Softer Than This
Who has killed Soft Brexit? That, of late, has been the cry on stretches of social media and in commentary around the issue, as the UK heads towards the exit date from the transition period of January 1st. Of course, we are assured by voices of all stripes, the culprits are clear — Remainers. It was their intransigence, their rudeness, their misjudgements, hubris, denial, anger — their many vices and absence of virtues, we are assured, who did this to all of us. They alone stand guilty of leaving the country facing between a diamond-hard Brexit and a Moissanite-hard Brexit.
Of course, you will hear little dissent from me about the quality of the Remain campaign — before and after the referendum. Wilfully disorganised and equipped with a limp message, it failed to resonate with anyone until much too late in the day, and then failed to move beyond its base to build a solid consensus on anything much after the referendum. Those who lead and animated it in this time deserve an extended break — perhaps a decade, perhaps more — from frontline politics to reflect on why they stuck with a failed message after clear proof it had failed.
But that failure entailed, in a binary referendum, the victory of another — the victory of Leave. And herein we find our Original Sin as to how Brexit has ended up so hard, how Britain and Europe are to move from common partners in so many endeavours to states that threaten each other with warships to protect such a marginal industry for their mutual prosperities as fisheries.
Because any narrative about how we ended up with the Brexit we ended up with that does not begin and end with the Leave campaign and its post-referendum successors is, by its very nature, an inadequate one to the task. Winning means something in a democracy — it must mean responsibility; for what you promised, and what comes after. If you win but then seek to shove the responsibility for what you said, and what happens next, to anyone but yourself, to what extent can you be said to be invested in democracy? It is surely, to a passive observer, a damning indictment of your ability to reckon with the harder truths of democracy. One wonders how, if the result had been reversed, we would have been treated by those who lost with 48% of the vote for Leaving.
I can guess, quite easily, because the narrative contains much that would have happened in that universe. We would, as in this universe, have been commanded to “understand” the areas that voted Leave. We would have been told that painful economic concessions had to be made to the values of those areas. We would have been told that their views deserved entire and whole respect, not question. We would have been instructed that the best thing for the country was to give them whatever they wanted, however they wanted, damn the cost to anyone else.
Because that is what has happened. Since the referendum we have been endlessly lectured that Manchester must understand Wigan — we are yet to hear, from the same mouths and minds, the call for the opposite. Remain must never be the one to be understood — its role in British politics is to be maligned, far beyond the reasonable critiques that can be levelled at its for its performance. Remain areas are expected to take harms to their values and interests without whispering a word of discontent; you must put your home, your job, your family, your values, your future, on the altar of whatever it is Leave voters wish, and not rock the boat when they are consigned to history.
Because Leave won, and we have not effectively held them to account for what that means — as a country — we are in this position. Because Leave won, and we were told that meant a total victory, we are in this position. We — all of us- are expected to swallow whatever it is Wigan wishes, without a moment to consider if perhaps a politics based on spiting Manchester doesn’t deliver much for either of them, beyond triumphalist headlines and an accelerating decline of the entire country.
This Janus-faced attitudes towards two roughly equally sized groups of voters extends to the US. When Democrats lose, they are told to silently listen to the areas they lost. When Republicans lose — do we see them being commanded the same? Where are the anguished voices of 2016, saying Democrats should’ve listened to blue collar voters, now? Why are they not demanding that Mitch McConnell tour the suburbs of Atlanta to listen to what “the real America” is saying?
Because the cottage industry of political commentary of the last 4 years does not allow for such things. Seemingly, once you have obtained a university degree, for these voices, you pass through some invisible ceiling — your interests and values are now “elite” and therefore coded as worthless; or at least, possessing so little merit as to be effectively as much. Never mind that these things are important to you — others who revile where you live, how you live, demand that they be taken away, so take them away we must, and do not speak against it.
Endlessly, these voices have been raised the last 4 years now. Telling Manchester to be silent and listen to Wigan. Telling Remainers to “suck it up”, to “dry their tears”, to take all the blame on board for all the bad that flows; never confronting Leave elites about the hollowness of their vision, their failure to grapple with reality, or their absolute failure to meaningfully try and bring the country together. Because they won, they were — and are — responsible first and foremost for what came since. We wait with baited breath to see if any of those who now and so often freely condemn the losing side for not surrendering it all at any point inquire of the winning side as to such matters as their plan for fixing any of this. That breath, I fear, will be baited many years yet.
