The concerns of a Remain voter

Felicity kindly invited me to try to express my concerns about the state of things.  I don't pretend to speak for all Remain voters.

Thanks Felicity. I don't have many 'leave' voters in my friends list, but the ones I do have are (mostly?) thoughtful people who have good reasons for voting the way they did. If their arguments were the ones that won the referendum, I think I could go along with it a lot more happily than I'm able to at the moment. I feel it was won on false pretences.

At the moment I'm trying to separate two things:

1) disagreement/disappointment with the result.  I hope you and others can understand is more than just 'sour grapes' -- it's beyond my ability to just 'suck it up'. I haven't seen you suggest that's the case either, by the way, but it's a running theme amongst some others and it's hard to bear. I think the winning side just has to be 'bigger' sometimes and let the losing side rail for a while.

I also think it is a responsibility of the winning side to address the concerns of the losing side, because after all, we're now going with the Leave verdict.  It's down to the leaders of the Leave campaign to confirm that it's all going to plan or admit gracefully that it's not.  Nothing goes completely to plan, so an acknowledgement of that would be helpful -- otherwise it feels more like everyone is defending their position at the cost of looking at the latest facts.  This goes for both sides of the argument.

2) distress about the fact that this vote has given those few (but not few enough, unfortunately) who want to use it as an excuse for blatant racism the chance to do so. I am not seeing anyone saying that all Leave-voters are racist, but I so far haven't seen anyone who voted Leave actually state that this is not in their name. It seems the gut reaction is to defend against the implicit accusation that they themselves are racist. This leaves me with the uncomfortable result that, in my Facebook bubble, the only people visibly upset about the well-documented increase in racist incidents the last few days are also the people that voted Remain. I would love to see the condemnation be universal, for those few (but not few enough, unfortunately) to see

I don't believe that you and other Leave-voters aren't upset about the fact that these hate crimes have increased, but so far I haven't seen a single one actually SAY it. You mention in your previous blog post about them being jailed and punished -- I guess that's close, and it's more than I've seen from any other Leave voter so far. Most have instead accused me (usually indirectly by way of a 'be like BIll' post) of 'stirring up hate and bile' - not my raison d'etre, I hope you agree.

I may still be failing to express myself clearly, although I'm trying hard, and using too many words. I ask you to try to see through my confusion and accept that I and others are genuinely trying to separate these two issues, which keep being pushed back together by both sides of the argument.

I'll try to summarise in one sentence what I guess I'm asking you to do: I would be more comfortable if you, as a Leave voter, would clearly say that the people using the referendum results as an excuse to attack and intimidate don't do so in your name. You might say it's obvious, but it would help me rest easier.

Perhaps you have a reason not to be comfortable with doing that, but at the moment that's the part I don't understand and am finding so frustrating.

- Matthew.

Why did you vote Leave?

This is a reply triggered by someone who asked on Facebook why I voted Leave. 

I don't get my news via the TV so missed the pre and post referendum coverage there. After the Scottish Referendum I didn't fancy getting stuck in the mire of Brexit conversations on Facebook. I didn't watch the debates and find Farage and cronies so unpalatable that I steered clear of anything to do with them. I hear the other side didn't comport themselves too well either. I regret that my vote is the vote also of extremists whose views I abhor. I know a number of people who changed their vote to Remain for that reason. But my vote was not a Far Right vote.  It was a Leave vote and it is stating the blinding obvious - but not on at least day one, post-referendum, blinding enough it seems - to say that is a different thing and what the majority of Leavers felt too.  I do not like being pushed around, made to change my vote by extremists and I do not think people generally vote tactically in referendums, rather that they vote the way they believe. 

Afterwards I saw someone say on a prominent academic's timeline on Facebook how the result was "worse than September 11th" and felt chilled by the remark.  There was a lot of "standing together" among such liberals which propping one another up tends to worry me by nature.  So the "Us and Them" of nationalism and populism, which is just another kind of standing together weren't reasons for my vote either.  I don't care much for party politics, or groups, and don't have enough time for most politicians to care about protesting at them, so no of course my vote wasn't a protest at the authorities either.  I was stunned to read people did that.  I suppose if I am as stupid as they all say now I might have been tempted to do a protest vote at the disconnected liberal elite running things or just showing how plugged in they are with all that talk of binaries, but actually I didn't realise quite how entrenched that liberal position was til afterwards.  It reminded me of a dinner party years ago in south London, where the host's family came from north London.  I must have said something slightly controversial because they looked at me in horror. The Left for them was clearly the only option - automatically, always, in all respects. I looked back in astonishment at my first encounter with this mindset in educated people: a herd-like mentality in an apparently ring-fenced world; one that that did not examine, question or consider, that could not be wrong and that would it seemed never change its mind.

