Choose your bogeyman

The politics of grievance requires a 'bogeyman'.  An all-purpose evil on which can be blamed everything that is wrong with life – and the only thing that stands between us and a vague promised utopia.

Bogeyman Politics asks you to believe that there is one simple cure for all of the interconnected problems of messy, complicated, fragile day-to-day life.  Can't get a hospital appointment?  Blame the Bogeyman.  Wages don't stretch far enough?  Blame the Bogeyman.  Can't get on the housing ladder?  Blame the Bogeyman.  Marriage breaking up?  Blame the Bogeyman.  It is a crass oversimplification, peddled by charlatans who want you to think that they alone, in this big scary world, are on your side.  It is a con.

For some, the Bogeyman is 'bankers', or 'neoliberalism'.  For others, 'Westminster'.  For many, it is 'immigration'.  For the majority of people who will vote to leave the European Union tomorrow, it is the EU that fills that role; the EU is the Bogeyman, responsible for everything bad about Britain, and the one and only thing that's holding us back from being truly great (or, if you are of a nostalgic bent, 'great again').

Real life is more complex than that.  More difficult than that.  Anyone selling you the idea you can fix all your problems with one fell swoop is not telling you the truth.

Which is why it is sad to see campaigners for the 'Remain' camp in the EU referendum rebutting the 'Leave' campaign's Bogeyman Politics with a few choice Bogeymen of their own.  All day today I have watched a steady stream of smug, supercilious Tweets and Facebook posts along the lines of "Oh, you think single issue x is to blame for everything bad? Ha! You fools! Can't you see that single issue y is to blame for everything bad…?"

No doubt the people posting this stuff think themselves very clever.  They aren't fooled by the narrative that the EU is the root cause of all our nation's problems!  They can see right through that!  They know what the true cause is.  But they have allowed themselves to be duped by a different narrative – one which is just as seductively simplistic, and just as destructively wrong.

As with most things, there is no one simple answer.  The 'Bogeyman' concept is attractive because it is comforting.  It is less frightening to be told you are a basically 'good' person who has been a victim of some malign conspiracy – and that you have it within your power to rise up and take back what is rightfully yours from those who have done you wrong – than that you are adrift on a rolling sea of entropy in the ever-changing, unforgiving, big wide world.  Having someone, or something, to blame – giving it a form, a name, a face – makes life easier to cope with.  At last, the question "Why do these things always happen to me?!" seems to have an answer.

It is an understandable, human reaction.  But political movements based on grievance, where politicians knowingly perpetuate the 'Bogeyman' narrative to mobilise great swathes of the general public, have a long and ugly track record of turning very nasty indeed.  And when campaigners for 'Remain' offer up an alternative Bogeyman as a focal point for the mystified anger of 'Leave' voters, they are guilty of it just the same.

The trouble (for both sides) comes afterwards – once the Bogeyman is slain.  The Bogeyman may have been defeated, but the problems of ordinary life have not gone away.  The hospital waiting times, the tax bills, the energy prices…  These things have not disappeared overnight.  The sunlit uplands of utopia glibly promised by the politicians who cynically played on people's fear of the Bogeyman to win votes seem as far away as ever.

And so, the search for a new Bogeyman must begin.  Something has to fill that void.  Something, or someone, has to be to blame.  Who do we think that might turn out to be?  When Britain votes to leave the European Union, and people's lives are not magically improved overnight, the public anger which did so much to drive the anti-EU movement won't just vanish – we should all be very concerned about what (or who) that ire might end up focused on next.

#EUref – time to choose

There are now only five days to go until we in the UK vote on our continued membership of the European Union.  Frankly, it can't be over soon enough.

Whilst the campaign seems to have gone on forever, and the quality and tone of the debate has often been nothing short of cringeworthy, this is a big and important decision to make.  I can honestly say I've not been so conflicted about a political issue for a long, long time – I have been genuinely undecided for the majority of the campaign, and it is only really in the last week that I have begun to marshall my thoughts, and make up my mind.

