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| The Guardian view on the conduct of the referendum campaign: never edifying, occasionally shaming | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| As the result of the UK’s referendum on EU membership – entirely unknown as we write – is digested, the citizens of Britain will be, between them, running the full gamut of emotions. Satisfaction, panic, relief, dread, indifference and excitement will be rippling through these islands. After the last few months of campaigning, however, few are likely to feel edified. | As the result of the UK’s referendum on EU membership – entirely unknown as we write – is digested, the citizens of Britain will be, between them, running the full gamut of emotions. Satisfaction, panic, relief, dread, indifference and excitement will be rippling through these islands. After the last few months of campaigning, however, few are likely to feel edified. |
| There was, along the way, cynical exaggeration of legitimate concerns, in some cases outright fabrication, and in many others the fomenting of wild emotions. Unnerving aspects of Britain’s psyche were stirred up from the muddy depths and brought to the surface. The extent to which, for example, the UK’s relationship with the second world war remains unresolved was made clear by the bizarre manner in which mention of the Nazis or Adolf Hitler slipped out of campaigners’ mouths, as if driven by some strange unconscious impulse. | There was, along the way, cynical exaggeration of legitimate concerns, in some cases outright fabrication, and in many others the fomenting of wild emotions. Unnerving aspects of Britain’s psyche were stirred up from the muddy depths and brought to the surface. The extent to which, for example, the UK’s relationship with the second world war remains unresolved was made clear by the bizarre manner in which mention of the Nazis or Adolf Hitler slipped out of campaigners’ mouths, as if driven by some strange unconscious impulse. |
| The leave side frequently appealed to an entirely imaginary British past – a mash-up of confused memories of Shakespeare history plays and wartime movies. Even on the remain side, there seemed to be little effort to frame a properly positive narrative about Britain’s place in Europe, and no full-throated attempt to accurately flesh out Britain’s historical indivisibility from its European neighbours. And the debate has been immensely parochial, with little regard given to the potential consequences of the result on the rest of the continent. No wonder our neighbours have been aghast at the whole sorry process. | The leave side frequently appealed to an entirely imaginary British past – a mash-up of confused memories of Shakespeare history plays and wartime movies. Even on the remain side, there seemed to be little effort to frame a properly positive narrative about Britain’s place in Europe, and no full-throated attempt to accurately flesh out Britain’s historical indivisibility from its European neighbours. And the debate has been immensely parochial, with little regard given to the potential consequences of the result on the rest of the continent. No wonder our neighbours have been aghast at the whole sorry process. |
| Perhaps there was always going to be a tinge of unreality in a campaign that relied on alternative futures being summoned up from oppositonal imaginations, the dreams of two different tribes who, it sometimes seemed, never encountered one another. Many of Britain’s older inhabitants have never seemed further apart from the young. In a campaign of rival narratives, underlain by rival renderings of national myths, it was perhaps inevitable that a highly speculative tone was attached to the proceedings. At times, though, the campaigns seemed to have slipped out of a Stanley Kubrick film or a JG Ballard novel – an impression increased by the dizzying peculiarity of some of the visual accoutrements, not least this week’s debate in, of all places, Wembley, with its angular, multicoloured stage-sets, its shiny, insubstantial surfaces, its soft-rock lighting and its overdesigned lecterns. Occasionally it has felt as if the whole campaign has existed as the figment of a collective fantasy. | Perhaps there was always going to be a tinge of unreality in a campaign that relied on alternative futures being summoned up from oppositonal imaginations, the dreams of two different tribes who, it sometimes seemed, never encountered one another. Many of Britain’s older inhabitants have never seemed further apart from the young. In a campaign of rival narratives, underlain by rival renderings of national myths, it was perhaps inevitable that a highly speculative tone was attached to the proceedings. At times, though, the campaigns seemed to have slipped out of a Stanley Kubrick film or a JG Ballard novel – an impression increased by the dizzying peculiarity of some of the visual accoutrements, not least this week’s debate in, of all places, Wembley, with its angular, multicoloured stage-sets, its shiny, insubstantial surfaces, its soft-rock lighting and its overdesigned lecterns. Occasionally it has felt as if the whole campaign has existed as the figment of a collective fantasy. |
| While the nation absorbs the result, there will be many wounds to heal and many issues to address. The campaign has thrown into focus uncomfortable truths, not least the rift between pockets of the traditional Labour heartlands and its leaders on immigration. It has also shown us just how coarsened our political discourse has become. One particularly disturbing aspect of this is how willing much of the media and certain politicians have been to dismiss experts in their field as elitists. One exasperated professor of European law likened the experience of seeing his hard-won knowledge dismissed out of hand to that of an evolutionary biologist being contradicted by a crowd of creationists. If this refusal to acknowledge those who have earned the right to be taken seriously were to become a trend in Britain, as it has in the US, it would be deeply damaging – licensing the privileging of prejudice over actual command of the facts. | While the nation absorbs the result, there will be many wounds to heal and many issues to address. The campaign has thrown into focus uncomfortable truths, not least the rift between pockets of the traditional Labour heartlands and its leaders on immigration. It has also shown us just how coarsened our political discourse has become. One particularly disturbing aspect of this is how willing much of the media and certain politicians have been to dismiss experts in their field as elitists. One exasperated professor of European law likened the experience of seeing his hard-won knowledge dismissed out of hand to that of an evolutionary biologist being contradicted by a crowd of creationists. If this refusal to acknowledge those who have earned the right to be taken seriously were to become a trend in Britain, as it has in the US, it would be deeply damaging – licensing the privileging of prejudice over actual command of the facts. |
| Now begins a new reality. The UK will, gradually, put the tensions of the campaign behind it, however painful they have been, and start instead to focus on its future. If this metapolitical campaign has left us any lessons, they should be about rejecting the kind of shrill political rhetoric of which we have heard far too much over recent weeks. We must strain towards a better way of framing our political debates, as we strain towards healing our divided country. | Now begins a new reality. The UK will, gradually, put the tensions of the campaign behind it, however painful they have been, and start instead to focus on its future. If this metapolitical campaign has left us any lessons, they should be about rejecting the kind of shrill political rhetoric of which we have heard far too much over recent weeks. We must strain towards a better way of framing our political debates, as we strain towards healing our divided country. |