between David Cameron and Aaron Bastani has a serious problem.

...and what next

Many Remainers I have spoken to think that everyone who voted Leave is a lost cause and that politics will sort itself out when enough of them have died from old age or a diet made up entirely of Cumberland sausage and Yorkshire pudding. They think that Labour must find a new electoral coalition, as Northern and Midlands Leaver voters are beyond the pale, which means winning over the people who really liked George Osborne. They feel that Labour should be the party of bellicose pro-Europeanism and that the next Labour leader should spit in the faces of every Brexit voter and call them a racist.

These are the people who will make Kier Starmer the next Labour leader. I don’t know if this is the route back to power for Labour, or the means to stop the spread of xenophobia we have seen in the last five years, but it will, given the chance, transform the Labour Party into something unrecognisable and engage in a level of triangulation that would make even Tony Blair think this puts political expedience ahead of principal. I’m not hopeful about the future.

Brexit won't resolve Brexit

The mere fact that we have left the EU will not resolve the cocktail of feelings and grievances that convinced people to vote to Leave. Us Remainers need find a way to address these concerns, either directly or indirectly, or they will mutate into something much more terrifying than ripping up the basis of our economy for the last 47 years.

Us Remainers don’t have to accept Brexit and we certainly don’t have to like it. However, if we want to counter the rising tide of xenophobia (or region the EU at some point) then we need to a better narrative than howls of rage that the stupid people have fucked the country. We need something that convinces people who wanted to leave the EU that there is an alternative to wallowing in nostalgic nationalism.

We may have lost of the argument over whether Britain should leave the EU, but there are still many more battles to fight. We need to learn from the last five years and resolve to do better in the future.

EU flag image created by Yanni Koutsomitis and used under creative commons.