I am planning to vote to 'Remain in the European Union'.  This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, because I feel any ideological attraction to the EU.  I am no fan of the European project, and there is much of it that I view with considerable suspicion – I am voting out of pragmatism, rather than any principled commitment to the EU – so I think it is worth explaining how and why I finally decided that I am leaning toward 'Remain'.

There are cogent, sensible, respectable reasons for wanting to leave the EU.  There is a very attractive vision of Britain outside the EU.  But sadly, I think the chances of a 'Leave' vote resulting in a Britain like that is practically nil.  The majority of 'Leave' supporters do not share my vision of post-EU Britain; the majority 'Leave' view is of an insular, curmudgeonly Britain which, liberated from the shackles of EU regulation, is free to be as bitter, intolerant and cantankerous as it pleases.

For me, if voting in the referendum included an opportunity to register my opinion on what direction the country should take post-Brexit, choosing 'Leave' would be much easier.  Without that option, I fear that any 'Leave' vote will automatically be taken as an endorsement of what we might term the 'Farageist' vision for the country after leaving.  That, I am afraid, is not something I am willing to put my name to.

Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Marina Hyde sums up one of the biggest issues I would have with voting to Leave:

There are many people I respect and admire voting leave – there are people in my family voting leave. I understand their reasons. But they must stomach the reality that a vote for leave will be taken by Farage and countless others as a vote for him, a vote for his posters, a vote for his ideas, a vote for his quiet malice, a vote for his smallness in the face of vast horrors. Is it worth it?

I'm really not sure that it is.

The EU has more than its fair share of faults and foibles.  It is certainly not an institution to which I feel any kind of emotional attachment; if I felt there was a good chance things would turn out OK afterwards, leaving it would cause me no pain.

'Remain' is the safer option.  'Remain' is a vote for continuation, not upheaval.  Despite what prominent Brexit activists might say, it is not 'scaremongering' to say that voting to 'Leave' is taking a leap into the unknown.  None of this means that Britain 'could not survive' outside the European Union, of course; 'Leave' campaigners who take a leaf out of the Scottish Nationalists' playbook by accusing those who point out these risks of 'talking Britain down' as being 'too small, and too poor' to prosper on our own, are tilting at straw men.  (And they probably know it, too.)

But just as I wrote last month that Jeremy Corbyn does not get to distance himself from the rest of the 'Remain' campaign and still be 'Remain', neither would I get to specify that my 'Leave' vote were somehow different from most of the people voting the same way.  No, my vote to 'Leave' would be lumped in with the votes of people from UKIP and Britain First – and it would be assumed that I had voted for the same thing they did, and that I want Great Britain to be the same the country they want it to be.

I don't.  And I don't hold out much hope for the voices of people like me being heard, in the event of a vote to leave the EU.  And that is why I think it will be best if I vote 'Remain'.

Of course Britain would prosper outside of the EU. Of course the EU isn't perfect. Of course it isn't racist to acknowledge that. But if you are voting 'Leave' for a more open, inclusive, positive, globalist Britain – as I would be, if I were to vote 'Leave' – you won't get it. We won't get it.

What we will get will be Nigel Farage and his ilk smugly parading around, pointing to the referendum result and declaring "See? We said most people in this country agreed with us! And look…!"

How ever little love I may have for the European Union, I really don't think I am prepared to vote for an option which will empower Farage and those like him to posture and preen and proudly hold my vote aloft as proof that the public shares their vision for Britain.

I don't share it. I don't endorse it. And I don't want – even accidentally – to get mixed up with those who do. I may not like the EU much, but I would rather vote to 'Remain' than see this brilliant nation turn into the type of country UKIP would like it to be, and know that I had had a hand in that.

#EUref: pick a side

A headline in yesterday's Telegraph that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will refuse to 'share a platform' with David Cameron when campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union will have come as no surprise for anyone who has followed the rise of Corbyn, and seen him to be the lightweight, petulant egotist that he undoubtedly is.  However, it was – in my view – indicative of how widespread certain misconceptions about referendum campaigning have become.

In writing before about how the conflation of a national plebiscite with traditional party politics has seeped into the mainstream, I have laid much of the blame for this at the door of the SNP – but this way of thinking is becoming more and more prevalent across the political spectrum, and I think it bears another look.

