Realising that I had fought in an actual war, without picking up arms or donning a uniform, didn’t come to me immediately. Although defeated it hadn’t actually dawned on me until a little over 4 years after the BREXIT referendum. This notion had nothing to do with the way I cast my vote and the manner in which it exposed itself, began in the most mundane of environments: the bathroom.
It usually takes me circa 30 minutes to complete the morning ablutions. Looking this good can take time. During that period, apart from the shower element, I have used this solitude to learn: the lyrics of my favourite songs so that I can better imagine wowing that Glastonbury audience, listening to LBC radio to better develop my influencing and investigative skills by listening to the frequently squirming politicians who very often contradict the same inconsistencies that they blurted out at the start of the interview and listening to sections of the odd documentary.
Half an hour is, by contrast, an enormous length of time for the digestion of information since our modern day lives are driven by our digital news agenda and instant messaging. A tweet (not exceeding 280 characters) has almost become the norm in terms of cognitive exchange. Give it to me short, sharp and at speed. The victims of this methodology are usually thoughtful debate, eloquence and, very often, the truth. I have estimated that this piece will take about 20 minutes to read. In real terms 4 sit downs on the Armitage Shanks or roughly a little over 93 tweets. Taken in bite size chunks even complex issues can be easily digested.
As I have failed to master the art of downloading any music onto my mobile I seek sanctuary with YouTube. I can even talk into this wicked application. Utterly amazing! The hidden algorithms also recognise themes suggesting often annoying adverts and links to other like material. So, I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised that the frequent playing of, amongst other rousing military film scores, the Battle of Britain theme would ultimately lead to some other fascinating, and unplanned, terrain. Why that particular piece of music? Obvious. Well at least to me. In addition to being a belting tune it typified being British. Courageous, strong, resilient with a never say die attitude. Britain is the best! And if I had been born in another country that would, no doubt, have been the best too.
YouTube made the background links to other social media elements as I felt energised by the music, shaving my face and bald head with aplomb! The documentary, “How Hitler lost the War” caught my eye and I was encouraged to press the play button. What followed was my eureka moment. According to the common myth Archimedes was in the bath when he blurted out the same immortal word. I was in good company since I was standing next to it.
In a nutshell, the narrator claimed that Hitler had lost the War as a consequence of an error of judgement by a crew of a lost German bomber who mistakenly emptied their payload over London. This event triggered an immediate retaliatory strike on Berlin that totally undermined the Fuehrer’s ideology that deemed that German Cities would be safe from devastation by the RAF. Prior to this blunder the German strategy was text book conventional warfare: control the skies, take out the main infrastructure, especially military bases and key aerodromes, thereby allowing a ground assault to break the will of the invaded people and acquisition of valuable territory was complete. All very traditional, injurious to both sides and costly.
As a consequence of the Berlin raid Hitler began the blitzkrieg of London and took the focus away from obliterating the RAF on the ground thus allowing our airfields to be repaired. Whilst Londoners took the punishment the RAF regrouped, repaired, and readied for the ensuing Battle of Britain. The rest, as they say, is history.
Post shower the wheels began to turn inside my head. I felt drawn to my sense of Britishness again this time without the aid of the stirring soundtrack. Then, somewhat surprisingly, the notion of how much easier it would be for an aggressor to simply ask their victims to give them what they wanted without being combative entered my headspace. This daft notion began to gain some traction as I deduced that successful conventional warfare ultimately achieved a change of mindset in the defeated either willingly or otherwise. What if you could shortcut the carnage and still change the will of the target population? But first my sense of national identity called more strongly.
As a Law graduate I am familiar with constitutional law. In essence the laws, both common and statute, and the conventions that, bound together, underpin our unwritten constitution. The rules we British call democracy. The pillars of our democracy: Government, Parliament, and the Judiciary. The first duty of Government is to protect us from foreign threats, whilst Parliament creates the Laws that protect our internal security. The judiciary provide fair play. Without this particular function of State, we Brits would claim that it simply wasn’t cricket.
