Month: June 2016

The Brexit disaster, immigration and the rise of the right

Posted on by Martin Newman

It’s been a long time since I was punched in the gut. I’d almost forgotten about it, but it came back to me in a rush on Friday – a vision of an older boy standing over me in the first grade having loosed his right fist into my stomach for no reason I could recall. 

The feeling was not just pain but helplessness, psychological more than physical. How do you combat the irrational?

That’s what I felt as the Brexit vote unfolded, helplessly watching a great contemporary culture inexplicably sabotage itself, a sick feeling overcame me.

Make no mistake about it, Britain has sold the family cow for the promise of a few ‘magic’ beans. But there will be no goose laying golden eggs at the top of this beanstalk.

As an Aussie, who lived in England for nearly two decades, I feel depressingly privileged now to have witnessed such a diverse but inclusive period in that country’s history.

When I first moved there in 1997 British cuisine was among the least enviable in the world. Dining habits barely extended beyond a night out at the local curry house. British chefs were figures of fun.

But fast forward to today where the main cities thrive on a variety of foods and the top chefs are lauded worldwide: Heston Blumenthal anyone?

Britain’s embrace of Europe and the cross fertilisation of ideas came from being the hub of globalisation between Europe and the rest of the world. London’s bourse and the country’s involvement in the EU as one of the three big players, also made it the key European financial centre.

Travellers from the Americas and Asia regarded the UK capital as the natural pivot point for the rest of Europe. 

Politically it was looked to, not just by European countries, but importantly by the US and China as perhaps the most influential ally in the region. 

Immigration was the central gripe of the ‘leave’ campaigners, but I witnessed only benefits.

Polish workers improved the building trade for the better. In the ‘90s I listened to one horror story after another about British tradies taking someone’s money, ripping out a bathroom and then disappearing for six months. These weren’t stories I read in the consumer section of newspapers, they were firsthand accounts from people I socialised with. The Poles brought a strong work ethic to Britain, showed up on time, stuck to what they said they were going to do and charged about a third less. When Brits talk about immigrants stealing their jobs, this is the type of thing they allude to. The ones complaining are those who lost easy money treating customers like mugs. 

The hardest working, most meticulous tradesman I ever dealt with was a Czech guy who fixed our windows in London. There every morning at 8am with his own sandwich. When he hurt his back one day he still kept to his schedule. Our experience with his British counterparts had been paying too much for an often poor job and an expectation they would get coffee every two hours, lunch and sometimes even that we’d flush the toilet after them.

As bad as being out of Europe is for Britain, though, there’s potentially a greater problem internally. While Donald Trump has given encouragement to redneck sentiment in the US, Nigel Farage has emboldened it in the UK.

What’s more the anger from those who voted ‘in’ at those who voted ‘out’, and visa versa, will further fester and disrupt unity.

The ‘leave’ campaign presented an argument of ‘us or them’ – as in Britain or Brussels, Englanders or immigrants – but with a clear split of views that’s not what’s manifested. It’s going to be Brit v Brit, the left v the right, the new world v the old, progress v nostalgia, sense v instinct. And everyone will be worse off.

Young white men were witnessed on the London underground yesterday aggressively chanting ‘You’re going home, you’re going home” at any non-white passersby.

Trending on Google in Britain after the vote was ‘What is the EU?’

We’ve seen the complacent end of a golden period for Britain that may take a generation or more to reestablish.

(Originally published in The Sunday Telegraph)

Could Jo Cox’s death save Britain from catastrophe?

Posted on by Martin Newman

Days out from the Brexit vote that will decide if Britain stays in the EU or goes it alone, the murder of MP Jo Cox seems to be doing what the heads of state, churches and financial institutions had been unable – to galvanise the ‘remain’ vote.

Her death has ignited a new debate over the nature of the campaigning, of the use of xenophobic language and imagery, and of the manipulation of the public with fear campaigns and falsehoods peddled as fact.

Through the first two weeks of June the majority of polls had the ‘leave’ camp ahead in the vote by anywhere between 1% and 10%, but days after Cox’s killing the ‘remain’ campaign had begun to shore up.

Yesterday a Financial Times poll had them neck and neck on 44% with the rest undecided. And a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times had the remain vote edging ahead 44-43.

There have been notable defections too.

Baroness Warsi, the former Conservative party chair who had supported leaving the EU, on Monday switched camps saying: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”

Her decision was motivated in part by the attack on Cox but also by a UKIP billboard campaign suggesting hordes of Syrian refugees are waiting to descend on the country’s borders – imagery likened to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda from the 1930s.

The choice between staying one of the three big players in Europe or dropping out and into an uncertain future of rewriting laws, trade agreements and regulatory barriers, will have the biggest single impact on the country, since it joined the Common Market in 1973.

And while the last referendum on membership in 1975 had yielded a clear 67% majority in favour, this campaign has been very different.

Marked on both sides by hysterical language and sniping, by misinformation and jingoism, it has left the Tory government of David Cameron floundering at the real possibility the British public will on June 23 vote to exit the European Union.

The benefits of remaining in the EU are clear, unequivocal and documented. The challenges of now going it alone and of reversing decades of infrastructure would be immense and are impossible to properly quantify.

But the ‘leave’ camp has succeeded in turning a complex, and to many people inscrutable, debate into a straightforward dichotomy –  us or them?

It’s a choice that embodies every unfounded prejudice and fear: Britain or Brussels? Refugees or jobs? Control or imposition? Safety or crime?

But by taking such a black and white view the campaign to exit the EU, led by UKIP’s Nigel Farage and the former Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson, has also copped the brunt of outrage at the killing of Cox.

The gunning down of the 41-year-old mother of two outside her constituency surgery last Thursday, by  a man who later declared in court ‘Death to all traitors’, was a wake-up call to a lot of previously disengaged voters.

Cox, a moralistic, straight-speaking Northerner, who spoke out for refugees, and whose liberalism chimed with many young people, was an innocent caught in the crossfire. An example of modern, inclusive Britain extinguished by a reactionary, nationalist presence that belonged to a different age.

‘Is this what we can expect?’ seemed to be the subtext of the stunned outpouring of revulsion at the crime.

Britain has a rich history of standing for freedom and equality, from London being one of the first safe havens of escaped slaves to the working class rioters who effectively snuffed out Oswald Mosley’s fascist black shirt movement at the 1936 Battle of Cable Street.

The appeal of a nostalgic Little Britain of bobbies on the corner, saccharine Enid Blyton adventures and explorers claiming new records, remains imbued in the consciousness of older generations of Brits. But while that idyll is equated by some with the leave campaign, its foundation is built on the values of fairness and doing right.

It would be simplistic and wrong to say the shooting of Cox is the only reason for a turnaround in the fortunes of the ‘remain’ campaign. It isn’t. The economy has always been and will remain the chief driver in the debate.

But in a campaign characterised by lowest common denominator attacks, this tragedy cut through the rhetoric to a deeper understanding of what type of place Britain is and should always aspire to be.

It is a terrible thing to have to find good amidst hurt and defeat – to console oneself with silver linings – but the sacrifice of Jo Cox may yet save Britain from an even more far-reaching tragedy.