Winning through attrition
From the very beginning up to the summer of 2016, it was an issue that divided the people of Britain along predictable lines. Then US President Barack Obama warned that the UK would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU. He made an emotional plea to Britons to please vote against what had come to be known as “Brexit.”
Racist presidential candidate and buffoon Donald Trump, on the other hand, was all for it. He saw Brexit as yet another repudiation of immigrants. He deliberately associated Brexit with the so-called “manly” qualities of the Republican Party, dog whistle racism and bare-chested “independence.” Besides, Vladimir Putin was for it, and Trump understood that there was a good chance Putin would make him president of the United States.
And Brexit passed. The day after the election, like the moron he is, Donald Trump tweeted a congratulations to his mother’s ancestral home of Scotland, even though Scotland had voted against it. Yeah, he was that kind of guy, even back then.
Today, new polling and recent by-elections signal Britain has turned its back on Brexit. Like Donald Trump, Brexit used to have barely enough popular votes in exactly the right places to get passed. But also like with Trump, today’s polls suggest Brexit couldn’t successfully get passed as a dog-catching initiative.
The sheer speed with which the tide has turned on the popular decision to exit the European Union suggests that the UK could rejoin it sooner rather than later. So what happened? Nothing more than reality setting in,
Britons are waking up to the undeniable fact that racism has a price tag. Right now, while America under Joe Biden is enjoying a relatively stable economy with inflation slowing down, Britain’s runaway inflation remains the highest in Europe. Thanks to Brexit the supply chain is breaking down and useful and productive European workers are fleeing the country. Britain is learning what America is learning: the way of Putin is the way of destruction. And that way is, as usual, the hard way.
Today only three in ten Britons (31 per cent, to be exact) say that they would vote to leave. Brexit has become toxically unpopular now that people see it for what it really is. In Northern Ireland, where the depredations of Brexit have hit especially hard, opposition to leaving is almost universal.
What do British politicians say? They say “Not so fast.” Many Conservative and Labour MPs alike recall the glory days when Brexit made for a superb platform from which to provoke attention and controversy. Despite its sudden and undeniable refutation, many of them are unwilling to admit the truth.
But young people are emerging as Brexit’s biggest critics. An overwhelming number (86 per cent, according to polls) of voters aged under 25 (who were not have eligible to vote in 2016) say they would rejoin the European Union.This suggests that future momentum is firmly with the pro-Europe lobby.
The way back from Brexit is like all awakenings from ignorance, slow and painful. Sometimes the best way is attrition. Just as with support for fascism, support for racist policies like Brexit might take nothing more than patience waiting for the fools who support it, principally the older Boomer voters, to die out. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.