A different opinion about Brexit

(The great thing about LinkedIn articles is that nobody reads them. So this is a long, rambling, ill-formed article suitable for people who are stuck on a static train without a Netflix subscription)

There exists in British society an unwritten belief, almost a rule by which we are guided at times of great importance. It states we must vote. Voting is the general maintenance of a democracy and we are all responsible for its maintenance. It is therefore irresponsible to squander the opportunity to contribute to the country’s governance.

The idea that we have a duty to vote is rooted in the historical truth that at various times throughout the centuries, various people have fought, suffered and even died to secure the rights of various other people to participate legitimately in the political process of the country.

To not use your vote is to disrespect the struggles, suffering, persecution and hard work that those people endured to deliver to us our right to vote. It is a failure to appreciate the importance and the value of democracy. To have the ability to vote and to fail to do so is a misdemeanour and a moral abdication.

I’m sure this is the same in many other democracies around the world. But to us peculiar British it is sufficiently ingrained into our psyche that it does feel like a peculiarly British and noble trait, uniquely our own.

I wholeheartedly agree with the premise. However, there are limits.

Imagine for a moment an absurd situation where the government announced we were to vote in a referendum, and we could either vote to (a) have our teeth knocked out with hammers, or (b) we could have our feet permanently crushed between industrial rollers. One or the other, get out there and vote. It’s our duty as citizens... because people died to secure our right to vote.

Absurd, and it would never happen. It’s an extreme example.

Somewhere along an imaginary scale between that extreme example at the far end and - lets say - a general election at the realistic end, the UK/EU 'Brexit' referendum resides. Somewhere along that scale. I’d place it near the middle of those two points. Near the middle, but possibly edging slightly over on to the mildly absurd side of things. An inch or two, no more. More or less half way between reasonable and ludicrous. A bit of each.

The thing that has interested me about Brexit from the first day of this whole fiasco is that both sides of the argument assume themselves to be naturally and obviously correct in their position.

This is most apparent in conversations on the subject. If I find myself talking to a pro-Brexit supporter, they talk about it as though it’s an obvious no-brainer, and therefore they talk with the assumption that like them, I am pro-Brexit. I mean… why wouldn’t I be? It’s the only realistic side to be on. Obviously I voted the same way as they did because I'm not an idiot.

Yet if I’m talking to a pro-Remain supporter, they talk about it as though it’s an obvious no-brainer, and therefore they talk with the assumption that I, like them, am pro-Remain. I mean… why wouldn’t I be? It’s the only realistic side to be on. Obviously I voted the same way as they did because I'm not an idiot.

That’s been the problem with this entire referendum. It was the very epitome of divisive. Division was not anticipated and managed before the whole gameshow kicked off. Failing to anticipate and manage division is as good as promoting it.

Which is why, from the very beginning, I have occupied a small third space in this appalling game of Mike Reid’s UK Runaround.

Mike Reid's runaround was a kinetic multiple choice question quiz show for kids, filmed in a TV studio in the early 80's. Large groups of kids answered the questions by running as fast as they could to stand on a Star. Star A, B or C, depending on which answer they thought was correct. If they were wrong, they left the game. A massive crowd was whittled down to a single winner over a half an hour of questions.

But Mike would throw out some oblique comments designed to cast doubt on their decisions and the kids would be given a few seconds to RUNAROUND NOW. During those few seconds the kids would frantically run to other stars, smashing their faces in as they collided in the desperate struggle to reach the right star before time was up. Arms were broken. Some kids were thrown out of windows. One lad brought a pair of nunchakas to ensure swift passage during the runaround moment.

If the referendum was Runaround (it was), then I stood on Star C at the start of the Brexit referendum and I did not feel swayed at any point thereafter to runaround and find a different place to stand.

The space I have occupied, and remained in while everybody else responded to madly barked orders to RUNAROUND NOW, is that I was, and still am, anti-Referendum.

