Brexit.. a wake up call?

Living in London a couple of years ago, I would often be struck by how "tolerant" the British public apparently seemed to be. Here was a country that was rapidly being resettled by people of various races. There were upwards of 600,000 people coming in every year into a country with a population of around 60 Million. That is around 1% of their population every year. To put it in context, imagine 10 Million people coming into India every year and competing for jobs and resources. There would have been race riots in no time flat as we have already seen in smaller areas such as Assam. But here were the British, carrying on with a stiff upper lip as if nothing was happening.

Yes, there were benefits of course. Mostly of the macroeconomic kind. However in the current world order, these benefits rarely trickle down to the ground. The rich get richer while the poor get the pain. This is the real problem in many democratic societies around the world today, as can be seen from the simmering discontent that bursts into "occupy" movements and so on. The very same anger fuels the rise of hyper-nationalism and gobsmacks us with the fact that people like Trump can actually have a strong chance of becoming president of the United States. The core of the issue is this real social and political problem simmering within. Unlike oligarchies and dictatorships where people have no choice but to accept the status quo, democracies are faced with an inherent contradiction. People have the power to vote but wealth and benefits are still concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite who don't take any effort to understand, uplift and share the benefits. And then we ask people to vote based on logic and facts. Without realizing that our reality is very different from their reality! What is amazing is how even politicians get disconnected from this reality sometimes!

The very fact that every single channel, analyst and expert predicted Britain would "remain" (except Marc Faber) should tell us how disconnected from the ground we are in most countries today. We live in this make-believe world of social and news media. Every message coming to us from these channels is obviously from "people like us". What the Brits call "posh" folks, who are worried about the stock market, macroeconomics, cross-border trade, university funding etc. So it seemed incomprehensible that people would actually risk all of that for what we see as a false sense of “taking back control”.

But the man on the street; he doesn't care about all this. All he cares about is the fact that he is a plumber and is having to compete with 3 other Polish plumbers for business. And that he can't even get a receptionists job today because it is all being done by Romanians. So how does a booming stock market help him?! It starts with this sense of “there is nothing in it for me” and rapidly redirects itself as anger towards outsiders, a sense of losing control and a search for someone who can assuage their sense of helplessness. Very soon it’s less about jobs and benefits and more about sovereignty and national pride.  The jump is quick because the human brain likes to believe that it is concerned with emotive issues of higher importance.

The other factor is the inherent loophole in democratic systems called “wisdom of the masses”. This referendum is a great example of how the ideal solution to everything may not be subjecting it to a mass vote. A decision by vote pre-supposes that people making the decision are fully informed, have access to all the facts and the ability to arrive at mature insights. But as history has shown us, this is often not the case. Crowds tend to react emotively and are easily mislead by eloquent speakers with vested interests. Human beings are also prone to taking decisions based on short-term benefits and pure self-interest. Whether we like it or not, this has to be factored in before we decide to throw something to a vote. In fact, it takes a certain strength of character to be able to live with the responsibility of having taken decisions. Sometimes it is the cowardly way to throw it to an open vote. History is likely to judge David Cameron harshly on this front. His decision to put this to a referendum seems to have been fuelled at least in part by his inability to lead and to stick to a stand even within his own party. The long term damage and possible global consequences of throwing this to the people instead will remain to be seen in decades to come.