We started to watch it last night, even though we were so tired from a long day. We knew there wouldn’t be any updates coming in until after midnight, so we decided to watch the initial coverage before heading to bed. ‘Staying up all night won’t change the result’ I said, in the way someone who assumes the vote will go the way they hope might say.
It was 1:30am before we managed to finally tear our eyes and bodies away from the screen and to a restless sleep, troubled by the narrow victories in areas that should have been strongholds for Remain, and by Leave’s bloated majorities in others. Surely not – we all knew it would be close but surely we wouldn’t actually vote to leave, right? There was that big chunk of undecided voters and you’d never decide at this late point to vote Leave, would you?
7am and bleary eyes focused on the harsh light of the phone screen as the numbers and words sprung up: ‘The UK has voted to leave the European Union in historic referendum’.
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The night before Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014, I was out knocking doors for the Yes campaign. One of the doors I knocked on belonged to a young woman from Poland. She said she completely understood why Scottish people might want to leave, but for her it wasn’t as simple – if Scotland didn’t get back into the EU she might not be able to stay. She was working here and had built her life here for 3 years. I couldn’t offer her any real, certain assurance that Scotland would be able to regain membership – we didn’t know then and we don’t know now. I did say however that we also couldn’t guarantee the UK would remain in the EU, but we both knew this seemed too far away, too flimsy a concept in that moment to sway her as a voter.
Fast forward less than two years and it’s happened. The UK has not only left the EU, but it has managed to drive a wedge into existing hairline fractures and break the country clean open.
Similar to cutting off your nose to spite your face, except you’re left with just the nose while the face stumbles on. In fact, one of the nostrils decides to rejoin the face, so you’re left with the other nostril. But at least you have complete control of that nostril! That’ll teach your face!
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Let’s look at the split across the country – Scotland and Northern Ireland voting with convincing majorities to Remain, England and Wales predominantly to Leave. I’m Northern Irish, I live in Scotland, my parents come from two EU countries – no prizes for guessing what I voted. Today saw record numbers of inquiries in Northern Ireland post offices for applications to Irish passports, which happily, is an option for any Northern Irish person born before 2004 (sorry for the shafting there, young people – a recurring theme in all of this). Today also saw the beginnings of a framework being set out for Scotland’s second independence referendum in what will be four years.
If Leave had won because they wanted to make the country – the whole country – work, and wanted the whole country to succeed, today would and should have been the day they reached out to Scotland and Northern Ireland to quell their fears, listen to their experiences and begin the collaborative work to building an independent United Kingdom. That has not happened. In fact, today Boris Johnson said the result ‘does not mean that the United Kingdom will be in anyway less united’, demonstrating woeful ignorance for how so many people feel – people who will very much be necessary in building any semblance of a functioning United Kingdom.
The attitudes of Leave to Northern Ireland were insultingly disengaged at best, dangerously neglectful at worst. The only country in the UK with an EU border, a post-conflict society with increasing risk of violence, a country that does not have a strong independent economy and is heavily subsidised by EU funding (some 2.4 billion euros between 2007-2013; another £2bn was expected before 2020) – in short, a country at a very high risk of economic and social turmoil. Will a post-Leave Westminster plug this funding gap and ensure financial stability? Perhaps they can spare some of that coveted £350m a week we’ve heard so much about? When not a single high-profile Leave campaigner even visited Northern Ireland during these debates, this seems unlikely.
More than £1bn passes over the invisible border every week in trade, as do countless inhabitants of the island going to work or going to see their families. Throughout the campaigning, Leave could not give a reassuring answer as to what would happen to this trade; to this border. Initial suggestions of border controls between the North and the South were met with eye rolls – there are over 200 rural roads. The alternative? Border control between the whole of Ireland and the rest of the UK, keeping the north’s economy on life support, dependent on sterling and unable to trade without restriction with the south, while simultaneously keeping it alienated from the UK. Here you go, Northern Ireland, you’ve had your worst fears confirmed – you belong to neither the UK or Ireland. You’ve got the Good Friday Agreement though, that’s all that matters.
