Read more: How will the Brexit result go down in Spain?
A lot of people felt a little shell-shocked that sunny Friday morning, as the news came through that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Despite having worked toward that outcome since I was 19-year-old undergraduate, I felt a little numb myself.
You know what that numbness was? It was the shock of being in control again. The shock of a bed-ridden convalescent throwing open the doors and stepping into a summer garden. The shock of a newly paroled prisoner, unaccustomed to making decisions without permission, having to think again. After 43 years of having circumscribed choices placed before us by our leaders, we had rejected their advice and chosen to do our own thing.
For “Leave” voters, it was an exhilarating shock. But many “Remain” voters still seem to be struggling to accept the new dispensation. In the five stages of grief, several of my “Remain” voting friends are somewhere between stage one (denial) and stage two (anger). Some simply refuse to accept the verdict. Tens of thousands have marched through London demanding that MPs defy the electorate, and more than four million have signed a petition calling for a second referendum.
Others, while accepting the outcome intellectually, cannot reconcile themselves to it emotionally. It was won only on the basis of falsehoods and bigotry, they tell each other. Elderly, uninformed and racist voters were whipped up by unscrupulous demagogues. The country has let itself down, abandoned the comity of nations, raised its drawbridge.
Anyone with access to Twitter will know what I’m talking about, but this goes beyond social media. Mainstream broadcasters, too, having tried to be even-handed during the campaign, are now throwing neutrality to the wind. Almost every interview with a “Leaver” starts from the proposition that we are either bigots or exploiters of bigotry. The idea that there might be an economic, democratic and internationalist case against the EU is not rejected; in the minds of our broadcasters, it never existed.
It’s worth reminding ourselves, if only for the record, of what was actually said before the vote. I have some claim to having written the script for our campaign in the form of my book, Why Vote Leave. Not one of its ten chapters was about immigration, which I mentioned only glancingly as one of several areas where sovereignty had been lost. I told every rally that leaving would not end immigration from the EU, and no one ever complained. Shortly before polling day, Boris Johnson made a point of saying that he was “not only pro-immigration, pro-immigrant” but also in favour of an amnesty for illegal entrants. Michael Gove, too, repeatedly stressed that he was in favour of legal immigration, and that the only way to win consent for it was to convince people that it was controlled.
Ah, you say, but what about that awful poster of Farage’s? Well, I happened to be in the Vote Leave HQ when it was unveiled and the reaction was universal: all around me, people were burying their heads in their hands and groaning. Quite apart from the moral objections, we knew it would hurt our vote—as, indeed, almost all of Nigel’s interventions did before and during the campaign.
But here’s the point: 17,410,742 voted to “Leave” the EU, more Britons than have voted for anything else, ever. But UKIP’s vote at the last election was 3,881,129. Something like 80 per cent of “Leave” voters were not UKIP supporters.
This point is worth stressing, for two reasons. First, many overseas media have decided that Nigel Farage is the face of the “Leave” campaign. This understandably prompts them to interpret the vote as a nativist one, which can’t be good for our image. Sadly, with the Conservatives convulsed in a leadership contest, there are fewer mainstream “Leavers” to explain on the airwaves that Britain has just voted for a more competitive and less protectionist future, one which will see a renewed emphasis on our non-EU allies.
Second, the “Remain” campaign seems to believe its own caricature of the opposition. It is striking that, both before and after the vote, “Leavers” emphasised that there would be no change in the status of EU nationals already in the UK. The only people suggesting otherwise are those who backed “Remain,” perhaps because they truly think that this will appeal to their opponents.
Trust me: it won’t. No one has spoken at more “Leave” rallies than I have. The people who attended them wanted more control, not zero migration.
Our challenge now is to find a status that both sides can at least live with. We “Leavers” can’t ignore the fact that a very large minority voted to stay. Nor can we forget that the UK works as a partnership of four nations, two of which preferred the status quo.
These facts will necessarily exert a measure of temperance, of moderation. We need to find a new status in our relations with the EU, which may go too far for some and not far enough for others, but around which we can build a consensus. That may well mean keeping many of our current arrangements in place, while moving to a phased repatriation of power in other areas. I do hope “Remain” voters will work with us on this. Cavilling about the outcome is no substitute for getting involved with what happens next.
Prospect will be hosting a Brexit debate on Tuesday, 19th July at 6.30pm. Panelists will be: Anatole Kaletsky (economist), Rachel Sylvester (The Times columnist), along with Anand Menon (Professor of European Politics at King's College, London). The event will be chaired by Duncan Weldon (former Newsnight economics correspondent). Click here to register your interest to attend.
