| "A Caesura in our National History...a Guillotine Moment” |
A Political Diary |
| A Multiplicity of Voices , Politics of the Referendum , July 10, 2016 |
Whether anyone emerged better enlightened about the workings of the Union is doubtful. The first polls are out suggesting that not a mind was shifted since it all kicked off in the winter. The actual deeds of the Commission tend to be specific in intent and dull in nature. There is more spark in the revelation that a Leave leader's favourite character in fiction is Tyrion Lannister. “It's a stitch-up. It's the biggest stitch-up since the Bayeux tapestry”, runs a piece of press copy intended to amuse more than enlighten. * * * * The week since has had an air of the fictional Don Fabrizio Salina observing Garibaldi's unification of Italy. “Everything must change in order it may remain the same.” The Common Agricultural Policy has been cause for bile for as long as anyone can remember. Within days the Times has a letter from the NFU President. Nothing, but nothing, must be permitted to change. The Telegraph's star politician-writer- Boris Johnson- wrote on June 26th: “There will still be intense and intensifying European cooperation and partnership in a huge number of fields: the arts, the sciences, the universities, and on improving the environment. "EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down. "As the German equivalent of the CBI – the BDI – has very sensibly reminded us, there will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market.” So free movement remains, not what the nay-sayers were led to believe." Daniel Hannan in a television interview is of the view that freedom of movement is neither here nor there. Evan Davies, his interviewer, is left incredulous. “We've just been through three months of agony over immigration”, he is gasping in sheer disbelief, “and the public has been led to believe that what they have just voted for is an end to immigration.” Now a vote for change appears to be a vote for no change. On June 27th Richard Wyn Jones wrote his article "Why did Wales shoot itself in the foot in this referendum?", one of the most read and shared of the last week. The coalition of the shires of old England with Margate, Spalding and Torfaen is surely not one that can hold. * * * * The London commentators have been swift this week to visit the foreign lands that are their own country. Within a few days, the BBC’s Panorama has been in Tipton and Nechells. The weekend's Financial Times and Bagehot of the Economist are both in Derby. A first camera was in Worcester. The interview ran “What do you think will change?” “Everything.” “Like what?” “Wages will go up.” Wages will not go up. In fact in an import economy with its currency 15 percent down prices will go up. Expectations are too high. Peter Hennessy is a voice of weight and used words of weight for a radio programme. “Thursday 23rd June 2016, European referendum day, scored a line across the page of British history. "The incision was swift, the cut deep. The greatest adjustment in our lifetime, a caesura in our national history and our place in the world, a guillotine moment.” The revelation to this long-term observer has been of “fissures in our society deeper and more jagged than I had fathomed.” * * * * So many discordant voices. So much reduction to a Manichean contest between good and ill. “A bonfire of red tape!” It sounds good but the detail means beef dosed with growth-enhancing hormones and chicken bleached with chlorine. The true restraints on economic liberty are home-grown in the form of planning restriction, miserable training and education expectations. “We beat the Germans in '45 and we've done it again”, says the taxi driver in Lincoln, sniffing an air of metro-appeasement about his passenger in the back seat. “It's all our money!” is the response in the assisted areas on being pointed to the slew of projects carrying the blue Union symbol with its circle of stars. EU money comes with less political patronage than that from London, say the insiders, and with fewer strings attached. Britain holds 24th position in the Union nations for number of doctors per head of population. Maybe we are younger and healthier. One in ten doctors is European-born, say the liberals. * * * * An MP addresses a public meeting in Peterborough and asks what the audience would be prepared to put at risk in order to leave. “Everything!” is the bellowed reply. Economics has been trounced by culture and culture goes deep. “The English are not intellectual,” wrote George Orwell. “They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “worldview”. In a recent book, Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels recount how people in New Jersey were significantly less likely to vote to re-elect President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 if they lived near the sites of recent shark attacks. By the same token, voters seem to punish politicians for floods and droughts, but instead of seeking candidates who plan to spend more time or money preparing for such calamities, they simply unseat the incumbent. * * * * Time spans are short in attention. A party's economic management is assessed on the basis of only the very recent past. Opinions can fluctuate wildly, depending on how questions are asked. Before the Gulf war of 1991, almost two-thirds of Americans said they were willing to “use military force”, but less than 30% wanted to “go to war”. The academics know that democratic politics are followed by a few. In Germany half of voters cannot place “Die Linke”- “the Left”- on a scale of left to right. Most do not know the name of their representatives. The evidence is that voters tend to pick a candidate first, then bring their policy views into line with their choice. Level of education makes no difference. Thus in their theory of representative democracy James Madison and Edmund Burke alike proposed the trustee model. * * * * It might have been different. The original referendum Bill proposed a “Yes/No” question. Complaints to the Electoral Commission argued this was loaded. “Yes” looks more positive so the question was changed to “Leave” versus “Remain.” The number-crunchers said that was a 4 percent advantage to out. The Prime Minister rejected an attempt by the Lib Dems and Labour to let 16- and 17-year-olds vote. The reason was purely for party as it would hurt the Conservatives in future elections. 650,000 votes were lost from that age group. The excluded young are out in Parliament Square in big numbers. The Vote Leave campaign had written an application filled with gaps. It was rewritten by campaigners late into the night, the final document delivered to the Electoral Commission at 11.40 PM., twenty minutes before the deadline. Had they failed to be the designated official Leave campaign, the debates would all have been led by UKIP. In the event nearly 3 million votes were cast by women and men who had not voted in an election for decades. The pollsters never got to them. * * * * The population is going to enjoy longevity as never known before but there is small appetite for paid work beyond 30 or so years. A life of 30 years work and 30 years non-work is arithmetically impossible for all. It might be possible were Britain a Norway with a small population and a sovereign wealth fund. But it is not. The government taxes, spends and borrows as it goes. In any case chronic ill-health, with depression in the lead, prevents work for a longer span. No referendum can create children to make the gap. An outside body estimates the immigration requirement at 160,000 a year. That is the difference between the vote-casters and government across the river in the ministries that run up Whitehall as far as the eye can see. They look at numbers that are real. The rest of us do not have to worry. * * * * Nine-tenths of the 30,000 in protest are below the age of 30. “It was a huge emotional hit”, says the twenty-year-old language student, “I’m going to Berlin next week. I don’t know what I’m going to say to my friends. I’m ashamed to be British.” A young Asian on the former Mayor: “I quite liked him as Mayor. I can’t believe he just dumped us.” This is so far from a first image on television on June 24th. A woman of maturity was in tears. She has, she says, her England back. There is all the difference between those who speak of England and those of Britain. From a tech entrepreneur: “Who do those northern w***ers think pays for them?” I have never heard language of division like this before. But it is the paradox. London pays a quarter of income tax, more than north-east, north-west, Humberside and Yorkshire combined. It is the same with tax and business rates. A third of stamp duty is paid within a radius of 20 miles. The north voted against London perhaps for just that reason. There may be trouble ahead but this protest is reassuring. It is so very sunny and British, serious but playful. The devotion to Parliament is affecting. It is an irony since the decision on the referendum never even went, or so it is said, to Cabinet. Peter Hennessy is an acute expert on the inner workings of government. He has this week fallen back on a central plank of national self-belief. “We pride ourselves”, he has said, “on being a back-of-the-envelope people.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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