This has been a gift for the right-wing, conservative Christian unionist DUP party, the leading party of the country who have effectively been given permission, mid peace process, to alienate and distance the whole of Northern Ireland from the Republic. The DUP has one of the worst track records in human rights of any Western government, with recent exercises in power including fighting to keep the ban on gay men giving blood, vetoing a majority parliamentary vote for equal marriage, refusing to engage with the fact the High Court ruled their standing on abortion as an abuse of human rights, as well as Islamophobic comments made by the former first minister. It is difficult to have faith in such a party to steer Northern Ireland to a stronger and more positive place in such a dangerous time.
As for Scotland, when every single area of a country votes for something but is then forced to do the opposite, we are not ‘Better Together’ and we are not part of a ‘United Kingdom’, despite being assured of such 20 months ago. The very same campaigners who urged Scotland to stay actually managed to non-ironically employ the exact phrases used against them during that referendum: Boris Johnson stands there waffling about ‘Project Fear’ and ‘Hope not fear’ as if he just came up with the concept when it comes to a referendum where he, personally, has something to gain.
Ethnic nationalism – the type that the Nazi party was particularly fond of – was rife in this referendum. The fact that my mother, despite living in the UK for 39 years (longer than she ever lived in the Netherlands), could not vote in this referendum is an incredibly alarming insight into the mindset behind who the UK government feels ‘deserves’ to have a say in this country’s future.
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A quick note on the young/old divide in this result. Polls suggest up to 75% of people in the 18-24 age bracket voted to Remain, and around 62% in the 25-34 category. Conversely around 60% of people over 65 voted to Leave. I’ve seen so much anger from my generation today for what feels like our future being restricted by people who often are no longer working, who were of a generation of house owners, good pensions and relative financial security. A young generation that does not stand to gain much – will an independent UK suddenly have more, better paid jobs? More affordable housing? Better pensions? While the older generation’s opinions and votes are clearly as valid as the rest of the electorate, it is a worrying thought that the people who will be responsible for building and keeping our economy going (i.e. young people) resoundingly did not vote for this result.
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So what has Leave gained, today?
A divided country. A country where more money was wiped off the economy in 2 hours than the EU contributed in the past 25 years. An effectively leaderless country. A country which will shortly receive a Prime Minister it did not vote for, from a party that only secured 38% of the vote in the most recent general election. A country which can vote for such a huge, life changing decision, before then having to Google what the EU is as the results came in. A country where one of the politicians responsible for this decision used campaign material many likened to Nazi propaganda, and this morning said the debate had been won ‘without a shot being fired‘ despite a young mother and politician being violently murdered last week for her opposing political views.
The early, quickly revoked concession by Farage himself and the disbelief of some Leave supporters suggest that perhaps this is not a result even they ever expected to see. But it’s upon us. The result feels as if Leave opened their front door this morning to find a screaming, malnourished baby on their doorstep, which they are now responsible for despite having no qualifications or experience in childcare.
No one in Remain was arguing that the EU was perfect. It’s definitely not. I understand why people on the Leave side were angry. When so much has been taken from us by 6 years of austerity, when so many people have less than they’ve ever had despite working longer and harder than ever before, when public services are stretched to the point of breaking due to underfunding, of course people are seeking to ‘take back control’ – but look a little bit closer to home before severing ties with many laws and institutions that protect us; the many deals and opportunities that fortify the spending on our public services. The people who have told us that the EU is making us poor, making things dangerous, and diminishing public services, have in the past campaigned for private healthcare, for relaxed gun controls, and have implemented a series of cuts that resulted in a 20 fold increase in people having to use foodbanks over the past 6 years.
Choosing these people is a bit like locking yourself into the house with an axe murderer because he told you there was a bear in the woods.
Spinneke 