At the weekend the first person I trusted to speak to at all about the Referendum not because he is also an academic or because I rate his political views but just because he's well, non-judgemental I suppose said vociferously the EU had nothing to do with the European Parliament, the European Commission, the European Council. I looked at him. He looked a bit sheepish. That's what I saw somewhere anyway, he said.

The divisiveness and comments I have seen on social media since Thursday have been distasteful enough that I do not to want to get into any debate about the reasons why I voted. I did write about why and when things are cooler I might post it but not right now. Haven't we all had enough? Besides, my brother reminded me yesterday that Facebook just isn't the place for politics and I think he's right. I have turned off my feed about most everything not to do with music, dance or summer holiday events. 

But I'll say this because who can stomach assumptions made and spoken about people - who they are or how or why they voted?  Isn't that actually what we so dislike in racists?  The repellent judgements and assumptions they make? The alternative is to ask people what they think or why they voted the way they did and not when it's too late and they're pissed off with being judged. 

I think actually it would have pretty hard beforehand to say which way my family would vote. I am half English, half Scottish and we have children under ten. I lived and worked happily in London for five years and lived for years in Europe, later working there too. I am a homeowner, with three degrees and was more than halfway through another. I speak two languages passably well and get by badly in another two. The question always rattling around is "When can I next get to Europe?" I was in Stuttgart last month. I hope to go to Amsterdam in September and to try to persuade the kids to come to France or Italy in October. Oh, I dated a Frenchman for some years - and an Italian for that matter. But yes, I voted Leave. My father in contrast is in his mid seventies, English by birth married to a Scot, so for reasons of mixed nationality and my father's job we were brought up "British". British in Europe I suppose because we lived happily in Germany most of the childhood I can remember and if anything even more happily in Africa for another two years. I used to nag them for not letting me go to a German school but it wasn't the thing in the seventies when you had a British one on the doorstep. I was cross we only got a couple of hours of German a week at school, which struck me even at eight as absurd in the circumstances. My parents now live in a small Scottish town. Dad is ex-(British) army, generally votes conservative though his views are so wide-ranging I think they defy categorisation; he voted Remain. I took the boys to the polling station. My seven year old wanted me to vote Remain because he was worried about running out of brioche. Our nine year old said But if we leave will we still have friends if anyone attacks us? I said You don't have to be yoked together to be friends or have allies. My husband is Portuguese.  He said I was naive, hadn't thought things through and had voted with racists.

So no, of course it wasn't about immigrants or race. Yes, I understood the economy would be hit. Yes, I thought there probably would be some racist incidents. Not because I'm smart enough that everything was so predictable but just because I saw it happen in the nationalist upsurge after the Scottish referendum.

On Saturday on the train from Perth to Glasgow I was served tea by a courteous, attentive, professional man - Artur, whose slight accent was not from here. I often fall into conversation with people, curious to hear where they are from. I passed half an hour on the bus on the way back asking my friend about her country, Chile. But with Artur I didn’t dare ask where he was from, not the way things have been since Thursday. At the station entrance I had passed a crowd of Scots railway workers picketing to keep guards on trains. They politely asked if I would take some literature. It said they were upset because Abellio cost-cutting in Scotland would go to profit Dutch train passengers. I wondered what they had voted. I wondered what Artur thought of them and if he knew what I had voted, what would he think of me? I realised then how changed I am, how defensive I have become since seeing the comments on social media.  I love the diversity in our country and am proud of it. When I first came from south London to Perth, the biggest shock was the absence of that diversity.  Artur seemed too smart to me to think so but I reckon if he does hate and distrust half of us now, that will perhaps be due less to our vote and more to the way our compatriots have painted us since then through words and gestures like the one about the Bristol Flowers I shared on my Facebook page and think so irresponsible. That and the behaviour of racists who showed themselves over the weekend, but no doubt they will be jailed. Our response to them in law says so much more about us than the actions of a derailed few. 

