Another way to look at our exit from Europe, and why it came down to the definition of all.
Is there another way to look at the exit from Europe? Hard to think of anything positive right now. It is surely leading to years of uncertainty and further hardship in the short term. But it is interesting to look at possible reasons why the decision went the way it has.
The first point is that Dave is going. It was patently evident that in the event of a vote to exit, Dave would have to go. His position would be untenable. What is his legacy? It is tradition to grace the qualities of an outgoing Prime Minister and to begin to extol their legacy. Yet in my opinion he will be rated somewhere alongside John Major. Clearly committed, strong convictions, dogmatic and passionate about what he believed in. But fundamentally he led us into a car crash. I don’t predict the history books being that kind about him. There was a fundamental flaw in his thinking.
It seems to come down to his definition of all. The Tories made it very clear when they inherited power after the 2008 crash that the cause was bad management by the previous government. Consequently, Dave made his mission to explain to the British public that as a result of previous profligacy we all had to face the reality of new market conditions, we all had to square up to our national inability to balance the books and therefore we all had to tighten our belts and face austerity, whatever that might mean for all of us.
Except it wasn’t all of us. One look at the City of London and its surrounds makes it abundantly clear that all meant all working people not everybody. This prosperity abounding in areas of the south-east blatantly flew in the face of a one nation view of austerity. It is a matter of record that Dave schooled and studied alongside many of those in charge of our city institutions. And it seemed tacit that the rich would avoid austerity whilst the less well-off would bear the brunt. In other words he was playing fast and loose with the term all.
What seems to have emerged from the referendum is a resounding drubbing of the establishment by the less well-off working people in this country. The notion of one nation pulling together, something we proven ourselves able to do, seemed to fly in the face of reality. The media have seemed only too happy to laud excessive wealth of some to the extent that many became sickened by the emerging two nation state. The Teflon rich and those without. And hence one section of society delivered, what many commentators agree, is an overtly political message. ‘We have had enough and can do little about it’. Many saw the Tories failing to representing them, yet felt unable to turn Labour for direction. Politically that left nowhere to go. So it seems inevitable that a political message might be delivered on the one occasion when everyone has an equal say, no party lines.
If you’re part of the fishing industries in the south-west or relatively self-sufficient in a rural community, then the effects of exit may be minimised. Those involved in many areas of food production have far less reason to be concerned about wider access to markets than those in manufacturing industries that rely on raw materials from overseas and global sales. The former have traditionally been the most vociferous about leaving Europe, which is in stark contrast to the views of many areas of industry that supported remain. If those two factions were reasonably balanced numerically, then what seemed to swing the vote, as everyone is starting to realise, was the disenfranchisement of large sections of industrial community, largely in the North. Those who are facing the brunt of recession wanted make it clear that they have enough, which is a huge indictment of Dave’s political days.
The English are very good pulling together in times of crisis. But the last two years haven’t been a case of pulling together. Instead it seemed a case of parking the problem in the lap one section of our community and hoping they quietly grin and bear it. Dave, If you keep using the word all we rightly assumed it meant all of us. I think we have begun to understand exactly what Dave meant by all.
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