Spoke with Osborne and Balls supporting Remain. Economic case becoming overwhelming. Happy to put old quarrels aside to support Remain.

— Vince Cable (@vincecable) May 16, 2016

He gets it…

For the benefit of those who haven't quite grasped this yet, it is worth making very clear that in a referendum, there are only two sides.  You do not get your own side, all to yourself.  This means that if you are a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning for 'Remain', you are on the same side as David Cameron; you are on the same side as George Osborne; you are on the same side as Theresa May; you are on the same side as Ryanair.  You may not like it, but you are – because, on this one issue (even if on nothing else), you want the same outcome as them.

You could avoid that by being a Labour MP or activist who is campaigning to 'Leave' the EU, of course.  But then you would be on the same side as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, George Galloway and Katie Hopkins.  Whether you like it or not.

It is a common obfuscation to claim that even if you agree with the Prime Minister that Britain should stay in the EU, you fundamentally disagree with him about what the EU should look like, and what Britain's role in the union should be – and that this makes your position distinct from his.

The referendum is not about that.  This is a single-issue vote; Remain, or Leave.  Pick a side.  There is no third option where you get to say "I'm basically Remain…  But not like he is!"  Remain is Remain; it's as simple as that.

This, after all, is surely the point of holding a referendum on the topic at all?  It (in theory, at least) allows the campaign to strip away all the other gumf and focus purely on the issue, getting away from the "we are the good people, and that makes us different from those bad people" bloviating that we see so often in day-to-day party politics.

In refusing to put aside his differences with the Prime Minister in order to campaign on their one point of common ground in the run-up to this vote, Corbyn shows us that keeping his image intact is more important to him than the cause he professes to support – and once again makes the conversation about him, rather than about the topic at hand.

Both sides of the #Brexit debate are thoroughly winding me up

Yesterday’s fresh new crime fiction, The Incident Of The Churchill Bust, proved to be an illustrative, if irritating, episode in showing just how crass and puerile both side of the EU Referendum debate in this country are becoming.

Keen to discredit Barack Obama’s recent intervention in the referendum campaign – which saw Obama firmly endorse a vote to ‘Remain’ in the EU – and paint the President as embittered and anti-British, the ‘Leave’ side pushed a narrative in which he had ordered a bust of Winston Churchill to be removed from the Oval Office to to cop a snook at the United Kingdom.  In response, the ‘Remain’ side put about that this never actually happened, referring to it as a ‘myth’.

The truth of the matter, of course, was neither one thing nor the other.  Obama himself seems to have confirmed that he did in fact have one of the two Churchill busts in question removed – but that this was not out of any disrespect for Churchill, or for Britain generally.  And yet, both the Leavers and the Remainers have seized upon this completely innocuous, barely relevant story and wrung its neck until it appears to support their case.

With a full two months yet to go in this campaign, it is depressing to see both sides fixating on such a triviality.  If every tiny murmur of a story is going to make both camps work themselves into a lather simplifying and twisting each detail to make it appear favourable to their cause, I don't know how much more of this I'll be able to take; far from ‘engaging’ me in a question of national importance, such petty bickering over nothing makes me want to knock all their heads together and call the whole thing off.  Oh god, can’t it just end?

How the SNP ruined referenda for all of us

As a bit of a politics nerd (yes, I admit it), I have been looking forward to the pageantry around this referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.  There’s something about these political events – whatever they are ultimately about – which thrills and fascinates.

The debates!  The interviews!  The triumphs!  The cock-ups!  Staying up all night eating curry and watching David Dimbleby filling time as the results slowly filter in!  I love it.

But this excitement has been spoilt somewhat by those killjoys in the SNP.  Ever since the Scottish people’s own referendum on their national future in September 2014, those who campaigned for Scotland to leave the UK have made it their business to ruin not just this referendum, but all referenda.  Never again can we sip from the cup of a national plebiscite, without tasting the taint of Scottish nationalism.

The simple fact is that the tactics of the SNP and their supporters have changed the way that referenda in this country are fought – and, in my view, not for the better.