To be clear I’m not against all referendums, I am only against the EU/Brexit referendum. Because it was in every way but the one that counts, entirely bogus.

Right from the very first moment that Brexit loomed upon the cultural landscape, I have been bewildered by the gameshow superficiality of the entire operation. Amazed that a referendum happened instantly, rather than being introduced by a national census first. That the referendum was run like a competition with few rules, and yet it was directly and mechanically coupled to the exit button, so that the moment the referendum was concluded… the process of exit was triggered. Instantly. Just like that. Runaround now.

I think the reason we Brits, as a nation need to now come together, find some common ground, and get on with being the best Britain can be outside the EU, is that there is, sadly, a common ground that links both sides, and we all must accept that common ground and share the burden.

The common ground is that all of us who voted are complicit in this outcome, regardless of which side we voted for. We are complicit because we fuelled the sudden machine of Brexit. It didn’t matter which side our fuel came from, we piled it in and fired the whole thing up, because we were told to, and because we have it ingrained into us that voting is a duty, not an option.

The negligible powers-that-be blew hard on a Pavlovian whistle, and without thinking about it all in any rational way, without proper discussions, debates, national awareness raising, public consultations or serious information sharing, we all panicked, chose a side, then charged head first into hastily fabricated cardboard booths to dutifully put our mark on a ballot paper. Just because they told us to. And because people died fighting for our right to vote, and it’s morally criminal not to use that vote.

We did not as a nation have the presence of mind to say “Hang on a moment… what are we voting, in reality? Why are we being pitched head first into a frantic race to make sure one hastily assembled school of thought beats the other hastily assembled school of thought on this? Where are the debates, the educative information? what’s at stake here? we don’t know what we're voting for”.

I don't think anybody from the past who fought, suffered, worked hard, sustained injury or lost their life fighting for our right to vote today had this scenario in mind. I personally feel that to reduce the obligation to vote down to nothing more than a mute reaction to an instruction to do so is actually dishonouring those who fought for it.

They did not fight for our vote so that we would abandon our critical faculties, and comply with instructions infallibly.

We should really have refused to participate. We panicked. We just ran for the booths and hoped for the best.

So if you voted in that referendum, irrespective of how you voted, you participated in what amounts to an illegitimately conducted national referendum on a subject that very few us were prepared for.

At the time, I was horrified by what I saw unfolding. In my own na?ve, completely ineffectual way I began a year of frantic running around, trying to halt the referendum, trying to create a campaign or a movement that urged people not to vote and to ask instead for a census first, and for a referendum without a direct mechanism so that we could have some time to digest the results and consider what they mean for our countries before hacking through the bunji rope.

In hindsight I made a bit of a testicle of myself over the course of that year. Despite priding myself on my chops as a strategist, I made no impact at all. Nobody cared or even listened to me. I was just another yapping dog on a high horse in a field of similar yapping dogs on high horses.

I hoped I might reach an influential voice who might agree with me, and articulate a persuasive argument for resisting the instruction to vote on this occasion, in order to create a process that was more respectful of the ominous decision we were being asked to make.

I didn't want to halt the referendum. I just wanted to kill this particular one off so we could ask for a more sensible one. If an insufficient number of people voted, it would be null and void. Then we could have a proper go at it.

In many ways I am fairy unique in this modern world we live in. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I'm not innately middle class and yet I am no longer working class. I exist in two divided realms. By dint of my career I'm in one, but in my own free time, I'm very much out of it.

Two different worlds. There’s the aspiring middle class liberal elites in their wholesome premium bubbles, and then there’s the salty hunchbacked working class types who charge around the wrekin in shambolic Transit vans with no MOTs. People who simply do not know what’s good for them if research conducted within the bubble is to be believed.

