Brexit or not Brexit...тик-так / Политика, Свят / Македония

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I found “I don’t want to lose our identity like [London/Leicester/Boston]” is a constant refrain.
This, I believe, is what Middle England and the Midlands were voting against: they were voting against turning into London.
This, I believe, is what the Midlands were voting against: the historical process changing the meaning of England from an ethnic identity – and nation state – into a civic identity and – a immigrant nation.

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Ben Judah

5 часа · London, England, United Kingdom ·

Elizabeth I, to Elizabeth II

What will unfold will turn the twilight years of the reign of Elizabeth II into the final chapter in the history of the British Empire.
Brexit will swiftly trigger Scotland’s exit from Britain.
End the City of London as financial hub and reignite Northern Ireland’s ethnic unrest.
This will, together, end the role England has played since Elizabeth I as a world power and with it London's role as Capital of the World.
Wirthout Scotland and without nukes, which would be much, much harder to replace if forced to move from Scotland, little England's seat on the United Nations Security Council is no longer certain. Most likely becoming a "rotten borough," defacto no longer with veto rights as these would trigger Security Council reform.
You might tritely, but not inaccurately summarize it like this.
They conquered the world, retreated, and hated the immigrants that came from it so they crashed their economy, lost Scotland and ended their role in the world.
A tragic end for David Cameron, a man who aspired to be the Harold Macmillan of the 21st century, who will now be remembered as the Lord North, the British Prime Minister who lost America.
Why do I think it's all about immigration?
Nor the establishment? Class?
This is why.
It’s not England anymore.
This is what I was told, hundreds of times, by the people I met as I travelled up and down the country for Politico.
We don’t recognize our country anymore.
In Middle England and the Midlands, in Tonbridge and in Grantham, in Romford and in Witney I stood in the street and approached a hundred people in every town I visited to ask their views.
I can say with confidence, that with some exceptions, this referendum was not treated as a referendum on European Union membership by the English of the small towns. It was treated as a referendum on ethnic change.
I use that word precisely, now let me explain.
When asking English voters why they planned to vote against the European Union they said that they were voting against – “immigration.”
What do you mean by this? I asked every time.
The answer was not against 650,000 arrivals a year in favor of 80,000 arrivals a year. The answer was not against Romanian laborers in favor of Indian nurses on a points based visa system.
I found these abstracts meant nothing at all.
Instead, I was told, voting against – “immigration” – meant voting against – “the English being outnumbered.” Rather, I was told, hundreds of times, voting against – “immigration” – meant voting against – mosques, Polish shops, “foreigners in government” (i.e. Jews or Asians), or the fact “London is no longer English.”
This has left me utterly convinced this was a vote in the sleepy, decisive, small towns that swung it, against the process of religious, racial and ethnic change that has made the Britain of today a different country to that of the childhoods of the older generation.
The English are famously indirect, but when pressed, I was told repeatedly this is what the never-ending reply – “I want my country back” – meant.
Immigrants, is used in everyday English, as a word with a double meaning. Often it means, both arrivals – and non-white British communities.
As I write, both commentators and politicians are saying that the EU referendum was a grievance vote against – “the establishment” – or – “exclusion.” This is certainly there, but this is overwhelmingly not the grievance I heard.
“We never wanted all these immigrants.”
How to analyze this?
Let's not be Orwellian moralizers. But look at the trend.
It is, if you look at the data, baldy true that Britain is no longer the same country as it was in the youths of the older generation who voted decisively to leave the European Union.
Let us take a simple barometer: the Queen.
When Elizabeth II was crowned in 1952, she was crowned Queen of Nigeria and Malaysia, the non-white population was less than 10,000 and over 45% of the population were industrial workers.
The capital of her coronation was not an immigrant-mega city. In 1931 less than 2.7% of Londoners were born abroad.
This level, of a small but flamboyant and visible community of traders from continental Europe and Asia, was close to the historical norm. As late as the 17th century historians believe London was essentially mono-ethnic. Whilst liberals frequently point to the existence of Irish and Jewish immigrant communities in Britain from the late 19th century to bolster a national story of immigration, the real history does not fit this.
Irish communities suffered extremely high levels of ethnic hate and segregation until the 1980s in Britain, whilst extreme hostility to Jewish immigration saw the country close its borders to them in 1905 and refuse meaningful refuge to continental Jews attempting to flee Nazism.
As a result Britain’s ethnic structure was incredibly mono-ethnic and stable from the 11th century to, more or less, the 19th. England, in a fit of purity even banned Jews from living on this island in the 13th century until the 17th.
Only three left demographic traces: Hugenots from France and the Netherlands in the mid 16th century, Irish and then Jewish migration in the mid and late 19th century respectively. The numbers were always small. Hugenots in the 16th century numbered less than 1 percent of the English population, Irish in the 19th century were less than 3 percent, and fewer than 250,000 Jews migrated to Britain between 1880 and 1914.
Therefore perhaps the most significant trend of the reign of Elizabeth II has been the sudden, unanticipated (and for many clearly shocking) ethnic transformation.
In 1931 only 1.75% of Britain’s population was born abroad. By 2011 20% of Britain’s population were immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Today 13% of the population is non-white, there are 650,000 new arrivals a year and by 2050 it is projected by research from Oxford University that Britain have a 40% non-white population. The same research postulated that by 2070 those identifying as non-White British only will be the minority.
By 1971, only 85% of the population were white British. By 2011, this had fallen to 45% white British and I believe if one includes the enormous illegal and unregistered population the figure is lower.
This change – “London’s a foreign city now” – was frequently cited by those I met as key evidence that they needed – “to take our country back.”
There is a caricature of England, which is that London is an ethnic city and that the – “the backward shires” – are as they always were.
Statistically, and visually this is not the case.
