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| I won’t be marching for a people’s vote. There has already been one | I won’t be marching for a people’s vote. There has already been one |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| Some of my best friends will be marching for a people’s vote on Saturday. Some of them are the type who don’t normally go on marches, but they feel strongly and they want to make their voices heard. I won’t be joining them. Not because I don’t care about their feelings or voices, but because of the strange denial of what this is all about. | Some of my best friends will be marching for a people’s vote on Saturday. Some of them are the type who don’t normally go on marches, but they feel strongly and they want to make their voices heard. I won’t be joining them. Not because I don’t care about their feelings or voices, but because of the strange denial of what this is all about. |
| Remainers would like a second referendum where all the deluded leavers suddenly see the light. They see themselves as wholly on the side of good. They want collaboration and cheap flights, good cheese and Spanish carers. They want to safeguard scientific research and human rights. Sure, I want those things too. | Remainers would like a second referendum where all the deluded leavers suddenly see the light. They see themselves as wholly on the side of good. They want collaboration and cheap flights, good cheese and Spanish carers. They want to safeguard scientific research and human rights. Sure, I want those things too. |
| If you think Brexit will leave us weaker and poorer, march for a people’s vote | Timothy Garton Ash | If you think Brexit will leave us weaker and poorer, march for a people’s vote | Timothy Garton Ash |
| Brexit, as it is being played out, is a disaster, boring beyond words and full of words that mean zilch. The dreadful feeling is that it will all go on for ever. Are we going to be Canada or Norway? No, we are going to be England. Does May know what she is doing? The friendless, sleepless leader ploughs on. The Labour party, meanwhile, has absented itself, mainly with an eye on its many leave-voting seats. Principles are traded like derivatives. Who knows what a Labour Brexit would look like? | Brexit, as it is being played out, is a disaster, boring beyond words and full of words that mean zilch. The dreadful feeling is that it will all go on for ever. Are we going to be Canada or Norway? No, we are going to be England. Does May know what she is doing? The friendless, sleepless leader ploughs on. The Labour party, meanwhile, has absented itself, mainly with an eye on its many leave-voting seats. Principles are traded like derivatives. Who knows what a Labour Brexit would look like? |
| But really this is all about feelings – and I wonder why politicos are so bad at even beginning to understand this. Two years on, it is all, as Danny Dyer said, “a mad riddle”. Progressives still prefer to bully leavers rather than understand what drives them. Despising half the country is now the progressive position. So half the country are racist, old, small-minded, poor people who were seduced by a combination of Aaron Banks and delusions of empire. What these people really need is to be lectured constantly by a motley crew of metropolitan celebrities and has-been politicians (Clegg, Heseltine, Blair). Spare me, please. | But really this is all about feelings – and I wonder why politicos are so bad at even beginning to understand this. Two years on, it is all, as Danny Dyer said, “a mad riddle”. Progressives still prefer to bully leavers rather than understand what drives them. Despising half the country is now the progressive position. So half the country are racist, old, small-minded, poor people who were seduced by a combination of Aaron Banks and delusions of empire. What these people really need is to be lectured constantly by a motley crew of metropolitan celebrities and has-been politicians (Clegg, Heseltine, Blair). Spare me, please. |
| Maybe these people are supremely persuasive. But the reality is not – as is so often claimed – that leave voters regret their vote (some do, but not many). They mostly just wish it was over. Me too. I wish it was over. | Maybe these people are supremely persuasive. But the reality is not – as is so often claimed – that leave voters regret their vote (some do, but not many). They mostly just wish it was over. Me too. I wish it was over. |
| At one level, it is a disaster for progressives – and part of that is the refusal to see the Brexit vote as a revolution. It was, but just not the one we thought was coming. There was a massive turnout, and it was close. The simplistic idea that really people didn’t understand anything at all and were just very angry about austerity and neoliberalism is just that. Remove the agency of half the people, why don’t you? Sticking two fingers up to the establishment in an irrational and possibly self-harming way remains an analysis that no one wants to deal with. I see why. Self-harm is a form of agency when all else fails – but it is hard to watch. | At one level, it is a disaster for progressives – and part of that is the refusal to see the Brexit vote as a revolution. It was, but just not the one we thought was coming. There was a massive turnout, and it was close. The simplistic idea that really people didn’t understand anything at all and were just very angry about austerity and neoliberalism is just that. Remove the agency of half the people, why don’t you? Sticking two fingers up to the establishment in an irrational and possibly self-harming way remains an analysis that no one wants to deal with. I see why. Self-harm is a form of agency when all else fails – but it is hard to watch. |
| The remain campaign, from its passion-free name and its inherent self-righteousness, is the worst campaign I have seen in my lifetime. In 2016, before the referendum, I wrote: “Much of England is ready to roll that dice [voting leave]; this part of England, so often despised, demonised and disrespected by those who claim to represent it, does need to be spoken for. This England will not do as it is told.” It turns out that I was right. | The remain campaign, from its passion-free name and its inherent self-righteousness, is the worst campaign I have seen in my lifetime. In 2016, before the referendum, I wrote: “Much of England is ready to roll that dice [voting leave]; this part of England, so often despised, demonised and disrespected by those who claim to represent it, does need to be spoken for. This England will not do as it is told.” It turns out that I was right. |