These elements resonate loudly with my sense of being British. Yet I was also aware of a couple of other key pillars, unconventional to many legal scholars, yet nonetheless institutions that made Britain the best place to live on the globe and deserving of the precursor of the word Great: the NHS and free speech amplified by the media which in my lifetime had morphed from daily newsprint and structured news bulletins into a 24-hour bombardment via the seemingly unstoppable wave of social media. These strong pillars when woven together gave me a real feeling of what it is to be British. I felt proud once again.
It then occurred to me what would happen to my identity if any of these pillars were weakened? What if, like a series of dominoes, the whole lot wobbled so uncontrollably that some actually crashed into a neighbour causing destruction on an unprecedented scale? Would my clear and unshakable concept of being British change? I concluded that it would. I then made the leap back to traditional warfare and the aforesaid pillars (differing in other countries but nevertheless consistent in terms of creating what it feels like to be German, American, French, etc.) which if disrupted by violence would nonetheless lead to a change of mindset in the defeated and in doing so ultimately challenge their national identity. But was violence the only mechanism that could successfully topple the pillars? I suddenly realised after a period of time that it wasn’t. Influence, often subtle, unchallenged, and reinforced, could also do the same.
The central plank of the BREXIT Leave campaign message was both ingenious and as far reaching as the mind was prepared to ponder: Take Back Control. In other words, the case for the prosecution.
This claim suggested that Britain had lost control. Lost sovereignty. The very core of being British. Making our own rules (Parliament) was a principle belief in my sense of being British. Was this not as certain as I thought? The debate flowed, unsurprisingly, into the realms of national security undermined, as the assertions continued, by unregulated immigration.
Government looked decidedly fragile too. Could this body really protect us from foreign threats? To finally disturb the foundations that had hitherto supported our essence of Britishness, that now resembled a quagmire unable to support the core values, the realisation that those from over there (the nebulous EU) were a bunch of unelected bureaucrats who sucked us dry of money like a leach leaving our precious NHS weak and ill equipped to look after us took hold.
The colossal sum of money paid every week was paraded around the country on the side of a bus transporting our future prime minister. Our economic wellbeing was also under a real and present peril since freedom of movement provided the antithesis to the Government’s promise to protect us both physically and economically.
The bowl of unfairness overflowed. This was not Cricket. Not British. And to cap it all Parliament had lost its ability to make our own laws. The pillar of free speech the epitome of Britishness and as important as the Union flag provided the masses with the necessary newsfeeds and intelligence to help the majority of us determine that the EU was the aggressor and we needed to fight back, especially since the remaining tower of our constitution, the judiciary, had to kneel before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) who had forced Human Rights legislation upon us.
How the hell had we ever allowed Great Britain to occupy this subordinate position? Where had our Roar gone? Then I played the Battle of Britain theme in my head. We had won two World Wars too. Britain was under attack again.
That is the case for the prosecution. Yet could any true Brit ignore the defence? The EU may be bereft of scruples, but our constitution was built on the Rule of Law: the fundamental cross checking of the opposite view in order that sound judgement could be administered. So, I present to you the defence.
The creation of the EU as it is today had somewhat humble beginnings with the trade of coal between hitherto frequent enemies France and Germany after WW2. Previously Europe had been a hotbed of conflict and the primary thinking behind mutually advantageous trade was the hopeful reduction in military conflict. This trading enterprise grew and nearly three decades later Britain joined too. As a method of maintaining peace the EU had passed with a reasonably glowing report.
However, as it expanded so did the nature and reach of the, by now, second largest economy on Earth. Functions such as the ECJ were established and the Euro became the primary currency. The former was never binding on the UK courts and the latter was never adopted as a direct consequence of our special membership deal. Contrary to popular belief the Human Rights Act 1998 is British law and was never imposed upon us by the ECJ. Indeed, following the cessation of hostilities in WW2 British lawyers significantly shaped the early European bill of rights. No one would take control of sterling or indeed tell our courts what to do.
The EU, like any other mature and democratic institution, is populated by elected Members of the European Parliament (MEP’s). Yes, democratically elected by the people of the individual nation states sitting under the umbrella of proportional representation. Germany, with the largest population, had the most followed by France then Britain (only by virtue of one less then France). EU commissioners are elected by national governments. No unelected members here. Please move on.