But in order to understand how this affects the upcoming referendum on the EU, let us first briefly examine the two key faults at the core of the way the SNP operates.

The first is that the SNP and its party machinery are seemingly unable to view politicians and activists (of any party) as individuals.  This is a topic I have touched on before.  The SNP is the only party in the UK whose rules actively prohibit its MPs from speaking out against party policy.  There can be no ‘rebels’; no dissenters; no brave individuals who put principles before career prospects to defy the party whip.  Not in the SNP.

No, the gradually dwindling numbers of SNP MPs in the House Of Commons (we all know it started out as fifty-six, but two have already been suspended by the party…) speak with one voice on every issue.  All of the (almost) one-and-a-half million Scottish voters who chose the SNP at the 2015 General Election might just as well be represented in Westminster by one single person, voting on all issues according to Nicola Sturgeon’s orders.  (Maybe that’s something they should look into?  It might at least save a bit on Parliamentary travel expenses.)

The second is the SNP’s unshakeable belief that the only thing which really matters is Scotland’s independence.  Any other political problems are subsumed by this one great issue.  Tax?  Health?  Education?  Infrastructure?  It doesn’t matter what the challenges facing these policy areas – all will be solved in the blink of an eye, come Independence Day.  And, until independence, there is nothing that can be done about any of them, so they may as well go hang.

These two central conceits were underlined for me recently by a conversation I had with an SNP activist while a protest march against the Trident nuclear weapons system was occurring in London.  I challenged something that he wrote on Twitter about the future of Trident; his response was, weirdly, about Scotland.  Apparently, I was wrong about Trident because “I didn’t understand the Scottish people”; I tried to say that I wasn’t talking about Scotland as a nation, or as a people, but that I was responding to what he had posted on the topic of nuclear missiles – but he was unable to make the distinction.

Within a few Tweets, our Nationalist friend had successfully twisted my disagreeing with one specific thing he had said about Trident into me being somehow anti- the entire country of Scotland and its population.  Because no issue, and no policy, can be discussed without it inexorably transforming into The Scottish Matter.  And because ‘The Scottish People’ (whose ‘mindset’ I was assured I ‘didn’t understand’) are one homogeneous groupthinking bloc, rather than over five million individuals representing a plurality of opinion across all areas of policy.  Such is the SNP mentality: everything is about Scotland, always – and all Scots think alike, on every issue.

So where does this leave our European plebiscite?  A referendum in this country has traditionally transcended ordinary party politics.  Faced with an issue deemed to be of such burning national importance that it is not enough for our elected representatives simply to vote on our behalves in Parliament, as is normal for most day-to-day political decisions, the usual rules and ways of operating are thrown out of the window.  The party whips are suspended, and the campaign is not split along party lines like at a general election.  Strange alliances are forged – fractious, often, but motivated.  This is not ‘politics as usual’.

The SNP, it appears, cannot understand this.  The fact that the ‘Better Together’ campaign – which pushed for, and eventually won, a majority ‘No’ vote in Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014 – was supported by all three of the major UK political parties has become a standard campaigning tool for the Nationalists.  That Labour (traditionally the SNP’s main opposition in Scotland) had campaigned on this issue alongside the Conservatives makes them – apparently – ‘no better than the Tories’.  (And what worse insult could there possibly be, for anyone whose understanding of politics reaches no further than the end of his own nose?!)

Once again, we see how the importance of the independence debate sweeps aside all other concerns, in the eyes of the SNP faithful – that Labour and the Tories agree on Scotland’s constitutional future makes them politically identical, no matter how many other major policy areas they vehemently disagree on.  “Who cares if Labour and the Conservatives disagree on far more policies than they agree on?!”, say the SNP supporters; they agree on the only one which actually matters, so they can be lumped in together for all time.

(Of course this ignores even the basic maths of a referendum.  With only two possible outcomes to choose from – ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – there is bound to be some overlap in campaigning.  There are simply not enough answers on the ballot paper for all the political parties involved to have one each, so you will, at some point, inevitably find yourself on the same side as politicians who are normally your opponents.  But then, figures aren’t exactly the SNP’s strong point, are they…?)

