Brexit
Before the
Brexit polls, my dad asked me the reasons for Leave. I googled and didn’t find
any reasons which sounded very convincing. And yet Brexit happened. What was I
missing? What articles had Google missed?!
Today, you’d
think that the usual after-the-event geniuses would be able to come up with
reasons. So what are we hearing now? Why did they vote to Leave?
1) There were those who always hated being
part of the EU, joined by those who thought immigration was taking away jobs,
and the racists who just hated immigrants.
(Funnily
enough, the immigrant issue wasn’t really that big a deal. At least not for
Britain. I wonder if Angela Merkel rolling out the red carpet for Syrians
created a perception problem that couldn’t be fought with facts).
2) Then there were the many who felt that
only the city of London benefitted while the rest of Britain got nothing.
3) For some politicians, this was a chance to
become visible, and to rise:
“Better to reign in hell than serve in
Brussels.”
4) Others may have been gambling, assuming
that the EU cannot afford to lose Britain and would be forced to concede
preferable deals even if Britain left.
5) Another gamble may have been that if
Britain quit, it could be the beginning of the end for the EU. And once the EU
disbands, everyone would be in the same situation as Britain. Except Britain
would have a head start in finding a way forward.
6) The price
tag of EU membership could be quoted: £350 million/week; the cost of leaving,
on the other hand? Highly subjective; and debatable. And thus not convincing to
the common man:
“The entire practice of modelling the future in terms of ‘risk’ has lost
credibility.”
Obviously, how
a campaign is run matters:
“The
slogan ‘Take back control’ was a piece of political genius. It worked on every
level between the macroeconomic and the psychoanalytic. Think of what it means
on an individual level to rediscover control… What was so clever about the language of the
Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment,
then promised to eradicate it.”
And so, ironically, “The least ‘enslaved’ nation in the EU
just threw off its ‘shackles’”.
None of that sounds very logical, right? Hardly looking like
a thought through, well analyzed decision? And now we have Scotland wanting
another referendum to become independent. And a petition to re-do the Brexit
referendum itself! Hardly the way you’d expect, well, a First World country to
act?
You have presented the points better than my vague discomfort with the situation. As you rightly said, these points are not great "convincers".
ReplyDeleteEU is getting dismantled maybe, like the USSR (not exactly however, because USSR crumbled like the pack of cards). The truth is that the glue for unity is weak in these cases.
This is not always the case with some amalgam countries. (I would say countries like Japan are non-Amalgam.) In comparison, in the US, which is a mixed culture population, the federal approach is serving well and the "glue" for unity is present in some manner. Even India, the unlikely candidate for unity, is managing for some 60+ years as one country, even if it has a long and weary road before it towards becoming a well adjusted nation.
On the whole, it appears in principle that unity is an uphill task whereas the prevalence of individuality is common.