Nigel Farage says the referendum result is a victory for “real people, decent people”. I see it as a victory for mendacity, stupidity, and xenophobia. Mendacity: there was exaggeration on both sides, but Boris Johnson went further, repeatedly peddling outright lies, which he knew to be lies. Yet it was common to hear people repeating these as if they were established facts. Stupidity: every expert group outlined the risks of Brexit – defence chiefs, top economists, medical and scientific leaders, you name it. Their advice was airily brushed aside by Michael Gove with his “people in this country have had enough of experts” remark – surely the most cretinous political soundbite since Mandelson’s quip about being “seriously relaxed about people becoming filthy rich”. Xenophobia: when Farage gave up the dog-whistle for the plain old whistle, with his hideous and inflammatory poster, it was good to see him called out not just by the usual lefty suspects, but by leading Conservatives on either side of the argument, and even by some members of his own party. But apparently this didn’t embarrass his supporters. In any sensible country, these three men would have been completely discredited by their appalling behaviour. Instead, it looks as if they’ll be rewarded with more power. I’ll probably move to Scotland.
Michael Rundell
Canterbury, Kent
• Thank you, John Harris (We are two nations staring across a political chasm) and Susanne Moore (I can’t decide which way to vote, both 23 June) for showing respect to those who may not have voted the left-liberal way. We have just endured an appallingly unedifying EU referendum campaign. Neither “side” has distinguished itself. The elitist Remain has deployed fear and an arrogant contempt for the mostly poorer, older and less metropolitan voters who appeared to be inclined towards Brexit (“insane”, “ignorant” and “hysterical” are all epithets that Remainers have flung about).
Meanwhile, leave has also gone for fear, plus an opportunist and poisonous racism. Yet talk to leave voters, and you discover their concerns are concrete and crucial: depressed wages, lack of homes, a collapsing NHS, an uncertain and shifting national culture. Let’s get really down to earth and examine a common leave complaint: rural schools, struggling, untrained and unequipped to cope with the arrival of east European migrant farmworkers’ children. In a Norfolk country town, a man talked worriedly of cultural upheaval, and of the seven languages spoken by children in his village school. I laughed, and replied that London schools can easily muster 70 languages. Later I was ashamed as I recalled the decades of work which has gradually (and by no means totally) replaced vicious racism with the capital’s celebrated multiculturalism. And equal decades while London teachers built up expertise and resources to handle 70 – or more – languages. What right had I to dismiss the anxiety of people whose environment has been transformed in a handful of years and whose response to this upheaval has been disparaged as “racist”?
The more “political” of us tend to live mentally on a national or world stage. But most of our fellow citizens still live and think locally, and they want their government close by and answerable; think of the value attached to constituency MPs. If many – the poorest, the oldest, people outside London – feel unsupported, unconsulted, forgotten and betrayed, and have expressed their anger via a Brexit vote, then the liberal left needs to stop sneering and name-calling and prioritise reconnecting with them fast.
Naomi Wayne
London
Martin Kettle is absolutely right to say “Never again” to referendums, (Now surely we can agree: referendums are bad for Britain, June 24). He is, however, wrong on one statement, that “this referendum was about Britain and Europe”. • My experience in Leeds, and I understand from colleagues that it was the same just about everywhere, was that, for the leave supporters, it was about immigration and that the referendum was simply the vehicle at hand for a vote against foreigners coming into Britain. No argument touched these voters, indeed, neither statistics nor reason and logic had any effect, and it is clear from this campaign, as it was in the AV referendum in 2011, that determined and unscrupulous organisers can fatally seduce the populist vote.
The visceral dislike of foreigners has been latent for decades and all the mainstream politicians are culpable for not tackling the issue over that time. We have all, to one degree or another, been relieved to have it brushed under the carpet - largely thanks to the first-past-the-post electoral system - and the relative success of UKIP was a huge alarm call that was not heeded. The experience with right-wing nationalist parties everywhere is that they thrive if their divisive and dangerous beliefs are not confronted at every opportunity. Will the parties now grit their teeth and make the case for a progressive and outward looking cosmopolitan society? I have my doubts.
Michael Meadowcroft
Liberal MP, Leeds West, 1983-87
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