Cities with a population less than 60% white British now include: Slough, Leicester, Luton and Birmingham. I was pointed to these cities are examples by voters when they said they were – “uncomfortable with immigration.”
Liberals frequently point to the fact that areas with low-immigration vote most heavily against for those opposed to immigration. This, I believe, is because of the high fear these areas have of becoming like Britain’s ethnic towns.
I found “I don’t want to lose our identity like [London/Leicester/Boston]” is a constant refrain.
This, I believe, is what Middle England and the Midlands were voting against: they were voting against turning into London.
This, I believe, is what the Midlands were voting against: the historical process changing the meaning of England from an ethnic identity – and nation state – into a civic identity and – a immigrant nation.
I strongly believe those stressing social and economic factors are identifying the acuteness and scale of the rejection but to use a cliché of recent minting – “not listening to what voters are saying on immigration.”
I felt, in Tonbridge and in Grantham, in Romford and in Witney, that I was witnessing the historical failure of the liberal cultural project to make this change successful.
I felt a liberation of language.
I heard this constantly.
“I’m not racist, but…”
In Tonbridge I was told - "Enoch was right." In Grantham I was told - "We are gonna collapse with these millions of Turks." In Romford I was told - "There'll be a civil war between the English and the immigrants." In Witney I was told – “it’s a peaceful invasion.”
All in all, I felt this referendum was evidence of the historic failure of liberalism to redefine Englishness from a narrow to a cosmopolitan definition for the dominant chunk of the country.
Why is this anger at ethnic change flaring of such intensity?
This is the Leave campaign I saw on the ground.
I met dozens of activists and MP from both sides.
This was how Brexiteers framed the referendum.
This was a referendum on whether or not Britain remains part of a German-controlled banker-run bureaucratic pseudo-Union that will inevitably end British democracy, roll up Britain as a state and flood the country with unlimited numbers of Turkish and Eastern European migrants, ending the England we know.
These were the consequences of such rhetoric.
As a result I met simply hundreds of devastated people horrified to have learnt thanks to the messaging of the Leave campaign that Britain was really under camouflaged German diktat.
The psychological mechanism at play reminded me of a conspiracy theory. It was as if something evil and secretive had been revealed.
I have come this conclusion because I was simply incessantly told by hundreds of frightened and vulnerable people that they had only just learnt on national TV and in the tabloids that the problems of their daily lives were the result of immigration.
There was desperation among many voters, as a result of this messaging, to save the England they loved and the public services they depended on. The majority of those I met had come to believe that a tidal immigration from the European Union was imminent due to what they believed was impending Turkish membership.
This process, of tele-populists frightening a vast chunk of the population reminded me of what I have seen reporting in two other countries I know well – Russia and Ukraine. Over and over, I was told my people with poor access to quality information that their way of life was facing extinction.
To a certain extent, given the historical scale of demographic changes, this did not surprise me.
What did, however surprise me, was the less dominant but nevertheless widespread belief that Britain was somehow liberating itself from Germany. Why was this so?
Politicians in this country like to speak of the “Air War” – or political messaging from above – and the “Ground War” or political campaigning from below. The Air War, through repeated comparisons of the EU to Hitler’s Germany, made by the Air War’s commanders (Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage) implanted this idea in a poorly educated population’s head. The Ground War, which I witnessed, was direct. Activists and campaigners ceaselessly repeated that – “this was not what our fathers and grandfathers fought for” – or that – “A vote to Remain is a betrayal of our forefathers.”
Again, this Ground War worked somewhat like a conspiracy theory in the heads of those convinced by it: it had been revealed to them that Britain was under Germany rule. This is was successfully rammed home by the Air War with the slogan – “This is our independence day.”
Intriguingly, this makes the British EU referendum incredibly similar in emotional content and messaging to the Greek bailout referendum, which unfolded in part as a psychodrama, refighting the Second World War. Making, I believe, this part of a European trend.
Repeatedly on my travels in the small towns I thought of the writer J.G. Ballard, who alone identified the mounting crisis in his numerous novels and interviews.
The English are a funny old lot, he used to say. They bang on like they won the war but if you listen carefully they sound like they lost it. The suburbs dream of violence, he used to say.
Writing that beneath the surface a chaotic, angry, lost, society was developing now all the social institutions – class, Church, Empire, Navy - which had held it together for centuries had decomposed into rotten threads.
What happens next?
I believe that will now see Boris Johnson, swiftly unfold as a political tragedy to echo that of David Cameron. This is a politician who explicitly said and believes Britain is better of inside the Single Market, whose membership conditions include free movement of Labour. However, he has now won a campaign that cannot – without a enormous rage and disappointment – remain in it due to having made the ultimate promise of immigration over the economy.
The immense contradictory pressures of trying to preserve the financial centre of the City of London and the imposing a halt on immigration in the forthcoming negotiations will ruin his hand.
However, to escape this bind, should the Conservative Party reunite around a premise to keep Single Market access, interpreting the will of the people not as I have seen on the ground, but in the terms of their own constitutional ideology – I believe the result will be greatest wave of anger, betrayal and disappointment this country has seen in generations.
So once Scotland leaves, what?
My great worry now is that England will find itself building a nation state, in an era when those wield less influence, with a composition unhelpful to that goal – and historically very little experience of being a nation state at all. Until the loss of Calais in 1515, England was in reality a fief of French speaking aristocracy who viewed themselves as part of and indeed aspired to rule a greater world of overlapping French Kingdoms. And beginning seriously with Elizabeth I, this elite began an imperial adventure, aspiring to rule many islands and nations in the world.
I believe the coming making of the English nation state, like the making of all nation, will be fraught, ugly and emotionally draining.