The best thing that happened to me this week in terms of politics was a private message relating in fact to that Facebook post from a young woman, a non Brit who lives in an EU country. I don't know her well and haven't heard from her in probably a year or more. We met once or twice at some dances. She just said basically that she understood. She wasn't in the same camp as me, or the opposite one. She was someone in a country which is part of the union to which we, I, said, sorry, no. Most of all she understood that some of us have reasons that have nothing to do with immigration or dislike of Europe. You have probably seen Lord Ashcroft Polls but immigration, though it seems to have got most of the publicity, was not apparently the main reason Leavers voted that way, never mind that I keep hearing that assumption parroted by people I know. She mentioned the worry of being tarred as Far Right by friends and colleagues if you publicly sympathise with or even say you understand why Leavers voted the way they did when you know that those reasons may have had nothing to do with immigration or (presumably) economics. She was and I am sure many others are worried about social isolation if they tell their vote or their sympathy for not - what? Politically toeing the party line to which those fitting her social demographic, or perhaps even mine, are expected to belong? 

That fear reminded me of the 2014 Scottish Referendum. Someone came up to me at a dance then and whispered "We wanted you to know, we're with "No" - we just don't want to, you know - say". And the way things were up here then I could quite see why: the violence and intimidation the attacks on cars, the broken windows, the strangers asking elderly people on pavements in my parent's town what they were voting and then jostling them - just the way I heard from people who lived there how it was in Germany after the war. I saw someone comment on the distinguished academic's timeline about how "civilised" wasn't quite the word, perhaps it was "reasonable" (the post seems to have gone now), how reasonable then people had been in Edinburgh during the run-up to that vote while he was working there. I thought: what planet had he been on? Then again comparatively Edinburgh is a bastion of culture and tolerance but still, that isn't I think how my friends there found it. Anyone though who thinks there isn't a deep city/country divide in Scotland need only watch Where You're Meant To Be Paul Fegan's superb documentary about Aidan Moffat and Sheila Stewart. 

I was the only person in the cinema watching that film in Perth ten days ago. "Perth?" laughed someone I met in passing a few years back in a bar with outspoken locals in Glasgow's Merchant City. "What's with Perth?" I said. "Nothing.." he said. "It's just..." and he shook his head. Perth, an hour's drive away was so far off his radar that it just well, never featured. It was plain on his face: why would it? There has been incomprehension in Britain all over and all round, for decades. At least the referendum made us acknowledge it. 

It is true the Scottish referendum changed many personal relationships for many people. For me, it's not that I'm not friends with people who voted differently then. Rather, I found a kind of clarity. I realised then that with a few exceptions where friendship runs deeper than politics and even religion, we probably never were friends - more acquaintances. I'm not saying the same will happen now. I just don't know. Nearly everyone I know voted Remain. Some found the decision hard and I find those people interesting. A few voted Leave or did not vote. I don't in all cases know their reasons. But that handful I would say are also the handful of those whose views I very often respect, moreoever, from whose thought processes in general I have long found much to learn.

But that's why I'm not saying more about my reasons just now. I'm just sick of it all. I normally have quite a thing about allowing comments on blogs and particularly if you are going to allow them then to allow pretty much all of them, except maybe those that might wound an uninvolved third party. But not this time. I just can't bear it.  If I have that debate it will be face to face with people I respect. Those tend to be people whose views, even if, especially when actually they differ from mine, tend to be thoughtful, clear-sighted, reasoned, dispassionate, well-mannered, people from whom I will learn. It is no coincidence that I have found such people tend to have good judgement.

If I pass on any advice to my children about referendums the way I feel just now would be to keep out of it if you could square that with yourself or live with feeling cowardly or uninformed or perhaps the better option is to accept that you don't know enough, that if the experts couldn't say whether 20% or 60% of our laws come from the EU, then did anyone know enough? Or if my children feel that obligation to vote, which was after all, very hard won in our history - perhaps I will say to them watch, listen and keep things strictly private. But then, like I would guess so many, would they then wonder if it was better to live with feeling afraid of saying how you voted? Would they think twice, for fear of slander and isolation about acknowledging in public someone they knew who had voted differently? Would they think then it was simply better not to vote? And when people become too afraid or worried to vote, or to say their vote, or too sickened by the things it reveals, what kind of society is that?