Patrick Comerford
It is ten years since the United Kingdom voted 52-48 per cent in a referendum on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union. The leave campaign sold their message with a tissue of lies that have not gone away in those ten years since, and the nation is more divided than ever.
Not satisfied with the wind of division they had then sown across the land, in every village, town and cities, many of the key figures in the ‘Leave’ campaign are now reaping the whirlwind of racism and hatred, stirring up ‘cold rage’, misogyny, Islamophobia on the streets, calling for mass deportations, and targeting minorities that include Muslims, Sikhs and any other group they decide to hate today.
That year we were approaching the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen, and when a number of bookshops placed some of her best-known works on display in 2017, I wondered whether the juxtaposition of the titles was a reminder that the Brexit vote was 48% ‘Sense and Sensibility’ but 52% ‘Pride and Prejudice’.
I remember the big red bus rolling into Lichfield, and how the then Conservative MP was grinning like a Cheshire Cat, prattling on as he repeated the lies and half-truths peddled by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage.
On the Remain side, the attempts to talk about the damage that would be inflicted on the UK economy by leaving were supported by almost every prominent economist. Michael Gove declared dismissively ‘we have had enough of experts’, presumably meaning all those economists and business leaders who said Brexit would be a disaster. One of the few economists who disagreed, Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, claimed Brexit would increase GDP by 6.8% and would reduce prices for consumers. So much for his expertise.
The lies of that campaign still rankle, as those the lack of political leadership, still less bravery, from both David Cameron as Prime Minister and Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
David Cameron could have had enough foresight to demand a two-thirds majority and to rule out a paper-thin divisive margin. It was a dereliction of political responsibility on a fundamental issue for short-term political gain. He whistled a little tune as he turned back into No 10 after announcing his resignation. It was the same frivolity that had had marked his role in the whole campaign.
The Labour Party could have energetically pointed out that the EU had ensured women’s rights, children’s rights, workers’ rights, students’ rights, consumer rights, human rights, that the EU had brought economic and political stability in the decades immediately after World War II, that trade within the EU had created jobs and brought hope to the regions, that the Common Agricultural Policy had benefitted farmers and regional communities, that more open borders had benefitted trade and been a boon to tourism.
That’s a list of ten or more benefits of EU membership that ought to have been repeated by Cameron and Corbyn, and repeated again and again. But there are ten lies that were repeated throughout the campaign and that have never been swept away in the ten years since.
The Brexit campaign repeated numerous high-profile pledges, misrepresentations and claims that failed to materialise, that never amounted to even half-truths, and that are still embedded in my memory:
1, The big red bus was plastered with claims that Britain sends £350 million a week to the EU, and pretending that the same money could be used instead to fund the NHS instead. The UK’s net contribution to the EU was significantly lower, and no such £350 million dividend was ever realised. Instead, successive Tory governments, from David Cameron and Teresa May to Boris Johnson, Liz ‘Lettuce’ Truss and Rishi Sunak, continued to underfund and under-resource the NHS, while Nigel Farage seems intent on seeing the NHS scrapped and health care privatised, so that it is available only an ability-to-pay rather than a needs basis.
2, ‘Take back control of our borders’: This lie had many voters believe the Brexit vote would give powers to deport and turn people away who wanted to make a life in Britain, either by choice or by necessity, and resolve all immigration issues. But this closed-border, small-island big lie is having a lasting and damaging impacts. The number of hate crimes doubled in the days after the referendum and jumped by 41% in the month following it. Their promise was not just empty, it was also divisive and dangerous. Net migration to the UK continued to rise, while British passport-holders found they were facing rigorous border checks and sometimes missing flights or even holidays. Michael Fabricant seems not to have realised the irony in his complaints last weekend that he had to queue with his passport at airports in France.
3, Leave campaigners claimed negotiating a free trade deal with the EU would be the easiest thing imaginable and that the UK would sign numerous deals soon after leaving. Instead, negotiations took years, new trade barriers were introduced, and the UK had to leave both the single market and the customs union.
4, Leave campaigners, including Penny Mordaunt, then the Armed Forces Minister, claimed Britain would be forced to join an EU army if it stayed in the EU. Ten years later, the EU does not have a unified standing army, and both the US and Russia have done their utmost to divide Europe, particularly in terms of a response to the war in Ukraine and Putin’s campaign to undermine European unity.
5, The Leave campaign, with barely disguised anti-Muslim rhetoric, claimed Turkey, with a population of 76 million, was joining the EU. The implication was that millions of Muslim migrants would flock to the UK. Needless to say, Turkey has not joined the EU, is a further than ever from joining.
6, The more intolerant campaigners tried to insist that leaving the EU would mean leaving all international agreements. They soon learned that European Court of Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU, and was in fact the brainchild of Winston Churchill – the same Winston Churchill the far-right wants to own when it comes to rotating images on £5 notes. The UK still has responsibilities and obligations in international law.
7, Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed that Brexit would reduce the cost of clothes, food and wine by 20%. He has probably never shopped in Asda, or talked to people doing the weekly big shop, or parents on budgets buying school clothes for their children. He may know the price of a bottle of his favourite Bordeaux, Cos d’Estournel, but does he know the price of a pint of milk?
8, It was claimed that Britain’s energy bills would be slashed by £2 billion a year if voters backed Brexit, because ministers could scrap the ‘unfair’ VAT tax on gas and electricity. Boris Johnson claimed Brexit would benefit the poorest families because they pay three times more of their income on household energy bills than the richest households. Surely even Boris Johnson has noticed the rise in energy bills. This is the same Boris Johnson who later spoke about ‘levelling up’, which proved to be nothing more than empty words.
9, Tim Martin of Wetherspoons claimed he had calculated that Brexit would offer a saving of 3.5p per meal. Instead, costs in any of his pubs that I have visited have risen above inflation in the past ten years. Although, I have to admit, I have been in fewer than ten Wetherspoons in my life.
10, The greatest lie after the vote ten years ago was that Britain had voted, that No means No, and there was going to be no going back. The false logic in that would mean there should be no more general elections, the people have voted, and that’s that. And what, then, of the referendum in 1975 that decided to stay in the Common Market? Who said, in addition, that 52% of voters all voted for a ‘hard Brexit’. If even half of that 52% voted only for a ‘soft Brexit’, then 74% voted against a ‘hard Brexit’. And everyone is entitled to change her or his mind ten years later.
It was clear during the run-up to referendum in 2016, that anti-immigrant feeling could easily turn into violence. The murder of Jo Cox by a neo-Nazi was the most horrific example and came a week before the vote. We have seen in recent weeks how the most vocal Brexit campaigners have been the least willing to condemn the racist violence on the streets, and Farage traduced Jo Cox’s memory and ignored her murder when he claimed this morning in a BBC interview ‘I have been physically the most attacked and endangered politician for now well over a decade.’
Indeed, the British people had not spoken: Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain, Wales voted by a whisker to leave, England alone voted by a large margin to leave. It was hardly a united nation or a united kingdom.
All the lies I list this evening have gone unexamined and unquestioned by the right-wing newspapers that printed them. There has been no soul-searching, no acceptance that they gave the oxygen of publicity to lies and to liars, no taking responsibility for an entire nation being gaslit into voting for something that has brought immense economic damage down on the nation. There has been no remorse, no apology, no accountability. The liars still peddle their lies ten years later and a nation continues to suffer as the consequence.
