Brexit, of course. The Brexiteers drone on about the ‘will of the people’ while the Remoaners grumble about the ‘damage’… It would be hard to cause more damage than three and a half years of uncertainty and doom-saying…
The ‘Will…’ argument is, in my opinion, entirely spurious. OK, so (very) slightly more than half of those who voted voted to leave. The question is: why? Mainly prejudice and short-sighted self-interest. All those bloody foreigners coming in and taking ‘our’ jobs. Mainly the jobs that we won’t do because they’re too hard, too poorly paid or not ‘cool’. Service industries. Agricultural work. The British are too damn lazy to do them…
My aunts-in-law are typical examples: When asked why they voted leave, they mumble inconsequentialities, heavily laced with unverified claims and xenophobia. “‘They’ clutter up our hospitals”: no mention of the fact that ‘they’ also mainly staff them. “‘They’re’ clogging up the NHS appointments system”: with no mention that the Government’s maniacal austerity measures are a much more major cause. “‘They’re’ taking our jobs”: see above. “All you hear is foreign jabber on the streets”: That’s not changed much from when I was a boy, except that, then, most of the ‘aliens’ spoke English – of a sort!
After all, most of the Europeans who’ve come here have no intention of staying, and those that do are likely to contribute more to the economy than they take out. OK, so there are wasters and criminals from the ‘east’. This is nothing new and we’ve plenty of wasters and crims of our own. We need to deal with the undesirables in the same way that we (ought to) deal with our own.
The xenophobia has been triggered largely by the huge influx of ‘illegals’ from less desirable parts of the world: leaving Europe isn’t going to change this: the people traffickers don’t care if we’re in or out, and it’s already harder to get into the UK than anywhere else in Europe. Open borders? I think not! Ever tried to get back into the UK without being checked at the border?
And the Remoaners are not much better than the Brexiteers: No-one seems to be able to come up with a series of cogent arguments as to why we should stay in. There seems to be a nationwide inability to come up with sensible arguments on either side – it’s all emotional blackmail, and that reflects the grossly incompetent efforts of both sides before the referendum. Lies, misconceptions and prejudice ruled then, and nothing much has changed since.
The only good thing is that it seems that both major parties are likely to collapse in the chaos of their own divisions and misconceptions. And don’t even get me started on UKIP and the Brexit party…