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From 15 year son: An essay on BREXIT

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Shakespearmint · 17/12/2018 13:16

I wish I could publish it on his behalf !

BREXIT

As George Orwell wrote in the appendix to his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, when one creates an abbreviation for a word of phrase, one turns it into a more fundamental concept, or one takes away the complexity or distinctiveness of its connotations. It becomes as concrete 'as a chair or a table'. Orwell wrote at a time of political extremes, of Comintern and Nazi; we find ourselves at a time of instability and partisanship which, though lesser in both severity and consequence (at least for now), finds the same methods of propaganda used for the same purposes.

Now is the time of the negotiations on Brexit. Now, you must have at some point reflected on this inelegant and rather unnecessary coinage. It is not designed for convenience; we could after all called it the UK's exit [from the EU], or used a similarly unflashy term; such terms are after all used by most pundits and newsreaders. But who can be passionate about the UK's exit? In that case, our leaving the EU would be a purely technical matter, involving a political prospect with many implications; but 'Brexit' is an ideological matter, sometimes even exceeding traditional right vs. left affiliations: it is a concrete event with a singular purpose; in fact, the word Brexit compensates for all that Brexit is not. Brexit just means Brexit.
I am not suggesting that words by themselves have the power to influence the political situation; but they are symptoms of the disease that has. I need not here instil in anyone a sense of the sheer idiocy of the referendum issue - that a 2% difference would only be genuinely meaningful to the extremely superstitious; nor that 'the people', who voted on the basis of what were demonstrably lies, should not be idolised over all facts, knowledge and expertise; nor indeed that one cannot undermine democracy simply by voting. These are things that cannot be argued by reason. But reason doesn't come above hard facts - that is, in the Brexiteers' view, the hard facts of the Will of the People, June 2016, or Brexit, and what I have just recited would have been a political ideal, a date, and a retching sound respectively, in 2015 and before. Thus, now we can see the passion and dogmatism with which some have now been made to pursue the Brexit cause, we can understand the tenacity with which those in power cling to it. They are one and the same: multifaceted issues with complex implications are transformed into a solid facts, insisting that all must bow to them.

Thus this new Brexit deal, as expected, serves Brexit more than it serves Britain. It is outside the EU; but it has nothing to do with the reasons for the Leave vote, save perhaps controls on immigration. For the Leave vote was, irrespective of how it is put into words, about the perceived lack of democracy in the EU. They voted Leave because they believed that the EU was asserting unwanted, unelected power. But now, because of the deal, we are 'rule-takers, not rule-makers'; we previously had MEPs, representatives in Europe, and as for straight bananas, they were very much our own doing. Brexit, once again, is a solemn obligation; all else, including those who voted for it, must submit to it.

The divides, however, have only become greater, possibly because, behind 'the people have spoken', there is the panicked question, particularly among the poorer voters: 'if not Brexit, then what?' What will solve the problems we face? We have as a country vested great hopes in Brexit, to solve social issues, and many will not readily give it up without a clear alternative. The kind of clear alternative that was offered at the 2017 General Election - which detracted attention from Brexit - has not been sustained. And as long as it does not exist there will be no peace from the rallying cries of the Brexiteers, irrational though they are.

I am soon to be one of 'the people', and have no better idea of right and wrong than anyone else. I know, however, how the sides present their arguments; I know that while those who support Leave use rhetoric and cliches, and mock those who disagree, Remainers tend to use facts - facts, that is, from the real world, not self-established superstitions. I do not want the kind of world where truth does not get a look-in, but when political dogmas such as Brexit are established, that world looks unsettlingly close.

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ViragoKnows · 17/12/2018 13:19

Oh for the love of God