Beyond the Brexit horizon

If you are still looking up facts about the EU or our membership of it, you are fighting the wrong battle. We won that argument months, possibly years ago. It did us no good of course – for who is listening?

Brexit is more a symptom than a cause. Sure, there are no doubt a few crazed ideologues who genuinely have strong feelings about the minutiae of cooperative government in a global twenty-first century, but the majority of the population whose votes made Brexit even possible, don't really care. They can't possibly be distressed about the EU and its governance because on the whole, like 99% of the population pre June 2016, they don't understand it. Most EU-related issues for which they profess disquiet are actually products of fake news and misunderstandings, some accidental, many deliberate.

No. The bigger debate is the changing face of society and social interaction within it. What do we aspire to look like as a nation? How do we want to define ourselves and each other? How do we want to be treated by others? What rules and moral norms do we seek to place in the footings of the edifice which is twenty-first century Britain?

This week, Prof Tanja Bueltmann tweeted what it is like to be a female anti-Brexit campaigner. She attached a selection of some of the appalling insults that she receives day in, day out. They are mostly misogynistic, worded specifically to attack a woman and would make no sense if used against a man. Their viciousness is breathtaking and should give real cause for worry to us all, male and female. A society which tolerates this level of abuse and intimidation will eat itself in ever-decreasing circles of self-loathing until nothing remains of civilisation and aspiration. Does this really reflect our national intent for society post-feminism?

On Tuesday, the Daily Mail ran an article about the Hostile Environment. Apparently it is not hostile enough. In the mean and hate-peddling world of The Mail, the culture of relentlessly (mis)targetting innocent citizens, denying them healthcare and pensions, causing loss of jobs and housing and even wrongful deportation just doesn't go far enough in aggravating the fault-lines of society. How ignoble is their ambition, to harry countless individuals and to destroy peaceful lives in the pursuit of selling newspapers? Is this way of doing things really part of our vision for ourselves for the next generation?

The problem is highlighted by the Gammon Conflict – both sides of it – which amply demonstrates the new “normal” of our political discourse. There are those in the country who justifiably feel unheard and ignored. Their newspapers encourage them to lash out in their pain and to blame someone for their predicament. Tragically they usually pick someone from a different victim-heap. As they furiously wave their oratorical armaments around the political arena, rarely do they hold still long enough to catch the real culprits in their sights. They settle for the easy pickings, the same targets the world has been choosing for milennia – immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, women, the long-term sick and disabled, the poor etc. New for recent times, is the EU itself – hardly a powerless victim but a false target nonetheless. For these white men, branded "gammons", Brexit has become the proxy for all that needs fixing in their unhappy lives. But because they have been sold a pup, the final achievement of Brexit can only prove a disappointment and a further betrayal to these lost, angry souls. Their pain will not be assuaged; their anger will not be lulled. Is this really the best way for our bewildered and emasculated men to seek to regain their self-respect?

And what of those jeering at “the gammons”? Understandable, for sure. But harmless? Not really. It's just joining in the unedifying squabbles in the kindergarten playground. As a way to let off steam, it's fantastically rewarding no doubt. If we want to find a way forward for the UK, it's not really helping. We are all in the political cesspit of decades' making. Do we really want to stay here seeing who can fling the most excrement or would we be better off refusing to collude in the ruling elite's attempts to divide and rule us, instead uniting to find the ladder up?

Meanwhile our two main political parties seem to have collectively lost any sense they may ever have had of serving The People. They have grabbed on to the expediency of The Will of the People argument in implementing the result of the referendum, but nobody belives this intellectual sham. The vote to cancel Leveson 2 serves well to demonstrate that there is no imperishable commitment to honouring important promises made to the public. Yes there is an obligation to keep faith with the Leave voters. But there is also an obligation to respect, serve and protect all those who did not or could not vote, not to mention the 48% who voted to Remain, and since all of the evidence shows that continuing with Brexit will damage the country in almost every way imaginable, that obligation weighs heavy. And there is an obligation to uphold the law of the land and the integrity of our democracy and that means responding to the evidence of Russian interference and the illegal election-spending of Leave.EU. Yes these obligations are in tension with one another. The skilled politician is one who can address these contradictions and find a way forward that satisfies all and disregards none. The great leader is one who sees the uncomfortable truth and presents it to the people, unvarnished, alongside a vision for the path of probity and justice that can lead us to the promised land where things are genuinely better.

Certainly we must defeat Brexit – it's the huge target in front of us after all and it's blocking the way to our own future - but we must also lift our eyes above the Brexit horizon. Win or lose, it's only the sub-plot. Our greater aim must be to create a society that supports and values every single last one of us, women, gammons and immigrants alike, finally shaking off the tired old shackles of sexism, racial-prejudice and all forms of fear of the other. Let us demand of our MPs and party leaders a bigger, more generous society, fit for the third millenium.

If we can find peace and self-respect at home, we need never doubt ourselves at the international table of collaboration again.