Through my work as a brand strategist, I enter the bubble. It quietly astounds me how insular, myopic and oddly confident bubble dwellers often are about cultivating and pruning their own tidy view of the world. Often there is almost zero comprehension of anything outside that bubble unless it can be processed as a quaint earthy experience to relish for a brief moment on Instagram.

Yet despite my sojourns in the bubble I am working class, of working class stock. Away from the glitz and glamour of advertising agencies, brand consultancies and market research missions, I prefer the company of those salty low-life outland dwellers who just don't figure in the machinations of the bubble.

I feel comfortable in their presence. I feel like one of them because I am one of them. For all the criticisms you might throw at the unwashed troglodytes beyond the bubble, they are decent honest dependable people. If you have friends outside the liberal elite bubble… you really know they are friends, you can really count on them. They don’t lie to you, or deceive you, or dupe you, or drop you like a cold turd them moment it suits them. They are good, down to earth people.

So I live in both worlds. I’m at home with the Transit van drivers and I am conversant with the shimmering perfect bubble dwellers wafting about in their eco-friendly ubers. Frankly where Brexit is concerned I have empathy and compassion for the fears, anxieties and arguments of both sides.

I will restate that I have that empathy for BOTH sides. Not one more than the other. I know that both sides could have understood each other's positions much better. I know that the awful two-way mud-slinging was inaccurate and hurtful and that the media amplified ill-feeling across the divide. I know that if we as a nation had listened to all the valid and relevant arguments, fears and anxieties we would have come together, and the outcome would be a lot more comfortable for everybody because we would have understood each other, worked through the angsty points and worked with a better perspective on the whole, not just on what we believe as individuals.

It seems to me now, with one foot in one camp and one foot in the other, that both sides can still come together and find common ground just as swiftly as both sides can stop painting each other in simple primary colours of accusatory slurs and generalised assumptions about each other's motives for voting.

Underneath all that division that the referendum unleashed, we’re all complicit in this outcome. We all provided the fuel that powered the machine that used weights and balances to press the button that triggered the ejector mechanism that sent us drifting away (metaphorically) from the European coast. None of us truly understood what was happening, what would happen, what the consequences will be.

We still don’t. Neither side is even close to declaring “I told you so”. 

And if you disagree with that and say you understand perfectly well, consider that still, today, we still cannot predict the eventual outcome. We're utterly clueless.

In 1979 Zhou Xiangyu, the first Premier of the People's Republic of China famously answered a question about the impact of the 1789 French Revolution with the enigmatic reply “it’s too soon to say”.

It transpired many years later that he had misunderstood the question and assumed the discussion was about the recent student protests in Paris that same year. But the idea he accidentally proposed was profound... that almost 200 years later it was still foolish to attempt to summarise the impact of such an enormous event.

I think the roller coaster ride unleashed by Brexit will be challenging, but the true outcome of it will arguably not be apparent during our lifetimes. If that sounds reasonable to assume, then would it not have been a good idea to establish a program of national awareness raising, discussion, debates and presentations of facts and statistics to help the electorate focus in on what was actually being voted for? Would it not have been a good idea to take a census first before moving to a referendum?

Was it really a decision that we all had to make without having even a basic idea of the outcome?

The entire referendum gameshow was a game of "retaliate first". For fear of one thing, we chose the other. Nightmares and urban myths powered our journey to the voting booth.

If you voted to Remain, please don’t harbour bitter resentment against those who voted to leave. Please stop clinging to the idea they did so because they despise variable skin tones. You voted in the exact same jerrybuilt contest that they did. so you are as responsible for pulling the trigger as they are, because you added your weigh to the trigger by participating.

If you voted Brexit, don’t gloat or get ahead of yourselves for your supposed victory. Don't assume you've heroically pulled Great Britain from the yoke of EU oppression. The coming decades could be the hardest this country has experienced in years, and it’s likely that many of those who voted for Brexit might end up shouldering much of the hardship that comes along.

We're entering uncertain waters, and where they will wash us in the next few decades ... it's too soon to say.