A lot of people felt a little shell-shocked that sunny Friday morning, as the news came through that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Despite having worked toward that outcome since I was 19-year-old undergraduate, I felt a little numb myself.
You know what that numbness was? It was the shock of being in control again. The shock of a bed-ridden convalescent throwing open the doors and stepping into a summer garden. The shock of a newly paroled prisoner, unaccustomed to making decisions without permission, having to think again. After 43 years of having circumscribed choices placed before us by our leaders, we had rejected their advice and chosen to do our own thing.
For “Leave” voters, it was an exhilarating shock. But many “Remain” voters still seem to be struggling to accept the new dispensation. In the five stages of grief, several of my “Remain” voting friends are somewhere between stage one (denial) and stage two (anger). Some simply refuse to accept the verdict. Tens of thousands have marched through London demanding that MPs defy the electorate, and more than four million have signed a petition calling for a second referendum.
Others, while accepting the outcome intellectually, cannot reconcile themselves to it emotionally. It was won only on the basis of falsehoods and bigotry, they tell each other. Elderly, uninformed and racist voters were whipped up by unscrupulous demagogues. The country has let itself down, abandoned the comity of nations, raised its drawbridge.
Anyone with access to Twitter will know what I’m talking about, but this goes beyond social media. Mainstream broadcasters, too, having tried to be even-handed during the campaign, are now throwing neutrality to the wind. Almost every interview with a “Leaver” starts from the proposition that we are either bigots or exploiters of bigotry. The idea that there might be an economic, democratic and internationalist case against the EU is not rejected; in the minds of our broadcasters, it never existed.
It’s worth reminding ourselves, if only for the record, of what was actually said before the vote. I have some claim to having written the script for our campaign in the form of my book, Why Vote Leave. Not one of its ten chapters was about immigration, which I mentioned only glancingly as one of several areas where sovereignty had been lost. I told every rally that leaving would not end immigration from the EU, and no one ever complained. Shortly before polling day, Boris Johnson made a point of saying that he was “not only pro-immigration, pro-immigrant” but also in favour of an amnesty for illegal entrants. Michael Gove, too, repeatedly stressed that he was in favour of legal immigration, and that the only way to win consent for it was to convince people that it was controlled.
Ah, you say, but what about that awful poster of Farage’s? Well, I happened to be in the Vote Leave HQ when it was unveiled and the reaction was universal: all around me, people were burying their heads in their hands and groaning. Quite apart from the moral objections, we knew it would hurt our vote—as, indeed, almost all of Nigel’s interventions did before and during the campaign.
But here’s the point: 17,410,742 voted to “Leave” the EU, more Britons than have voted for anything else, ever. But UKIP’s vote at the last election was 3,881,129. Something like 80 per cent of “Leave” voters were not UKIP supporters.
This point is worth stressing, for two reasons. First, many overseas media have decided that Nigel Farage is the face of the “Leave” campaign. This understandably prompts them to interpret the vote as a nativist one, which can’t be good for our image. Sadly, with the Conservatives convulsed in a leadership contest, there are fewer mainstream “Leavers” to explain on the airwaves that Britain has just voted for a more competitive and less protectionist future, one which will see a renewed emphasis on our non-EU allies.
Second, the “Remain” campaign seems to believe its own caricature of the opposition. It is striking that, both before and after the vote, “Leavers” emphasised that there would be no change in the status of EU nationals already in the UK. The only people suggesting otherwise are those who backed “Remain,” perhaps because they truly think that this will appeal to their opponents.
Trust me: it won’t. No one has spoken at more “Leave” rallies than I have. The people who attended them wanted more control, not zero migration.
Our challenge now is to find a status that both sides can at least live with. We “Leavers” can’t ignore the fact that a very large minority voted to stay. Nor can we forget that the UK works as a partnership of four nations, two of which preferred the status quo.
These facts will necessarily exert a measure of temperance, of moderation. We need to find a new status in our relations with the EU, which may go too far for some and not far enough for others, but around which we can build a consensus. That may well mean keeping many of our current arrangements in place, while moving to a phased repatriation of power in other areas. I do hope “Remain” voters will work with us on this. Cavilling about the outcome is no substitute for getting involved with what happens next.
Prospect will be hosting a Brexit debate on Tuesday, 19th July at 6.30pm. Panelists will be: Anatole Kaletsky (economist), Rachel Sylvester (The Times columnist), along with Anand Menon (Professor of European Politics at King's College, London). The event will be chaired by Duncan Weldon (former Newsnight economics correspondent). Click here to register your interest to attend.