In essence the big three controlled the whole of the European continent (a tad below 7% of the land mass of the World, or in reality more since I guess we should ignore Antarctica). As France relies heavily on the trade in agriculture with Britain and German likewise in terms of industrial production the big three would always look after each other. By maintaining the Pound Britain had the economic edge and was always better insulated from any meltdowns in the Euro, especially in the poorer southern member states. Practically speaking Britain bossed much of what it surveyed up to the border of Russia. So much for taking back control there.
MEP’s create laws in the form of regulations and directives. Broadly speaking health and safety standards that engage with, amongst other matters, goods, food, medicines and production. Workers’ rights and freedom of movement also came into the mix. But remember that whatever laws were passed in the EU there would always be a bias towards the big three and in particular Britain. The EU has never made British law. I will repeat that again: The EU has never made British law. By way of the European Communities Act 1972 (UK legislation) EU regulations and directives became British law, but then again by the time they were given ascendancy by virtue of the 1972 Act of Parliament such legal obligations were already heavily weighted in our favour.
Freedom of movement (a reciprocal arrangement for British citizens too) was a contradiction in terms as there was no such thing. It was a qualified right that meant that a series of stringent restrictions applied allowing a member state to repatriate any individual who did not maintain the required standards of financial independence. Simply signing on to our benefit system was never permissible.
The UK border agency simply did not have the capacity to deport some EU nationals who ironically increased our gross domestic product (GDP) by accepting poor pay for the jobs that most of us Brits didn’t fancy doing in the first place. Successive Governments were less than enamoured by the prospect of sending such people back home since significant parts of our domestic economy boomed as a result of a low wage market. Such migration should not be confused with those who seek asylum from war torn epicentres such as Syria and Libya where, arguably, our own foreign policy created much of the backdraft. This was never an issue that could be attributed to our membership of the EU.
If all else failed, Britain had the doctrine of Parliamentary Supremacy. No other authority can stand above the British Parliament in the whole Universe let alone Europe. As a first-year law under-graduate I learnt that if Parliament were so minded it could enact a law that made it illegal to be French in France. Consequently, if any EU law had caused offence domestically, Parliament could block it. Like it did with any notion that we should adopt the Euro. Sure, there were potential financial penalties but in reality as the 6th largest economy on the planet any adverse consequences were limited. So much for the EU making our laws and telling us Brits what to do.
So, to the cost of it all. £350 million per week? In 2018 the UK Government paid £13 billion into the EU coffers. However, the amount the EU reinvested in UK infrastructure and public services was £4 billion and our specially agreed rebate, negotiated by the late Margaret Thatcher, was an additional £4 billion too. Not included within this calculation was the benefit to our economy of overseas investment due to the stability of the UK and its influence over Europe (estimated by the International Monetary Fund as a generous net gain to the UK), frictionless tariff free trade with the significant benefit of the economies of scale and open collaboration on matters of, for example, education, security (and especially counter terrorism) space exploration and health. The later issue presents a chilling obstruction to the vital and unhindered transportation of isotopes that help cure and manage cancer patients from other EU member states into Britain, especially since half of us will be a cancer victim.
The bus slogan was wholly wrong and utterly misleading. So much for making a saving and reinvesting it back into our beloved NHS. I am pretty convinced that the brutality of austerity could only amplify this feeling of financial betrayal.
Yet, as I sometimes hear, “they all lied!” If you are one of these protagonists are you for real? Or more certain are you British? Granted that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne MP did state that if Leave won there would be an imminent emergency budget yet this was averted by Mark Carney , the Governor of the Bank of England, who reached for the quantitative easing lever and showered the economy with a created short-term wealth typed out on his laptop.
In summing up the defence, had Britain really lost its sovereignty that the leave slogan deemed we had to wrestle back? I would say categorically no.
The sovereignty of Parliament is a fundamental principle of the UK constitution. Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.