| All the portents of that vote were there – and if you want to change things, you need to understand them. The remain tactic was to dismiss leave as irrational, and it still is. Understanding the power of the irrational is not the forte of political analysts. | All the portents of that vote were there – and if you want to change things, you need to understand them. The remain tactic was to dismiss leave as irrational, and it still is. Understanding the power of the irrational is not the forte of political analysts. |
| We are all familiar with the economic arguments and yet the earthquake of leave turned on its head the mantra that everyone votes out of economic interest. Something deeper and darker is going on. Identity matters, belonging matters. If the left don’t address these issues, the right owns them. Brexit was an act of transgression in terms of the articles of faith of liberal democracy – and it is this transgression that we need to address. | We are all familiar with the economic arguments and yet the earthquake of leave turned on its head the mantra that everyone votes out of economic interest. Something deeper and darker is going on. Identity matters, belonging matters. If the left don’t address these issues, the right owns them. Brexit was an act of transgression in terms of the articles of faith of liberal democracy – and it is this transgression that we need to address. |
| A few thinkers recognise this, and a great collection of writings from Compass, The Causes of Brexit and the Cures, brings together Caroline Lucas, Lisa Nandy and John Harris among others to try and unpick what is happening. For all those marching on Saturday – marching because you are so sure in your hearts that you are on the side of good – can you not for one minute examine your own hearts and ask yourselves why half the country doesn’t share your cultural capital? Why Arts Council England spends £8 in Islington for every £1 it spends in the former coalfields? Why, as Neal Lawson puts it, so many people hit “the panic button”? Are you so convinced that we want another vote? Is this not a huge loss of faith in democracy? | A few thinkers recognise this, and a great collection of writings from Compass, The Causes of Brexit and the Cures, brings together Caroline Lucas, Lisa Nandy and John Harris among others to try and unpick what is happening. For all those marching on Saturday – marching because you are so sure in your hearts that you are on the side of good – can you not for one minute examine your own hearts and ask yourselves why half the country doesn’t share your cultural capital? Why Arts Council England spends £8 in Islington for every £1 it spends in the former coalfields? Why, as Neal Lawson puts it, so many people hit “the panic button”? Are you so convinced that we want another vote? Is this not a huge loss of faith in democracy? |
| 'We must resist this mess': your views on the People's Vote march | 'We must resist this mess': your views on the People's Vote march |
| I myself sometimes waver – but I see a second referendum as undoable, expensive and part of a strange denial by the great and the good. And in the end, I don’t want to be told what to do by those who could not see it coming. Why am I to trust them? Because, yes, this is about hearts not just heads, as even the redoubtable Timothy Garton-Ash tells us today. Yet we don’t want to talk about the visceral. Everything must be subsumed to reason even when reason has been shown not to work. | I myself sometimes waver – but I see a second referendum as undoable, expensive and part of a strange denial by the great and the good. And in the end, I don’t want to be told what to do by those who could not see it coming. Why am I to trust them? Because, yes, this is about hearts not just heads, as even the redoubtable Timothy Garton-Ash tells us today. Yet we don’t want to talk about the visceral. Everything must be subsumed to reason even when reason has been shown not to work. |
| Often I think of an interview Mark Rylance did about the success of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, long before Brexit. He spoke of the play “satisfying a hunger in audiences for wildness and defiance. There’s a feeling that they’ve eaten something they haven’t eaten for years – something they’d forgotten, that’s really needed for their health.” | Often I think of an interview Mark Rylance did about the success of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, long before Brexit. He spoke of the play “satisfying a hunger in audiences for wildness and defiance. There’s a feeling that they’ve eaten something they haven’t eaten for years – something they’d forgotten, that’s really needed for their health.” |
| What was that thing? Nasty nationalism, a sense of agency, a revolt? Has that thing gone away, or will it be played by the likes of Steve Bannon? For while we dawdle in technocratic limbo, that thing remains and it will not be overcome by the rehearsal of numbers. Brexit is happening. The people voted. They were the wrong people. | What was that thing? Nasty nationalism, a sense of agency, a revolt? Has that thing gone away, or will it be played by the likes of Steve Bannon? For while we dawdle in technocratic limbo, that thing remains and it will not be overcome by the rehearsal of numbers. Brexit is happening. The people voted. They were the wrong people. |
| But raise your voices on Saturday. I will listen to your anger as you say no one voted for this. For the reason we are in this mess is a basic refusal to listen. And learn. | But raise your voices on Saturday. I will listen to your anger as you say no one voted for this. For the reason we are in this mess is a basic refusal to listen. And learn. |
| • Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist | • Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist |
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