Who’s to
blame? The problem is where to start.
1.
De-industrialization. Jobs in UK manufacturing shrank from 7m to 5.1m between
1979 and 1986. More were lost in service industries. Of these losses, 94% were
north of the line between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. Happening mostly
during the Thatcher years, it has been wrongly attributed to government policy rather
than the consequence of economic misfortune. Wealth and opportunity moved
south. The social ruin was terrible. Skills were lost, traditions ended. Part
of what it meant to be British disappeared. Nobody knew or seemed to care what
was supposed to happen to places such as Oldham and Paisley.
2.
Immigration. Both natives and immigrants need to revise ideas about where they
live and the kind of people they are. As things started to settle after the
1950s influx, concerns were re-ignited with the 2004 Blair government decision
to open the UK labour market to the eight new EU states, later conceded to be a mistake (only Sweden and
Ireland did so as freely). In the first year
129,000 migrants turned up instead of the expected 5,000 to 13,000. “Nobody
asked us!” said those who felt strongly about it (and then, in June 2016,
somebody did ask.)
3. Cultural
dementia. Historian Professor David Andress argues that France, the US and
Britain are all engaged in “particular forms of forgetting, mistaking and
misremembering the past”. As a population we are older than we have ever been,
but seem to focus on daydreams of the past and along the way stir up old
hatreds, give disturbing voice to destructive rage and risk the collapse of our
capacity for decisive, effective and just governance. One such daydream is the
belief that the nations of the old empire are “queuing up” to sign trade deals
with the country that once ruled them.
4. The Dam
Busters. Difficult to explain but England has a curious fascination for an
Anglocentric version of WW2, which has grown even as the event has receded,
perpetuating old notions of difference and moral superiority. This leads us to
…
5. English
exceptionalism. Sitting at the top table of nations, punching above our weight,
a freedom-loving people ever ready to fight faceless bureaucracies and red tape
seem to be predominantly English ideas.
6. The
playing fields of Eton. Their damaging contribution to contemporary British
politics includes David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg: a
too-confident incompetent, an opportunist and a cartoon version of the ruling
class.
7. The
newspapers. While some blame poor education for the Brexit vote, and the
electoral influence of newspapers may shrinking now, with their circulations,
they are far more rabid (eg the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph) in England
than in Scotland, and inform far more of the public debate.
8.
Complacency. During the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign, some voters opted
for independence because they felt that in areas like Sunderland, people want
to leave Europe. Independence could allow Scotland to stay in the EU. Few were
as farsighted.
Source: The
Guardian, 3 March 2018
