David Cameron. We will remember that name all our lives. The walking, talking embodiment of the deluded, ivory tower dwellers of Downing St and Westminster. Never has a Prime Minister been so comprehensively out of touch with the people he represented. He has lived a life surrounded by the rich and powerful, fêted by big-time CEOs and sitting at tables with mighty world leaders. His wife comes from the élite landed gentry, and everyone knows it. When he went out and bought her second-hand Nissan Micra for £1,800 to get around in, I doubt that twenty people in the entire country actually believed she would even look at the thing. That’s how out of touch he is. Up till the last couple of weeks before the referendum he never seriously considered the possibility of a Leave vote, because he, personally, didn’t know anyone who would vote that way.
I imagine he thought he was popular. No. What he was was less disliked, less distrusted than ‘the other lot’. Virtually every well-known politician in England has completely lost contact with that bedrock of ordinary British folk who don’t trust politicians, don’t want foreigners pouring into the country, just want to have a job, drink a couple of pints at the pub, watch Eastenders and not have to worry about anything more serious than how well their football team is playing. On one side, Cameron and his ilk. On the other, beige neo-libs and the oddball, Corbyn, who thinks that the average Briton has five kids, lives on welfare and eats out of food banks. God help us, Nigel Farage is probably the only prominent English politician who reads the great unwashed accurately, which is why he has his triumph.
So where will it take Britain? Two likely scenarios. One: Cameron’s legacy, the destruction of Great Britain. Scotland gone within the year. Less likely but very possible, a united Ireland in the EU, leaving a ‘United Kingdom’ of England and Wales. A struggling, isolated and desperate little country shaking its head in disbelief. A simmering wall of hatred between the educated and the stiff-necked plodders who have pulled the house down around their ears.
Two: the revolution that is already underway. 36 hours after vote Leave, a petition demanding a parliamentary re-think has 800,000 signatures. Cameron said this had to be a oncer, but nothing he said or says matters any more. In New Zealand company law, presumably mirroring the UK’s, major financial decisions such as selling off more than half a company’s assets have to be authorised by a special general meeting of shareholders and need a 75% majority. This is obviously the model Cameron should have applied, perhaps at a lower level, say 60%. But in his delusion that the referendum was a foregone conclusion he quite possibly never thought of it.
If I had to bet, it would be on the second option, but I may be tainted by wishful thinking.
The immediate, interesting question is this: where will the new politicians come from? Politicians who see that those who spent their time entertaining themselves in Parliament in childish point scoring off the opposition were a mob of well-paid Neros fiddling while Rome burnt. That all that shouting and laughter has earned them the contempt of the man and woman in the street and simply has to stop and will too, for a time. It will be a brave and foolhardy politician who roars with laughter at a cheap shot at the other side in the weeks to come. Quiet days in Westminster, at least.
If this sudden disaster were to result in the end of ideological experiments and the emergence of sober, collaborative and responsive government, it might even have been worth it. Sadly, that is not a bet I would back.
Play With Strangers 