“Well, what a short-sighted, obstinate, overly simplistic view of party politics!” you might very well be thinking now.  Well, yes.  Exactly.  And yet this pervasive, barely-literate nonsense is now shaping the way our politicians are gearing up for the referendum on the European Union.

Keen not to be tarred with the same brush as their sworn political enemies, simply because they happen to feel the same about one point of policy, MPs now seem reticent to engage in the very cross-party campaigning which makes a referendum campaign different, and worth having at all.  The fear of ‘sharing a platform’ with one’s usual political enemies – and the damage this could do to one’s own political image and career in the future – is distracting from the more pressing matter of actually campaigning for the result one believes is best for the country.

If this – or any – matter is of enough significance to be put to the population as a whole to vote on, rather than being left to representatives in the Commons and the Lords, is it not also important enough to put aside party political bickering and campaign alongside whoever happens to want the same outcome as you?

In a referendum such as this, you don’t get to choose your allies – you work with whoever happens to agree with you as to the best path for the country to take.  And you should reasonably expect to do so without the threat of this being held up as a stain on your character in years to come, once the referendum is over and political life has gone back to normal.

If some cabinet ministers believe Britain should remain in the EU, while other ministers feel strongly we should leave, they should be free to campaign on whichever side of the argument they wish.  It is not ‘weak’ of the Prime Minister to allow his ministers this freedom – and it is not very edifying to see politicians from other parties attempting to portray him as such, choosing petty political points-scoring over the matter at hand.

And if a politician from any party finds himself by some happenstance on the same side of this debate as a politician from another party (which – as I have said – is mathematically certain to happen, given the limited number of options for campaigning), this does not suddenly make the two politicians, or their two parties, indistinguishable from each other on all matters.  It would be sheer folly to suppose it did.  And yet, that has been the SNP’s take on things for over two years, now – and it is a view starting to permeate the mainstream national consciousness.

I can’t help but feel sad that the SNP’s small-minded, parochial mentality is being allowed to set the agenda for a national question about which many people feel very strongly – and as a result, we are all being denied a proper referendum campaign which truly cuts across, rather than entrenches, party lines.

What do we gain from #Brexit?

We know, now, the date of Britain's referendum on membership of the European Union – 23rd June.  Soon, the campaigning will begin in ernest, as politicians attempt to convince us either to 'Remain' a member, or 'Leave' the EU.

Personally, I am undecided on how I will vote.  I can see good arguments on both sides – and I can see wild hysteria and condescension on both sides too.  However, it's my view that the burden of proof is on those who wish to 'Leave'.

The lawyer and legal commentator David Allen Green writes on his blog Jack Of Kent that he is 'neutral' about 'Brexit', observing that the referendum's outcome will make little difference to law and policy, on a practical level.  Neutral, perhaps – but in reality this is a de facto argument to 'Remain'.  If things will be basically the same either way, why would we go through all the hassle of leaving, and all the tremendous upheaval that will entail?  Unless we can be fairly sure that getting out of the EU will tangibly improve life for most people in Britain, aren't we better off just staying as we are?

To my mind, 'Brexit' is not a matter of life-and-death.  The UK will basically be fine, whatever happens.  For all that the zealots on both sides of the argument would have us believe otherwise, neither result will truly be a catastrophe.  Maybe I will lose some friends by saying that – but friendship shouldn't be contingent on sharing a particular viewpoint on the European Union, should it?

But as I say, the onus is on the 'Leave' camp to make their case – and unless they can convince me of some very real benefits of leaving the EU (and I am still open to being persuaded), I shall end up as 'Remain' by default.

Maybe this seems uncaring, or half-hearted; a rather uninspiring way to make a decision about the future of the country.  But if it would be a touch unfair to say this is a vote about minutiae, it is at least a vote about something which few people really see as the crucial matter of our time.

For those of us who follow politics closely, it's a chance to spend a second year in a row geekishly obsessing over exit polls and sitting up all night eating takeaway food and watching David Dimbleby looking for something to say to fill in time – however, I think the wonks who inhabit the fringes of political society for whom Europe has always been a burning issue seriously overestimate the number of people who hold strong, passionate opinions about the EU.

