In the country of the blind
The old adage goes “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. However, in the short story “Country of the Blind” by H.G. Wells, the people determine that the one-eyed man is disabled by his ability to see, and propose to put out his eye.
I am feeling a little like the one-eyed man – truth be told, I’ve been feeling that way since 2016, when the Brexit referendum result became apparent, and this was hugely redoubled last year when the country gave Boris Johnson’s Tories an 80 seat majority in parliament, largely on the basis of a set of perhaps 50 seats in which the best interests of the voters were obviously served by a government as left-wing as people could bring themselves to vote for, seats which had been neglected and ravaged by the austerity policies practiced by 10 years of Tory governments past. I’ve consistently been pointing out that Brexit is an appallingly bad idea, and that voting for the Tories is like turkeys voting for Christmas – and, by and large, only those who, like me, are identifiably part of the “liberal elite” have agreed with me. (I’ve a degree, a postgraduate qualification and worked most of my adult life in a profession, so I obviously qualify there…)
I’ve seen this put down to “false consciousness” by Elaine Glaser. I have a lot of sympathy with her position (the article substantially predates the referendum, but is probably significantly informed by the 2010 general election result). Alternatively, there’s a discussion of acting against one’s best interests (for which there’s a technical term “akrasia” in psychology) here.
The thing is, over the last three years plus, I’ve discussed Brexit with a lot of people, in person and online. Many of those did actually vote for Brexit, and I’ve observed before that almost none of the reasons they gave for voting that way were justifiable, an argument I made many, many times. Since the result came through, it’s been much the same, but now with a more or less universal “suck it up, we won!” edge, and that has been getting more prominent as we get closer to the actual cliff-edge of having no trade deals at the end of this year, as opposed to people trying to argue that the obvious damage being done to our trade, our industry and employment in the country is somehow “worth it”.
I could draw parallels with the US situation, in which Trump supporters seem to be doing much the same thing; from an outside perspective, virtually nothing he has done seems to be in the best interests of the USA, far less the majority of his voting basis, but the constant refrain is still one of electoral triumphalism.
“We won, get over it”.
I really have to draw the conclusion that what is most important to both groups, Brexit and Trump supporters, is that they won, and they won over all the reasonable arguments put forward by “liberal elites”. The important thing has been sticking it to the liberals (“libtards” for Trump supporters, “remoaners” for Remain voters) quite irrespective of any damage done to them. One caller to James O’Brien’s LBC show last year said “I know he’s lying, but I love it, because it upsets people like you”… There’s one difference from the “Country of the Blind” story – they seem not to want to put out our eyes out of concern for us, but because they’re fed up of people being reasonable, particularly if they seem to be right a lot of the time. “We’ve had enough of experts”, said Michael Gove, encapsulating this position.
OK, there is also a strong undercurrent of generalised hatred for anything labelled “European”, which Boris is pandering to by taking us out of any organisation with the name “European” on it – even if that is going to cost us ten times as much, in the case of Air Safety, or if we actually proposed it in the first place and mostly wrote the rules, in the case of the European Convention on Human Rights. We are, apparently “winning” if we remove ourselves from anything which, although it benefits us, has the taint of being “European”. To me, this seems rather like walking away from a football game mid match – the other players will have a slightly less good game, but we’ll have no game at all. But “that’ll show ’em”… “Winning” is apparently worth any sacrifice, including the integrity of the country (see my “one party state” post).
The appeal, clearly, is to emotion, not rationality, and rationality only gets in the way. Some Brexiteers, indeed, have called me a traitor for wanting to rejoin the EU, though my massively primary motive is to benefit my own country by cooperating rather than competing. I’ve noticed some of my fellow Remainers (now “Rejoiners”) falling into the trap of “us -v- them” and calling Brexiteers “Gammons”, and generally disparaging their intellect, which is only playing their game. But then, playing “our” game of reasonable argument is equally pointless from their point of view, because reasonable argument isn’t the game they’re playing.
What we can do, however, is refuse to play their game. No name-calling, no “us -v- them” mentality, no disparagement, merely calm reason. Yes, it will probably continue to be infuriating. But all the indications are that they aren’t in a majority any more, and eventually we can hope that the undecideds will be listening to reason, not emotion. All we need to do is, in a calm and rational way, put together a centre-to-left alliance which will defeat Boris’ Tories at the first opportunity – and hope that that is earlier rather than later…