If you baulked at this summation in the previous paragraph please read it again. These are not my words but a verbatim record of The Government policy paper (item 2.1) entitled ‘The United Kingdom’s exit from, and new partnership with, the European Union’ (May 2017).
How were the majority of voters then made to feel this way, especially as prior to the referendum being announced the intricacies of EU membership were never a topic of general conversation around the dinner table or down The Dog and Duck?
Furthermore, if you wanted to denounce the case for the defence I would be minded to conclude my address even more robustly: If Britain left the EU, we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by Brussels.
If that causes you to spit venom in my direction please reread and note that these are the words of Boris Johnson MP expressing his opinion in 2013. Having read his entertaining book, The Churchill Factor, his solidarity with the EU project was palpable.
So why did the defence fail so miserably? Perhaps it was so soundly drowned out by the remaining institution that the defence has yet to call: the media.
Our newsprint is owned by a discrete number of generally secretive super rich individuals who have their own narrow agenda.
British TV likewise has a small band of wealthy influencing owners. The Murdoch dynasty is perhaps the best example. During the pre-BREXIT debate the notion of experts was bizarrely rubbished by Michael Gove MP whilst a plethora of amateurs were paraded as equally weighted opposition. The British vernacular of comparing apples with apples rarely appeared on the menu.
The phrase WTO (World Trade Organisation) became mainstream as callers to various radio phone-ins spoke of this default position in the same manner as one would talk about the weather. The fact that President Trump had blocked the reappointment of one of the WTO’s appeal judges thus disabling the mechanism was not, apparently, a reason to be feared. The often-charismatic rabble-rousing cheerleaders nonetheless continued, unabated, to champion the fact that the EU needed the UK more than we needed them and we could have our cake and eat it too. There were absolutely no downsides. Who wouldn’t vote for that? The remain campaign were culpable too by failing to present the case for the defence.
Consistently humming away in the background 24-7 was the machinery of social media with its sophisticated algorithms that bombarded users with those misleading yet seemingly accurate information, for example the imminent influx of 70 million immigrants from Turkey when they were given membership of the EU. Had social media achieved the status mooted by Karl Marx and finally become the opium of the people?
The complexities of geopolitical relationships were conveniently wrapped around three words: Take back control. Explaining how to boil an egg would have a greater number of words.
Collectively media connected purposely misleading data with the fear that Britain was under attack. Panic is a significant motivator and it only takes a few apprehensive individuals to encourage a disproportionately number of others to follow. It only takes one person to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded auditorium for many others to flee. Fear makes others follow. In addition, as exposed in the docudrama ‘BREXIT: The uncivil war’, a gigantic portion of the disenfranchised population not registered to vote were targeted with a clear leave bias. The nerdy schoolboy ease in which this process can be facilitated is brilliantly yet chillingly exposed by Christopher Wylie in his book Mindf*ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to break the World.
Fair play? The British way? Never! My viewpoint was also reflected by the Electoral Commission.
Yet BREXIT had created such a velocity that the defence argument, if ever articulated with the same vigour as one would expect if you were standing in the dock at the Old Bailey on trial for a heinous crime, was consumed by the vibrant and colossal pandemonium of the ensuing battle against the convenient patsy: The EU.
The referendum result created a new narrative that democracy was won by the swashbuckling BREXITEERS whilst the miserable losers, Remoaners, were unpatriotic and unworthy of respect. Yet this logic was false as the UK is a qualified democracy: Parliamentary democracy is not a pure or even representative democracy. The ‘will of the people’ has never been sovereign. Power is in the hands of a select number of Parliamentarians who act on individual conscience to ultimately decide what is best for the nation. Not what their individual constituencies necessarily declared. If you are a parent you will identify with the notion that given the democratic choice ice cream would probably be the staple diet of all young children. Parents have a vital responsibility. So do Parliamentarians.
The referendum became divisive. Families fell out and relationships failed. The keep it simple narrative of ‘we won, you lost’ has failed to heal the angst. As the UK wrestled to leave Parliament was accused by many observers of frustrating the will of the people. As premier Theresa May stood at the lectern outside number 10 Downing Street she said the same. Yet in a twist of irony, lost on many voters, Parliament showed its total supremacy by dismissing the will of the people. If it could ignore the majority of its own citizens then why would it ever be in fear of the EU?
