Some Thoughts on Yesterday

The EU referendum has been the ugliest political campaign I have any experience of. In Britain, the bile and the rhetoric have been unmatched in recent times, at least outside Northern Ireland at the height of sectarian carnage. The only comparable thing I can think of that matches some of the racist bile seen in the last few weeks is the infamous 1964 election fight in Smethwick. There, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was unseated against the national swing by a Conservative candidate who had run on the slogan 'If you want a nigger for your neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour.'

The Leavers have not been so openly disgusting. But every time they have warned of the dangers of Turkey joining the EU, or blamed the EU for migrants coming here, putting pressure on services, driving down wages and taking jobs, they have been appealing to the same instinct. The fear of the Other. They are appealing to that part of us all that is better left in the dark, in the jungle where it came from.

This has been going on for years. The language changes. But the ideas are the same. It was bogus asylum seekers when I was younger. Then it was Poles. Then Romanians and Bulgarians. Next is Turks, and all Europeans generally. But it is the referendum that has allowed this debate to move into the open, and seen it elevated to top billing in people's minds.

And the solution is billed as simple. Take Back Control. That has been one of the cries of the Leave campaign during the EU referendum. Vote to Leave on June 23rd, and you will get control of your country back. Back from those Others that have wrested control from you.

It isn't a million miles from 'take back control' to 'take our country back' to 'Britain First,' or 'Put Britain first.'

Yesterday, an MP was shot dead in the street in her constituency. She was a mother to two young children, a wife, a charity worker, who sat in Parliament for the town she had been born in, grew up in, and then had represented for a year. She was out in town, doing what all 650 MPs do on a weekend; getting out there and meeting the people who they represent. My heart goes out to her husband and their two children. The loss of any life is crushing, sickening, and wrong.

The man who carried out this act of senseless violence is alleged to have yelled 'Britain first', or 'Put Britain first,' as he delivered the fatal shots. The facts are still not properly established. But as part of my job, I teach children to make inferences from limited evidence. Applying the same logic, what has happened is frighteningly clear. 

For the first time since the IRA killed Ian Gow in 1990, a British MP has been murdered for the views that they hold.

So, my message is simple. Listen up, senior Leave people. You may be as appalled as the rest of us at this tragic act of senseless slaughter.  I heard many of your tributes. I don't doubt you are appalled, and never for one minute wanted anyone to die.

But you are responsible for what happened yesterday. Not directly, as you did not call for violence. But every time you have used the fear of the Other, whoever it is, to try and advance your cause, you have brought this moment a step closer. Each poster about migrants, every hashtag about Taking Back Control, you have allowed this atmosphere of poison to develop. Every time you blame the Westminster elites, or all politicians, for our difficulties, you have helped to create an arena in which politicians are dehumanised and reduced to the scum of the earth. In this setup, it is no surprise that those who are misguided, mentally ill, or just pure evil, have taken the cue and stepped up to the plate.

To borrow from Terry Pratchett, we are out of the history books, and travelling without a map.

I genuinely think that Parliament should be sitting today. That MPs should have been dragged off the campaign trail, to be able to express how they, and their constituents, must be feeling.

And that the referendum should be cancelled.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons for believing that the EU is a terrible thing. I've thought them myself, having seen Greece forced to swallow the IMF's medicine a few years ago, causing immense suffering and hardship. I really hoped this period would see us get to the heart of what it means to be British and European in the third millennium. 

But the debate we are having is not one about the ideals of democracy, and sovereignty, and the place of a post-colonial, post-industrial society in the C21st.

We are having a national debate about migration, and how we feel about people that are not British. And it is stoking fear and prejudice. It is ugly, it is appalling, and it may have just claimed its first life.

No good will come of a decision reached under these circumstances. The polarisation and arguing has gone too far. These wounds opened up will not easily heal. Regardless of who wins, that poisonous atmosphere will remain. And God knows what comes next. Yesterday morning, the idea that a British MP would be slain in their own constituency would have been dismissed as far-fetched. Now it is an historical fact.

If this is what Johnson, Farage and Gove want, if this is the world they believe that they can create through the ballot box, then I do not want to be a part of it.

In the absence of them cancelling the referendum, I'm voting to Remain. Because I will not be party to Johnson's power grab, and Farage's attempt to fulfill his lifetime ambition. They have tried to do so off the back of fear and loathing. It has split the country in a way I thought impossible. The damage, the apaaling attitudes will take years of toil and effort to repair. 

And that is why they should not be allowed their moment in the sun. To vote out would be to endorse what has been done in the name of Leaving. Can you honestly do that? Because I know I can't.

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N.B. Since I wrote this, but before I shared it, I saw on the Guardian that the man in custody appears to have long standing far right connections, to apatheid South Africa and the American far-right. Just to add a bit of context.