The Brexit party's toxic rhetoric doesn't represent most leave voters

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/22/brexit-partys-toxic-rhetoric-leave-voters-drink-chucked

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Throwing milkshakes at people you politically disagree with is something we just shouldn’t do. I’d love it if UK politics could be one great big food-fight, as we’d probably get a lot more done than parliament has since the referendum. But the problem is, it won’t stop there. It took less than a second for Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) to escalate to punching the person who threw milkshake on him. Jo Cox’s widower, Brendan Cox, responded to the Nigel Farage milkshake incident by condemning the act despite his strong political opposition to Farage, because it “normalises violence and intimidation”. If you want to hurt Nigel Farage, expose him for what he is.

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I was at the Brexit party rally in London last night, with a couple of upturned buckets for chairs and a folding table with a banner reading “A no-deal Brexit would be a disaster for the UK: Change my mind.” I was inviting people to speak to me, the most basic expression of liberal democracy.

Challenging the fantasy promoted by Nigel Farage that everyone who voted leave in 2016 wanted to leave without a deal is crucial. A few people sat down for a proper discussion of the issues. Despite our differing views, many of them were genuinely nice people, who were actually grateful to me for not being what they perceived as a “typical remoaner”: calling them racist or just thick. But then there were those who called me delusional, scum, or a fucking traitor, chucked water on me and poked me in the face with a flagpole. Somehow that didn’t quite convince me that the Northern Irish peace process could cope with a massive constitutional rupture between the UK and Ireland.

One benefit to post-referendum Britain was that the Brexit victory exposed (by emboldening) the worst elements on the leave side so that they couldn’t hide behind decent, reasonable leave voters any more. That allows us to address the thuggish and racist elements in the UK separately from the concerns of most Brexit voters – that our country is disgustingly unequal in favour of London when it comes to investment, infrastructure and job opportunities. The harmful rhetoric that treats all leavers as Faragist racists could have been put to bed. But Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is undoing that. The drink chucked in my face was a lovely reminder of that.

It’s been my privilege to speak to Brexit voters in high streets across the UK. They are not the shouty, racist caricatures you see on Twitter or Question Time. On the whole they are decent, reasonable people who are angry with a political system that they can see doesn’t care about their area. The failure of Westminster to attend to Hull, Swansea, Motherwell and Newry for generations has made people desperate for change. Unfortunately, at the first chance they had to express that desperation, they did so in a way that will make things worse for them.

The irony that I was the one being called a traitor is painful. Nigel Farage promised people they could vote Brexit without suffering economically because we’d get a deal. Now he’s telling people they voted to leave without one. He knows that people care desperately about the NHS, yet personally advocated its destruction. He knows that what people need is serious investment in left-behind communities, but he wants to slash the role of the state.

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Farage does not represent the Brexit voters I have met. But people are so desperate for change in this country that they will vote for a party with no manifesto. If you thought the conversation around Brexit was toxic because of the constant accusations of racism, you ain’t seen nothing yet. And because Nigel Farage has pushed himself as the face of change in this country, none of the real concerns of decent Brexit voters will be addressed.

That’s why tomorrow, we must get everyone we know to turn out to vote in the European elections, for the sake of leavers and remainers alike. Vote for parties with manifestos that reflect your values on all the issues the EU covers, or sit back and let Nigel Farage be the face of this country.