The EU Referendum - My thoughts

Last Thursday (23rd June), the UK held a referendum on whether to remain part of the European Union or to leave and to go it alone as an independent state. Friday morning came and the results were a narrow victory for the Leave campaign, 52% of the country chose to leave the EU.

There is a lot to think about, a lot I have to talk about when it comes to this referendum so I'm going to make a few posts to try to explain my thoughts. There is a lot of random thoughts going through my head, I need to get them down to make sense of the world.

You can (and probably should) ignore my post on why I am currently very angry as this is just a rant to help me come to terms with how I am feeling right now.

What happened?

I stayed up to watch as the EU Referendum results were coming in. Gibraltar was the first and, as expected, they were highly in favour of Remain because of their strong ties to Spain. It did not really tell us anything, this was what we anticipated, a 96% vote to Remain was exactly what was expected.

Newcastle was the next and the results were disappointing, it was roughly 50:50 and that was not good enough, this was not what the result the analysts expected but this was the first to declare and it could still be an outlier, it would be OK, though I was nervous.

The next few results came in and seemed to shore up the Remain vote then came Sunderland, expected to be a significant support for the Leave campaign and it felt like a bigger vote for Leave than people were predicting.

As the night progressed we saw increasing numbers of results coming in, the key factors seemed to be that Leave was doing better in the areas that they were expected to do well in but Remain was having a mixed night. The turnout was higher in the Leave areas, that was a sign of things to come.

Eventually, Leave were called as the winners... and I was shocked, I was angry and I am writing a lot of this as a way to cope with the emotions that I am feeling.

Why did we vote to leave?

I think the EU Referendum has put a spotlight on vast divisions in the country, between regions, between classes and between age groups. My view is that there are a lot of disenfranchised people who do not feel that the current political systems are there to support them and that there is nothing to lose by changing the status quo. I think we need to explore what the potential factors are that lead to such a divided experience of the country, of the European Union and of the world

I think that we can break things down into the different, perhaps interconnected, themes that emerged:

• The poverty divide - Areas doing economically well tended to vote Remain and areas that have been struggling economically tended to vote Leave.
• The educational divide - Areas with a higher number of graduates tended to vote Remain and areas with low numbers of graduates would vote Leave.
• The age divide - The younger voters had a lower turnout than the older voters, but of those that did vote the younger voters were significantly more Remain and the elderly were significantly Leave.
• The campaigns - Exploring the different impacts of the two campaigns.

Aftermath

• The economic impact as the markets adjust to the realisation that the UK is going to leave the EU
• The political impact as politicians across the country, across Europe, across the world come to terms with the decision.
• The social impact has so far been brutal, with the rise of open racism and xenophobia.

The future

After all I have seen over the past few days, after all I have written, after all the anger, frustration, sadness and pain have subsided there still has to be a future, we still have to work towards a better future.

We cannot 'punish' those who voted Leave

Many of the regions that received the most help from the EU voted to Leave but are now worried, they are now asking, or maybe even demanding that the UK government promises them the same level of funding that they received from the EU. There is part of me that wants to tell them, "that money has gone, wiped from our economy, you're on your own" but I know that is wrong.

We have to help them, we have to support them because as badly hit our economy has been they will suffer more, to not help them is to punish them for voting the wrong way, to further disenfranchise them and to continue their isolation and to push them further into the hands of more extreme political parties. We have to find it in ourselves to accept their decisions and work not just to keep the status quo but to improve their lot, to give them a sense of control over their own destiny, to ensure that the infrastructure is there to support them, to give them the opportunity to grow, to give fair wages for a fair day's work and to provide more jobs. This is not just about more government handouts it is a fundamental change to how we treat less affluent areas.

We need stability

It feels, right now, like stability is months or years before the UK will get back to some semblance of stability. We need strong leadership as soon as possible and we need to know whether Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will be activated or not. There is still uncertainty that Parliament will actually vote with the result of this referendum.

We have to work together to gain that stability and we have to accept that Scotland and perhaps Northern Ireland may secede from the UK. If they do vote to part from the UK then we need to make this as painless as possible, both for them and for us, we cannot let anger at their "rejection" of the UK make us spiteful.

The UK can and will survive this, if we stand together, if we abandon resentment and retribution. It may take some time for emotions to die down among many people and that is where I ask people to be kind to each other, to give people the space and time to come to terms with what has happened.

Finally, to migrants in the UK...

... you are welcome here, you work hard and you add to our culture/the beauty of the UK. You are my friends, my colleagues and I feel my world would be a far darker place without you. I send you my love and know that I stand by you!