a romanian adventure

It was all going so well on Friday morning. Nigel Farage’s near-concession was splashed all over the front page of the Sun. But then actual results started coming in. Sunderland were 61% out, Newcastle only marginally in. Those two results were much more favourable to Leave than had been predicted. Maybe it was just a North-East thing. But as other declarations dribbled in from different parts of the country that favoured Leave, the writing was on the wall. I’d worked out the night before that for Remain to win they would need to be at about 53% by the time our meeting started because many of the Leave-friendly areas would declare later (the same pattern that you see at a UK general election but less pronounced because people were voting less along party lines). Instead it was almost a dead tie at that point, and I knew it was all over. I felt sick. Some other people at work were following it, but not as closely as me. “Look how close it is! It could go either way! And doesn’t that map look pretty?!” No, there’s only one way this is going now and it looks bloody ugly.

It’s sad for me because I’ve invested a lot of emotional energy into my plan to take control of my life (to use a slogan from the Leave side). It has created so much uncertainty. I’m now glued to Al Jazeera and news websites when I’d much rather be learning Romanian or making travel plans. I’m losing sleep. My take is that the exit process will take two years from when the infamous Article 50 is invoked; the UK will still be part of the EU during that time. So my immediate future should be safe. But I just don’t know for sure.

But it’s also sad for the country that it’s come to this. I perfectly understand the people of Sunderland sticking two fingers up to London and the South-East who have reaped most of the benefits of Britain’s supposedly strong economy. Mines, shipyards, car plants and steelworks have closed down in the last forty years with nothing to replace them except insecure data-entry-type jobs that a bright twelve-year-old could easily do. And with increased automation even those crappy jobs are disappearing. As manufacturing has vanished in Wales, the North-East, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands, so have communities. Successive Tory and Labour governments simply haven’t given a toss (and who do you vote for in a FPTP system when the two main parties are basically the same?). The influx of Eastern European immigrants after those countries were admitted to the EU certainly hasn’t helped either, but that’s only one in a very long line of reasons why so many people are struggling. It’s a shame that the EU had to bear the brunt of everyone’s understandable anger, rather than lying domestic politicians.

A lot has been made of the difference in voting patterns between the haves and have-nots, but to my mind it’s been overstated. It’s true that well-off metropolitan types voted to stay and have-almost-nothings in neglected areas voted to leave. But a lot of very well-heeled, often older people in rural areas will have voted out too. I can’t see the stats for Common Lane in Hemingford Abbots (two million quid, anyone?), not far from where I grew up, but I bet they voted out by a good margin. As someone who voted to stay, I see the Common Lane “outers” as my enemies. My dad, who is quite well off himself (but less so than before the pound and stock markets plunged), voted out. But he’s 66 and has very fond memories of Britain before it joined the EU in 1973. I’m pretty sure my brother also voted out. Mum didn’t vote, but she could hardly conceal her glee at the prospect of the EU collapsing.

The Remain side failed to make an emotional case for staying in the EU, and I think that’s where they lost it. The more they talked about economic risks, the more working-class people said “bring it on”, let those obscene edifices poking out of the London skyline burn to the ground, the system isn’t working for me. The new post-Brexit system, whatever form it takes, won’t work for them either unfortunately, I’m sure of that. That’s what makes the outcome so upsetting for me: the Leave voters were sold a complete lie. As for Nigel Farage who called the result a victory “for the ordinary people, for the real people, for the decent people”, seriously man, piss off.

Cambridge, where I was born, voted 74% in; Peterborough were 61% out. A huge difference, just as I predicted. Other liberal, young, affluent university towns like Oxford (70%), Bristol (62%), Exeter (55%), Brighton (69%) and Norwich (56%) all voted in. Mum talked about all those academic areas, implying that people who live in those places don’t know anything about the real world. How did we end up here? Anybody who knows anything about anything, and has studied or writes about the thing they know about, is now seen as some intellectual oddball who is hopelessly out of touch, and therefore can’t be trusted. Thirty years ago TV was full of shows like Tomorrow’s World, Johnny Ball’s Think It Do It, Open University, even Countdown, all stuff that broadened the mind. How times have changed.

Scotland of course voted to remain by a large margin (62%) and I don’t think it’ll be long before they exit the UK via a second referendum. Twenty years ago I couldn’t have imagined that. The events of Thursday night, and those of the preceding weeks, were like a massive earthquake. The rebuild will be long and painful. I can’t thank my mother enough for ensuring that my brother and I had New Zealand citizenship from an early age.

Jo Cox, the British Labour MP who was shot and stabbed on Thursday, sounded absolutely lovely and full of compassion. It’s so sad that two small children are now without a mother. Her suspected murderer has just appeared in court; he gave his name as “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. He sounds seriously messed up.

The compassion that Jo Cox showed in spades appears to be in increasing short supply in Britain. The picture of the UK that is beamed to me via various news websites (and therefore may not be entirely accurate) does not resemble the tolerant place I was brought up in, and that makes me sad. I’m seeing a lot of anger and resentment and hatred there now, and this EU referendum has given people an outlet for that. I don’t blame them in a way, but the EU is only a small part of the problem. The real problem is that successive governments over the last 35 years haven’t done enough to help poor people and poor communities. Britain’s economy is increasingly concentrated in London and the south-east. That includes St Ives in Cambridgeshire where my parents are staying now. Dad said he’s seen no evidence of the sort of anger I’m talking about, but then he wouldn’t in a town which is only a guided busway ride away from Cambridge, an outward-looking city which is likely to vote Remain by one of the largest percentage margins in the whole of England. If instead he went for a half-hour drive to the Welland Estate in Peterborough, parts of which some buses wouldn’t go through (and maybe still don’t) because it was too dangerous, I’m sure he’d see it. In 2003 I lived and worked in Peterborough, which is in the same county as Cambridge (sort of), but it’s really a world away and I expect it to vote Leave by a hefty margin.

How will Jo Cox’s murder affect the referendum? It sounds crass to even ask, but I think for such a huge decision we have to. Before the event I was picking a fairly comfortable win for Leave by nearly ten points. The more coverage the referendum and the campaigns got, the more it seemed to favour Leave as it became the mainstream option, and I could see that continuing right up until voting day. (This is the opposite of what some commentators were saying, i.e. that more attention would lead to a higher turnout, especially amongst Remain-friendly younger people.) The murder itself might garner some sympathy votes for Remain, but perhaps more importantly there hasn’t been any campaigning for two days and what campaigning is left will probably be more civil than before the shooting. I can see the pendulum swinging back towards Remain but will it be enough to get them over the line? I’m not so sure. And if it is enough but only just, people will say that the murder changed the result. What a terrible mess.