To large amounts of people, the European Union matters vastly less than those who shout the loudest on either side of the debate could possibly comprehend.  Plenty of people are, like me, quite happy muddling along as we are – unless the case emerges that 'Brexit' would leave us decidedly better off.  Perhaps the initiative in this referendum campaign will ultimately be seized by whoever is the first to grasp this.

No one can have principles except me

A curious trait of many who are politically active is the strange way they seem to think that they (and those who agree with them) alone have a monopoly on 'principles'.  This is, of course, an extension of their political outlook generally – these are people, after all, for whom politics is about 'belief' and fervour, not objectivism and reasoned discussion.  But it leads to a logical fallacy, which these people can only fail to see due to their commitment to 'the cause' consuming the rational part of their brain.

If it is possible to take a strong, principled stance in favour of something, then it stands to reason that it is possible to be equally strong and principled in opposing that same thing.  This is common sense.

It is, however, difficult – almost impossible, in fact – to get anyone (regardless of where on the political spectrum they might sit) who truly believes in their political cause to concede this self-evident fact.

Whether we're talking about hardline UKIP 'Brexit-eers', or committed Corbynites, the attitudes are always the same.

I'm sure. They see their careers terminated or on hold. Instead of turning on Cameron, it's JC who is their enemy. https://t.co/4z93azO3nW

— John McPartland (@McPartlandJohn) January 23, 2016

Yes.  The reason 'moderate' Labour MPs are criticising their party leader is because they are venal careerists and they are scared; in the mind of a Corbyn loyalist like McPartland, this is the only explanation there can possibly be – he simply cannot comprehend the idea that MPs might hold different ideas from Jeremy Corbyn for genuine reasons, and that they might believe them and fight for them just as passionately as Corbyn himself fights for his own ideals.

Tory cabinet Ministers 2 worried about climbing greasy pole & Ministerial salary, rather than the interests of Brits https://t.co/g5h3SoD3hO

— uKipaLotmoreIan (@UkipaLotMoreIan) February 2, 2016

It's never occurred to Ian that these cabinet ministers might have weighed up the arguments on both sides very carefully and genuinely concluded that remaining in the European Union might actually be in 'the interests of Brits'.  I'm not saying they have, necessarily – maybe Ian is right that some ministers' reasons for not endorsing 'Brexit' owe more to expediency than conviction – but he can't be sure of that, and neither can I.  The possibility does exist that some ministers might have chosen not to campaign to leave the EU because they genuinely feel that staying in is the right choice, rather than because they are afraid to lose their salaries.

But fanatics like these cannot allow such impure thoughts to pollute their minds.  To admit that the enemy might actually be a relatively decent, normal guy who just happens to have a different outlook on certain issues – rather than an agent of evil itself whose dastardly propaganda racket must be smashed – is to admit defeat.

It is this demagoguery which allows activists to fight for their causes so passionately.  The single-minded belief that we are right because we have principles – whilst anyone who disagrees with us is necessarily a scurrilous, treacherous, two-faced, good-for-nothing hypocrite who's only looking out for himself – allows the movement (whatever it may be) to affect an air of moral superiority and rise above the petty objections of 'facts' and 'data'.

Most people, however, are (rightly) sceptical of zealots.  For the average person in the street – the very person, often, who needs to be convinced of one point-of-view or another – the ardour of anyone banging the drum too loudly, or too often, will actually be quite off-putting.  Such dogma – and such refusal to countenance the idea that the other side might, just occasionally, not be total schmucks – ends up being damaging to the cause.

But for an activist truly to dedicate him- or herself to a cause, he or she must completely believe that those who disagree are not just wrong, but malign.  These are people who have convinced themselves that they are fighting the good fight; that they, and they alone, are on the side of righteousness, justice, freedom and truth; and that it therefore follows that anyone opposed to their agenda has a sinister ulterior motive.

In short, they are deluded.  And they wonder why the rest of the population views them with such deep suspicion…?!