Reasons to be angry, parts 1, 2, 3…
We are living in angry times and the puffy red-faced vitriol of a divided nation can be seen all around us. I didn’t even realise just how angry I was until I was told we should all move on, together, and put all of this division behind us.
I like to think of myself as an optimist, as a positive person. I like to think that I am tolerant, except for intolerance, for which I have no patience whatsoever.
I like to think that I am the one who picks out the positives, shining a light of optimism wherever I go.
I am not immune to a bit of anger, I like to think it can be a positive thing. I get angry at injustices, casual racism, xenophobia, misogyny, or homophobia. In fact, the list is quite extensive, but I am not an angry young man anymore. I just turned 53 and I like my slippers and a glass of red wine whilst watching a box set. I like to think I’m aging with grace.
And then the smartest person I know, the one who knows me better than anyone else, better than I know myself, pointed out that I really am an angry old bastard. Coming from my wonderfully patient wife this sort of statement cannot be ignored. It was said with such loving forbearance, and tender sagacity, that there was no doubting what she was saying.
She patiently led me through the inevitable questions I threw at her. Have I always been like this? “No”. Am I always like it? “No”. Is it that bad? “Well… you are quite political and it does kind of dominate everything for you right now.” And with much soul searching we agreed, I’m in a kind of mourning period. I had to accept that PTSD was probably stretching it a bit far, but she was right, “I kind of needed to find something positive to focus on…” But in the context of the current clusterfuck that is British politics, that’s actually quite hard to do. So we agreed that I would spend some time looking at just what it is that is making me so angry so I could then move on and be an optimist once again.
I really am rather angry, in fact, quite livid.
Part one of my Reasons to be Angry was really quite easy, listing all of the things that were making me feel this way was quite simple, but it stopped a long way short of being cathartic.
In short, Brexit is a cause for national shame, and despite the fact it’s supposedly the will of the people, its apparent oven-readiness, the fact Brexit means Brexit, and we’re just going to get it done, we’re now out of the EU but still haven’t got a clue what the hell is going to happen.
In the meantime, Sterling has suffered massively, costing us around £450 million a week, substantially more than the fabled £350 million for our NHS promised on the side of a bus. At the same time, welfare cuts have led to massive increases in the number of ordinary people dependent on foodbanks, the number of homeless is more than two and a half times what it was ten years ago, and whilst we still remain the sixth richest country in the world, social discrepancies are so great that six of the ten poorest regions in northern Europe are found in the UK. Oh, and the number of reported Hate crimes increased by over 125% in a six year period, just as police numbers were cut by over 20,000.
And then on top of this, after ten years of Conservative rule, Barry from Barnsley voted Tory, because we needed to see a change.
Bloody hell I’m really very angry.
Part two, was a little more complicated, trying to understand why these things had actually happened, or rather, how in the hell did the result go the way it did in the referendum in 2016, and then at the election in 2019.
The first point is a pretty fundamental one in relation to our whole democratic process, and that is the system itself. First Past the Post has always been held up as a shining light of stable and cohesive government but that now seems a trifle ironic. What we actually ended up with is a government that won 45% of the votes and gained 56% of the seats.
Yet the issue doesn’t stop there. Teresa May had a majority at first, but she couldn’t be assured of a majority on Brexit. Now this was down to the divisions within her own party, the One Nation Tories up against the ERG. Labour’s broad church is just as equally split, arguably more so, with Momentum leading the way in trying to dominate the party.
Our political system does not prevent smaller parties from emerging, they simply have to do it under the umbrella of one of the existing parties. Until this is changed, we will continue to be ruled by governments supported by a minority of voters, AND be subjected to coalitions of politicians established behind closed doors, rather than in the open, and accountable to the electorate. At least when Teresa May formed a coalition with the DUP we heard about the financial payback and any conditions placed for their support, it was never the same in relation to the ERG…
The second issue is our media. I’ll not spend much time on this, as I could rant for Britain on this subject, I would simply advise anyone who hasn’t already done so, to read James O’Brien’s wonderful book, How To Be Right. The fundamental point coming out of this is, you can’t blame ordinary folk for believing lies if they are being continually repeated to them by both the press and people in authority. Our post-truth world is more than a little disturbing and there are masses of examples, but for me, the idea that a boycott of the Sun newspaper in Liverpool led to a different pattern of Brexit referendum results compared with the rest of the country, tells us an enormous amount about the malevolent influence of our media. Their influence is unquestionable, whereas the agenda of their mega-wealthy owners is undoubtedly questionable.
