5. The Elephant in the Brexit Room (TEITBR) - What the heck just happened?

[Home]
 
Come June 23rd 2016, we all dutifully went to the polls.... well 71.8% of us, nationally. Like all the pundits (and I mean all), I believed the vote would be tight... but essentially, to Remain. Reasons are many, but mainly come down to:

• Our politicians didn't have a Plan B, in case Leave was the result.. so they knew we would Remain.
• I remember Denmark, where they had a vote that said 'Leave' on a 48/52% split. Too close said their government, who had a second referendum 2 weeks later, that came out 52/48% Stay, so they stayed.
• The UK had been told, in no uncertain terms, that we could have 1 vote, and 1 vote only. That was part of the 'deal' Cameron came back with. He was happy with that, so we were going to stay ... weren't we?

So it had to be Remain.

Then I got woken by a message on Skype, from a colleague in Sydney.....what happened? said the message. The vote went 52/48 Leave! The result: Turmoil.

 Ok.. it was a fascinating time.... no one knew how or why.. because very few people actually bothered to look at the country as a whole. Most pundits looked at London, a few looked at other major cities, very very few took the feelings of the country as a whole.
Immediately the blame game started.. promoted by the media, and the politicians. 

• David Cameron resigned, as soon as was possible... by 9:00 am if I remember
• The Labour MPS roundly blamed Jeremy Corbyn, as he didn't take a leading role? Begs the question what they were doing in their own constituencies? They were equally to blame, if thats what it is.
• The younger generations, who managed to vote, blamed the older generations.
• The Scots blamed the English. (to be fair.. if Scotland had been a separate country, they would have remained).  
• The Londonites blamed everybody else, and immediately tried to get a ruling that the referendum was unfair, and needed to be run again. Presumably that would not have occurred if the split had been reversed.

What happened people is this:

• People who don't normally vote....voted. We normally get a 30% turnout... it was 71.8%.. double the number.
• The politics of fear... failed...hugely.
• A lot of people have disliked what the EU has become, and decided to be brave, and voted leave.
• Farmers and Fishermen, both who have suffered under EU control, voted to Leave, except those that had been able to deal with the huge flow of paperwork, and administration taking them away from farming and fishing, and becoming administrators... reducing the quality of the food you and I eat.
• People who should have turned out, who complained the most at the result, didn't.
• The political classes got taught a real lesson, along with people who don't normally vote, that voting can make a difference. 
• Just tripped up on the connundrum of the British Muslims, which is something even I didn't think of.

A look at the statistics here gives a good idea. Scotland had a 50% turnout. If, of the remaining 50% who didn't vote, had turned out, and assuming 80% of those (40% of the whole) would vote 'Remain', then the whole of the Uk would be remaining.
A similar story goes to the 18-24 year olds. We will leave aside the  100 or so Oxbridge final year students, who thought Upticking the Remain Facebook page was an actual vote. 

Its called Democracy. A 4% margin is a margin. If it had been 1% or 0.5% , then there could be an argument for leaving as is. But in reality, the majority of the population has voted to leave.

However.. thats not it.. not by a long way. despite the fact we now have a new Prime Minister, and brand new cabinet and an opposition in complete disarray... we also have a group of people informing us that a referendum is not a legal result that must be followed, headed up by Tony Blair, if that helps anyone. It is simply a device for showing the will of the people.

There are many options open to the new government, which are covered in the final blog post on this issue. 
   
In the cold light of day, it does have to be said, that the English are a group of people that don't like change. In reality, the majority of the 18-44 year olds who actually voted, voted to Remain. These are people, the oldest of whom were 4 years old when the 1975 referendum was held. The youngest had not been born, and most of their parents had not been born either.
They had all been brought up as being a member of the European Union, in various guises. They had not known anything different, and had not been given any facts, on either side, on which to vote. More importantly, they had not been taught what the EU was about, or the history of the countries involved, and how it came about. I actually discovered that my highly educated son in law (an accountant), and his father, an architect, had no idea who Oliver Cromwell was. Based on that, they stated that England had never had a revolution. So in one way, they cant be blamed. However, the son in law voted to leave on the basis of economics alone. In another, simple research would show the following:

• Countries that consistently fought each other over 2000 years+ have little chance of being unified, in the true sense of the word.
• If a group of countries join together, based on receiving more than they pay in, that is unworkable. Simple maths tells you that.
• If you take 27/28 currencies, and increasing, out of the currency trading markets, that market will eventually die. This is part of a financial market that both the UK, and Germany, rely on to bolster their income.
• Further to that, if you expand the 'Superstate' principal, in time Europe would have to combine with someone else... lets say the USA. Then that would have to combine... etc etc. Eventually you end up with 'Earth'..... then what? Enter Star Trek?
•  If your eventual government is made up of faceless people, who do not report back to you, and are effectively unelected, while costing you a small fortune, democracy fails.

 
[Home]