Down the Rabbit Hole

I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?

That's the understatement of the millennium really.

I can't pretend to be anything other than absolutely gutted. I genuinely believe in what used to be called the European ideal. I do think that this week we have made the single greatest foreign policy catastrophe since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich with his guarantee of peace with Herr Hitler.

But at the end of the day, the Remain side lost. There is no getting around that. I am not going to call for a re-run of the referendum. I am not going to hurl abuse at anyone. I am not going to question the motives of why individuals voted the way they did, or bemoan the demographics of what has happened.

I want to. Believe me, I do want to. I want to just scream in abject horror.

But that will solve nothing. It will not help to solve the arguments between my friends I have already witnessed. It will not help to heal the chasm that has been opened in the British body politic. It will not solve the divisions that exist between classes, ages, educational groups, regions and countries. So I'm going to bite my tongue.

Neither will I try and speculate on the deeper meanings of what has just happened. Being an historian, I know that there is time for that in the future, when tempers have cooled and perspective has been gained. One day, years from today, I would like to think I will be able to sit down, open a book, turn to a chapter on this week, and relive it all. Then, I may fully understand what has happened. But not now.

I will try and adjust to the post-EU Britain that is coming. It may take me some time. But I am sure I will get there.

I also want to extend an apology. To anyone reading this blog, or the associated Facebook comments and messages, who was offended by me during the EU referendum campaign, I am sorry. I am sorry for all the times I failed to put my points across well, for all the times I seemed to attack people directly, for all the times my frustration at the two Leave campaigns ended up being turned onto individuals.

My one exception to this moratorium on moaning is to do with referenda*. This entire exercise has revealed them to be the single most appalling instrument of democracy. They reduce issues of immense complexity to a simple Yes or No exercise. They let politicians off the hook, by allowing them to duck difficult issues during elections, and between them. They polarise the electorate by shepherding them into one of those two camps, meaning that the defeated side is inevitably bitter and upset. The issue debated is rarely resolved satisfactorily. They bring to the fore the worst part of society: the populists, the demagogues, those who are prepared to say anything to get their side over the winning line. They are also dangerously close to what political science calls 'the tyranny of the majority;' they allow 50% +1 of the population to impose their views upon the remainder, no matter what the consequences.

Millions of people voted on Thursday, with no clear idea about the issues. They had been fed lies from both sides for years, subjected to hysterical campaigning for weeks. Hard, unbiased facts were impossible to come upon. You were either Remain or Leave. No shades of opinion were permitted in this false dichotomy. Instead of doing the job required of them in a parliamentary democracy, our representatives ducked an immensely difficult decision, reduced it to a Yes or No question, and left us all to it.

And it is quite possible that someone died as a result of the emotions stoked.

There should never be another referendum again. I believed that before the vote, when I thought Remain would win. I think it now, when Leave has won. No matter what you think of the result, it is hard to say this was the best way to solve the issue. I am all in favour of democracy. But not when you reduce a complex issue to a tickbox exercise, and sit back to watch the floodgates open.

In a way, I am lucky. Although the British public has delivered its verdict, it does not affect me as much as it effects many others. I can remain a citizen of the European Union. The country of my birth has decided its future does not lie in the Community. But three of my grandparents were born in the Irish Free State, while one (if my dates are correct) was born in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, just prior to the painful separation of Ireland from the Union. The Republic of Ireland remains a member of the European Union. I am entitled to dual citizenship of the UK and Ireland. I think I'd better put my money where my principles are, and go and find those forms.

* The single biggest divide in the future may be between those who say 'referendums' and those who prefer 'referenda'. I've tried to work it out, but for good measure I used this:

http://www.dailyedge.ie/lets-figure-this-out-whats-the-real-plural-of-referendum-261522-Oct2013/