It took 24hrs for the Conservative landslide majority to sink in, but on Saturday morning I was in floods of tears for hours. This is really the end of an era for me. I've been fighting for EU values since I first started campaigning against TTIP in 2013 and realised how much the EU does for us. If you're a Remainer reading this, you'll know it all already. If you aren't you're about to find out. Ack, I wasn't going to make barbed comments. You'll see why later.
The election defeat
Ugh. I'm angry and deeply disappointed that the liberal (small L) pro-EU parties were unable to bring themselves to coordinate to keep out the most ferociously right wing govt that we have so far seen. To put personal or political ambition over collaboration at such a time is unforgivable. This isn't just about Brexit; this government now has real power. Once we've left the safeguards of the EU they'll be able to change our country in ways that could change British values and institutions for decades. I'm not going to go into it all because I wrote at length about the dangers of an unfettered Johnson just after the Referendum in 2016.
I'm not going to dissect where everyone went wrong, though. I want to write now about where this leaves the millions of us who passionately supported remaining in the EU, went on every protest march, signed endless petitions, wrote to our MPs* campaigned, leafleted, or just shared memes on social media.
What will we do with our time?!
I've seen calls to continue to grow the Remain community or to immediately launch a rejoin campaign. We can't do this. I can't stress enough what a bad idea it would be to continue to harp on about the EU at this point in time. The fight is over for now – for a decade, maybe longer. There is absolutely no way we can persuade leavers at this point in time that they were wrong, or make any inroads on the current government, and to try to do so would simply entrench opposition. The best thing we can do now is to leave it until the circumstances are right for us to start a completely new campaign, and I'll explain why:
Firstly, if we ever want to change the 52/48 divide (or 47/53 now*) we need to heal the differences. We can never hope to move it if we just keep chipping away at it percentage point by percentage point. Boris Johnson said in his acceptance speech that it was time for the country to come together, and he's right. Let's do it, but let's make sure that we unite the country against him. Wait … what? Mr Johnson has just won a huge majority and leavers hate remainers, so how are we going to unite the country against him? I believe that our best option is to completely drop the Remain tag – at least for now.
For me, staying in the EU was an umbrella policy that covered so many others – environmental standards, liberal values, workers rights, anti-discrimination, protecting the NHS from the US, food standards, chemical safety regulation, the precautionary principle, cross border collaboration on everything from science to art to security, and so on and so on. (In addition, of course, to my love of Europe and my dear UK and EU friends here and thoughout Europe.) Now that that umbrella has been removed, we're going to have to fight the raindrops individually and it's going to be fucking hard. We're going to need help. Why would we try to mobilise half the country on these issues under the Remain banner, when we could mobilise the whole nation without?
Once the govt has “Got Brexit Done” people will no longer have to choose between their EU/Leave loyalties and supporting the NHS, for example, and many of these issues and values will be fundamentally important to leavers*. Fighting for our NHS could truly bring the country together again and at the same time create a degree of opposition to the hard right Tories that could change future election results, especially in years to come when some of the problems of Brexit become undeniable. We can kill two birds with one stone: we can enlist leavers in helping us to fight some of the nastier aspects of Brexit (while not overtly linking them in any way to Brexit ofc) and change the narrative of the Tories being on the side of the man in the street fighting the nasty liberal elites. It sounds far fetched but hear me out.
We lost, get over it
To do this we need to admit that we've been beaten and accept it with grace. We need to give leavers the satisfaction and comfort of feeling that, at last, the change they voted for is going to come and that we're on board with it. It doesn't mean that we have to agree on immigration, or any other principles, but we do have to shut up about it and let them have a good go at making it work. We have to cut out the snarky memes on social media and the Brexit jokes, even the really funny ones*, we have to stop talking about unicorns and reminding them of the Brexit promises. We have to stop implying that each one of them is Tommy Robinson in disguise. We can't keep waiting for them to fail so we can point out every time they trip up or the promises aren't delivered. What kind of people would we be if we wanted our future to be worse just so that we could say, “I told you so?” We need to actively try to build bridges and heal rifts, even while we're hurting.