Add to this a political class that no longer refrains from openly lying, and we start to see why these things happened. From lies about police numbers, nurses, or the Opposition’s budget figures, the last General Election was another source of great shame. And skulking in the background was Dominic Cummings, an unelected official who had previously led the Leave campaign, with its promise of £350 million a week for the NHS – a lie that swung the campaign and for which we will be paying the price for generations to come.
I am actually livid.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Add to this financial irregularities, foreign intervention (when oh when will we see the Russia report?), and a complete lack of transparency or accountability with regards any political campaigning, and we have a democratic system that can no longer be trusted. And this all came to a head with the Cambridge Analytica affair and the investigation by the incredible Carole Cadwalladr (who is currently being sued in a vindictive and revengeful manner by the Leave-supporting multi-millionaire Arron Banks). When a campaign uses social media platforms, such as Facebook to target particular groups with adverts containing blatant lies, and there is no control over the number of adverts, their content, how much is spent, and where the money comes from, then we have finally reached a point where we have lost control over our own democratic processes.
My anger is also tainted with a sense of hopelessness.
So I come to Part 3, over which I have dwelled the most, why have so many people embraced these lies? To answer this, we must consider who they are, and to do this I will concentrate on Brexit.
And the answer is:
People on the traditional right of British politics were more likely to vote Leave
Men were marginally more likely to vote Leave than women
The lower your education attainment, the more likely you were to vote Leave, by a significant margin.
If you consider yourself as working class then you were significantly more likely to vote Leave.
White Christians were more likely to vote Leave than any other racial or ethnic group.
Older people were much more likely to vote Leave, with the dividing point at around 45 years of age.
There is no real evidence in relation to sexual orientation and voting patterns, but this is mainly due to the lack of relevant data.
The issue of racism has been bandied about a great deal, and there is no doubt that it was a factor, but it is also true that whilst not all Leave voters were racist, all racists voted Leave.
I got caught in a discussion on the Daily Express Facebook page on this very issue. The challenges faced in relation to the NHS, Education, Housing and Policing were all laid squarely at the feet of immigration. My attempts to point out that Immigrants were net economic contributors to our economy and that all of these issues were down to the UK Government’s own policies resulted in a tirade of denial and abuse. For the sake of my own mental wellbeing I had to cut short my sojourn into that particular echo chamber of bigotry and anger.
My final point though is based on personal experience, and it is focused around the issue of social liberalism. Dave (it is not his real name, and my apologies to anyone called Dave) is in his 70’s, left school with some O Levels but has done well in life. Dave very much fits the profile described above, but the question is, why did Dave vote for Brexit?
I know Dave well, and we seldom talk politics, he is a very angry man – far angrier than me. Dave resents the fact he can’t say what he thinks any more. Dave knows his views are shared by everyone else, but in a world gone mad with Political Correctness they just can’t say them out loud. Dave has lived a life where racist, misogynistic, and homophobic jokes were the norm and he doesn’t understand why he can’t do his Pakistani impersonation anymore. Dave likes his vegetables boiled until they are soggy, his steaks well cooked, and even feels judged for this, and bizarrely, he gets angry at the culinary choices that I make. Dave is, quite simply, angry with a world in which he feels left behind, judged, and no longer relevant.
I got Dave to complete the Political Compass test, and I had to stop watching as he ticked Agree to the statement that he believed that his race was superior to others. Dave’s results showed that he wasn’t exactly socially liberal.
Dave grew up in a different era. As Akala points out in his fantastic book, Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, if you were brought up in a time that told you that Empire was nothing but a force for good, then you are likely to have a distorted view on issues such as race. Dave doesn’t think he is a bigot, but he is. Dave’s nostalgia for a simpler world when Britain was still great and he was young, healthy, and assured of his place in it all, has been manipulated and ignited into a frothing self-righteous incandescent rage that is immune to reason or logic. So Dave voted for Brexit. Dave knows lots more Daves. We all know lots of Daves, and Daves always vote.
That’s why we left the EU.
I’m still angry. I’m angry with our political system, the injustices within our society, the malevolent influences of our press, and that Brexit still isn’t the will of the people. That list can go on and on, but there is hope with our younger generations who think differently and will change things for the better – just as soon as the number of them that actually vote start to outnumber the number of Daves at the ballot box.
I have also learnt to understand that we won’t move on while we are all angry, and we will never change things while we are judging each other. I will try not to be angry anymore, even with Dave, and I promise I’ll even stop using the term Gammon.