Life

TV review: What is wrong with the English nationalism of Brexit voters?

Billy Foley

Billy Foley

Billy has almost 30 years’ experience in journalism after leaving DCU with a BAJ. He has worked at the Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent in Dublin, the Cork-based Evening Echo and the New Zealand Herald. He joined the Irish News in 2000, working as a reporter and then Deputy News Editor. He has been News Editor since 2007

Billy Foley
Billy Foley Billy Foley

Brexit: The Battle for Britain, BBC 2, Monday at 9pm

One view of the UK's decision to leave the European Union is that all the Brexiteers' stars aligned at the same time.

They are commonly listed out as follows: The crash of 2008 left many people looking for a way to get back at the establishment, the Labour party was in disarray with a leader whose instinct was anti-EU, the Leave camp managed to capture the brains and gravitas of Michael Gove along with the showbiz and popularity of Boris Johnson, the prime minister was afraid to properly attack Brexit Conservatives because he thought he would have to work with them after he won and in Nigel Farage the Leave campaign had an outsider who wasn't afraid to drive head-on at the issue which won the vote - immigration.

Another distasteful and anti-democratic view holds that many of the people who voted to leave were ill informed, xenophobes who barely knew the arguments. And the other cracker - that the old dragged the young out of Europe, as if the views of young people should be given bonus points. It's the kind of attitude which would return us to a time when only property owners were given the vote because everyone else was thought too stupid to understand.

The final argument is the one I find the most persuasive: That people voted out (by a small enough margin) primarily because they didn't value EU membership, thinking (probably incorrectly) that leaving would curb immigration and that they disliked ``the world will end if we leave'' claims of the pro-EU campaigners.

And let's put aside this nonsense that the voters were duped with bogus figures and promises from the Leave campaign. Every election I remember has had stretched promises and dodgy figures from all sides and I don't remember too many remainers complaining about George Osborne's emergency budget ruse or that leaving would cost each family a fantastically specific £4,300 a year.

Into this maelstrom steps the excellent Laura Kuenssberg with her analysis of what happened on June 23.

The BBC's political correspondent managed to get few of the main players to take part (I imagine it will be a few years yet before the definitive account is made) but in Will Straw, the executive director of Stronger In Europe and Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, she made a very good start.

Just an aside here, and perhaps this is a sign of my middle-age, but isn't it remarkable that these two key figures in such a momentous decision are just 36 and 38?

There were no stand out revelations but a solid first draft of a significant moment, although noticeably no reference at all to the decisions of Scotland and Northern Ireland to vote comprehensively to Remain.

The negotiations around that will be just as difficult for the British government as making the separation from the EU.

The Leave vote, of course, looks entirely different from here with the special arrangements which brought peace to Northern Ireland under threat.

However, there has been a bit of old guff flying about.

Firstly, who knew that the EU meant so much to so many people in Northern Ireland? Apparently it was the bedrock that the peace process was built on and I've heard it said by normally sensible people that their children cried on the news of the exit vote. Please.

Secondly what is so wrong with English nationalism? Irish nationalism is portrayed as a noble idea to unite the two parts of cruelly divided island, Scottish nationalism is also to be admired as the right of a nation to rule itself, but English nationalists are to be denigrated as `racists' and `little Englanders'.

You'd think above anyone that the Irish would understand that a `little Englander' is better than an `expansionist Englander'.