After the Brexit vote, will dignity prevail?
Colin Randall
The British people have spoken and those who willed the country to remain part of the European Union must respect the decision to leave.
That such a high proportion of the electorate, 72 per cent, took part in Thursdays referendum is worthy of respect. But the same cannot be said of the campaign itself.
Rarely in political history can there have been a debate of such wretchedly low quality, with insults, scaremongering and hyperbole taking the place of rational discussion.
Neither side emerged with much credit.
Prophecies of doom streamed from both camps, leaving voters with an unenviable task of distinguishing trustworthy or at least plausible projections from unsubstantiated polemic.
Also questionable was the pro-Brexit Daily Mails insistence on emphasising the mental health problems of the suspected killer, understandably seen by many observers as a direct attempt to distance the crime from any connection with arguments for
Leave.
It may be nothing the remain camp could have said or done would have been sufficient to overcome the deep hostility felt by many Britons towards so many aspects of Europe, and especially with regard to the loss of sovereignty and perceived ineptitude in tackling the immigration crisis.
It is certainly true that attempts to portray catastrophic consequences for employment and the economy generally were widely disbelieved or felt to be wildly exaggerated. Time will tell whether the peoples verdict makes life in Britain freer, more successful and safer or imposes new responsibilities and challenges the country will struggle to overcome.
Further sharp differences of opinion are inevitable as Britain works out how to manage withdrawal from the EU.
After arguably failing the country at a time when there was need for cool, respectful discussion, backed by non-sensationalist factual evidence, the political establishment owes it to the public to show a good deal more dignity in the coming months. In a quixotic bid to regain an ill-defined dream of sovereignty and throw off the perceived regulatory shackles imposed by faceless Eurocrats, 17.4 million voters chose to abandon an economic and political alliance that is all anyone in the UK under the age of 43 has ever known.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party (Ukip) who has been the most prominent voice in the Leave campaign, told jubilant supporters the result was a victory for real people, for ordinary people, for decent people.
Farage, a millionaire former commodities broker who has successfully rebranded himself as a man of the people, said Britain should declare June 24 as its own Independence Day. Presumably forgetting the murder just eight days earlier of British MP Jo Cox, he hailed a revolution that had been achieved without a single bullet being fired. After months of bitter campaigning, characterised by wild claims and anti-migrant rhetoric by the Leave camp, it was all over before the first EU-standardised boiled egg had been cracked open on a British breakfast table. At 4.40am on Friday veteran BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby told surviving viewers of the BBCs all-night referendum marathon that it was now statistically impossible for the Remain camp to win.
During the all-night coverage, David Dimbleby briefly supplanted Kim Kardashian as the top Google search in the UK.
In the end, 52 per cent of 33 million voters in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar had opted to turn their back on over 40 years of British engagement with the great European project. With 48 per cent backing continued membership, however, the UK is now a clearly and bitterly divided country, and one now facing years of economic and political uncertainty.
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