Where was the modelling undertaken by the ‘SPADS’ (special advisors)? Those unelected super-intelligent Government advisors, some of which have the ear of the most senior of our elected officials, who must have predicted how a narrow win either way would inevitably lead to the type of eternal anguish typified by the Maradona ‘hand of God’ goal in the 1986 World Cup defeat of England. A comprehensive majority would have nullified this emotional drain. Rather like on 17th November 1977 at Saltergate when I witnessed Chesterfield beat my Dad’s team Reading 7-1, after the visitors had taken the lead. At 5-1 some of the more pragmatic Reading fans were cheering on the Spireites to add to their tally! The SPADS had, at best, been absent or caught with their pants down. Never the British way.
As this torturous process continued up until the general election in December 2019 was it surprising that the battle-weary British population wanted this pain to be over? ‘Get BREXIT done’ was the antidote. The simple one pill solution. The malaise of battle fatigue was unmistakable.
I had been in a war. Not a conventional one but one that nonetheless had damaged my country. I was, and still remain, unclear if British identity has been broken too? The pillars of my Britishness, but I acknowledge not necessarily yours, lay around me bomb damaged. Not by explosive weapons but by the deliberate power of an aggressor that even I struggled to identify.
The Battle of Britain (10th July–31st October 1940) gave the nation a significant pause prior to the much later and decisive Allied Operation Overlord (6th June–25th August 1944) that culminated in the successful invasion of Nazi occupied Western Europe. The key word in the last sentence is Allied. We didn’t do this alone.
In conclusion, who were the perpetrators of the 2016 War? Who were the victors? And what are the spoils?
The Russia Report was released in full by The Intelligence and Security Committee, after a period of intentional stalling by the incumbent Government, exclusively driven by the stroke of midnight appointment of Dr Julian Lewis MP as chair who immediately had the Conservative Party whip removed after he ousted the Government’s preferred candidate and ardent BREXITEER Chris Grayling MP. Not even a suspension in play to check VAR (Video Assistant Referee) or a verdict from the Umpire.
Luminaries such as The Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab MP concluded that Russia sought to interfere in the last general election. Furthermore, and to underline the terrifying smash, grab and interfere of Russian cybercrime the attempt to steal our COVID-19 vaccine research data too. To assume that the 2016 referendum was in some way inoculated against this meddling would be best served by cockney rhyming slang, “You are having a bath!” Indeed, as the report stated, the Government didn’t even look and have since categorically asserted that they will not back either. When suspicious, we Brits always look, at least, under the bed.
Which external regime would profit most from the destabilisation of the geo-political alliances across Europe much of which had been honed so incredibly to defeat the Nazi’s?
Internally, which actors will profit from the relaxation of, amongst other safeguards that great rafts of Britons have enjoyed without really appreciating their significance, food standards and employment rights? America has a culture of poor food hygiene and processing standards that unsurprisingly create medical complications later in life. The big US pharmaceuticals lie in wait to treat these steady streams of patients who, without a free at access health provision, have to pay for treatment. In 2008 the estimated yearly medical costs of obesity were $147 billion. Big business. EU medial standards are peerless. I love visiting the USA, but I do not want to live in the 51st State.
I very much doubt that the eventual spoils, which follow the end of the transition period on 31st December 2020 that has yet to achieve the ‘easiest deal in history’ (Dr Liam Fox MP) or an oven ready one (promised by the Prime Minister) and will see significant disruptions to trade and travel epitomised by border red tape measures amounting to £7 billion per year for British business (Michael Gove MP) and a huge lorry park in Ashford to name but a couple, will fall to those voters who convincingly said, “we knew what we were voting for!”
BREXIT never did reflect the core values of Britishness and continuing to claim that the deception was the way we do things in our magnificent country is foolish in the extreme. Sleight of hand displayed by a skilled magician is entertaining and enthralling. Yet it should never be considered as binding. Chopping legs off for real leads to permanent disability.
How I miss being British.
© Ian Kirke 2020 & photograph