The other thing we need to do is choose our fights carefully. If we go off half-cocked at every infringement on our rights and standards, it's just going to melt into white noise and we'll sound like sour grapes again. We need to pick the ones that are irreversible, the ones that everyone can get behind and provide a solid concerted movement. We know that the grass roots can do this, even if the opposition parties can't.
My suggestions would be to concentrate on the NHS and Global warming for the following reasons. Both are popular movements at the moment, both can be seen to be independent of the EU, and both are extremely fucking urgent. Global warming obviously, and the NHS because once it's been dismantled it would be a mammoth job to put it back together.
I think we should leave the trade deal with the US, because when we rejoin the EU we will have to harmonise our standards with them again, and any of the damage done by a US trade deal will be undone. Bear in mind that UK manufacturers will have to maintain production to EU regulations if they want to export to the EU anyway, so adjusting back should not be too much of a problem. In addition, trying to block elements of a US trade deal has too much of a project fear/remoaner feel to it to get much leaver support. Finally, having campaigned for so long against TTIP I know that it's really, really hard to get anyone interested in trade deals. Try getting anyone to understand ISDS on the street.
There are other worrying issues that could raise their heads under a Johnson government like constitutional change, but again these now have to be dealt with under a liberal banner rather than an EU one. Incidentally, when I first read that Johnson was thinking of doing away with the BBC license fee, my first thought was that it might be good for us to have a BBC that wasn't govt funded, but then I realised that an independent BBC would be vulnerable to purchase, and how much would Rupert Murdoch LOVE to own the BBC? I know I have a tendency to catastrophise, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that Johnson already has this in mind. Anyway there are lots of problems ahead which are Johnson-related, not EU related and not the subject of this blog.
What about the pro-EU groups?
So what about all the pro-EU groups we have worked so hard to build up? The best thing would be for these to either convert to NHS/Climate change groups, or more likely suggest that the membership move wholesale to support these two issues. Pro-EU groups should limit themselves to genuine EU matters now, like supporting the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and Brits abroad, on which we should all continue to campaign. They don't need to keep stoking the EU fires because Remainers will never forget the last 3 years. The moment the banner is raised again, we'll come out of the woodwork like LGBTQers during Pride. It would be best if they quietly became inactive. Anything with blue and yellow on it is going to be like a red rag to a bull, and damage our chances of sucking leavers in by stealth. Once we've spent 10 years uniting the country against Tory inroads on the NHS and for action on Climate change, and Brexit has had its inevitable disastrous results (which we will accept stoically to start with) we can start the call to rejoin.
This gap in EU campaigning won't just play into our hands in the long run, it will stop the distraction of our energies from really important issues. If we can find a positive in the last few years it is that we are now a politically engaged country, on both sides of the argument, and if we can channel that into fighting climate change (which for me dwarfs all other issues by far) we have a better chance of achieving something than we might have done 5 years ago.
Keep your pecker up
This is an uncharacteristically positive post from me at a time when so much that I stood for has collapsed. The absolute despair I felt at the weekend receded when I started to think about this blog post and the way forward. It's not because I am optimistic, on the contrary, I think we have some terrible revelations to weather in the coming decade. I think it's partly because my mind keeps pulling back from the yawning chasm of reality, and partly because I always feel better when I'm giving my opinion. I haven't watched the news since 13th December, which helps.
What I'm trying to say, in my self-centred way, is do whatever it takes to heal over the next few weeks or months. We have time. Brexit is going to happen now, and we're no longer on a constantly re-setting clock. Learn the foxtrot, do some painting (that means YOU, Claudia), build a model railway like Rod Stewart's (ok we don't have that much time). Have some kind of rest at least, because burnout is no fun, and we're going to need you.
Asterisks: I couldn't work out how to do superscript numbers so you'll have to play mix and match,
* (pointless in my case, because my MP is the redoubtable Helen Hayes, who was one of only 52 Labour MPs who voted against triggering Article 50, and has opposed Brexit at every turn – thank-you Ms Hayes)
* in favour of Remain according to votes cast for remain parties during the General Election, IF you count Labour as a remain party.
* although OBVIOUSLY if they hadn't voted leave we wouldn't have to fight these issues at all
* Brexit walks into a bar. The barman says, "Why the long farce?"