One question I had been asking myself in the face of all the problems was: why aren't the people rebelling against their politicians? Frustrated are many, but their frustration did not cause voters to vote en masse for a change of era in British politics. Protest took a different path, with a narrow majority of Britons voting to leave the Union in the EU referendum. Obviously, many voters thought that Brexit would solve their problems. I did not understand the logic, but I was willing to learn and understand.
During my visits in recent years, I would have liked to talk to British friends about leaving the EU, but I could not. Brexit was a constant topic in the media and potential conversation partners were so annoyed by the fuss that no one wanted to talk about leaving. In the first few months after my move, things looked different. Brexit was, supposedly, imminent. The prospect of never being confronted with the issue again loosened tongues. Except that most conversations were highly boring. Our immediate circle of friends think that Brexit is utter bullshit that will damage Britain, themselves and future generations for decades to come.
The widespread opposition from those immediately around us was not surprising. After the referendum, the voters were carefully screened by opinion research institutes and divided into umpteen categories, such as age, gender, origin, level of education, income or type of profession [1]. A very detailed analysis can be found, for example, at www.Lordashkroftpolls.com.
Younger people were more likely to vote to remain in the Union, as were academics and city dwellers, especially those from London. Our friends fit all three categories. In addition, many have an immigrant background. I am a foreigner anyway, my wife is British but her family were immigrants. It was similar for many of her colleagues at work. No wonder, given that the proportion of people with a migrant background is particularly high in England's public health system. Nineteen percent of the employees alone were not born in the UK (foreigners and those born abroad with British citizenship). In other words, our circle of friends is aware that there is a world beyond Britain.
But fortunately, there is also the extended circle of acquaintances and relatives. At meetings in larger circles, we left our bubble in more ways than one. I was finally able to immerse myself in the minds of convinced Brexiteers.
One spoke of how impossible he found it for Britain to have to pay Greece's debts. He wasn't going to work himself to death just to get his tax money to pay off other countries' debts. Another lost his temper and said he didn't know that. Outrageous! He had voted for Brexit mainly because of the 350 million pounds that are transferred to the EU every week. He was glad that the sum would now be made available to the National Health Service (NHS). With this he addressed the famous red bus of the Brexit campaign, on which was literally written: "We send the EU £350 million a week let’s fund our NHS instead".
Then there was an elderly Indian lady. For a long time, the British had been telling the Indians what to do. After decades of pondering whether she should become a British citizen and thus defect to the colonial masters, she did. Only to find that there is an entity telling the British what to do?! No thanks, and out of the EU.
While I could somehow understand the lady's motivation, apart from the fact that the EU does not act like a colonial master towards its members, the two gentlemen had been fed misinformation.
It is true that Greece had received vast sums of money from various public institutions during the financial crisis. However, the money was not given as a gift. Loans were made to Greece at lower interest rates than Greece would have had to pay on the normal market for government bonds, but still with interest.
The loans came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The UK has a share of about 5 per cent in the IMF. In particular, however, loans were granted by members or organisations of the Euro Group (almost eight times the amount of the IMF). And Britain is not a member of that group. To say that Britain would have been forced to pay Greek debts via EU membership is therefore wrong in several respects.
When it comes to the famous 350 million pounds per week that is now supposed to flow into the health system, the half-knowledge of my interlocutors was joined by Brexit propaganda. The figure itself is not completely out of the air. If you look at the EU's financial reports at the time of the referendum, the EU "received" an average of just under £354 million per week from the UK.
However, many funds flowed back into the country through subsidies for agriculture, support for poorer regions or through research funds. Since the UK is one of the richest donor countries, more money flowed to Brussels than back. The difference, however, was reduced by the so-called British rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. This left £166 million a week of the aforementioned £354 million, or about £8.6 billion over the year. Still a chunk of money, but hardly more than half the amount touted.
The claim on the Brexit bus quickly developed into a scandal. The promised amount of money was exposed as false in a short time. And the heads of the Brexit campaign did not want the slogan to be understood as a promise to support the NHS, but only as an example of what the money could be used for. Perhaps.
A lawsuit was even brought against Boris Johnson, the face of the campaign, for misconduct in a public office [2]. The scandal dragged on for several years. But the only thing that stuck with my counterpart was obviously the misleading message of the bus.
But on with the text. A really, really big issue was immigration. Here I got to hear the outrage from all corners. The first one was a seated gentleman with an immigrant background. He told me about the changes in his neighbourhood, an old immigrant quarter. More and more Arabs were turning up, which went against his grain. Not only do they take away the flats of the old-established people, they often don't even want to work. He had not slaved for decades just so that the newcomers could make a nice life for themselves at his expense.
He had heard that the EU was responsible for immigration, so get out of the EU. I often heard this reasoning, in a slightly different form. Sometimes it was about black immigrants, then about Pakistanis or Indians. Only one group of immigrants was hardly ever mentioned in these discussions: those from EU countries.
That was no wonder and certainly not representative. I was still moving in a London bubble. In the multi-cultural city, white continental Europeans are not sticking out.
It is different in small towns and in the countryside. You hardly ever meet non-white immigrants and their descendants here. I met the first British people who disliked European immigrants at a party in the countryside of some very English friends. And there were dozens of them! In their parents' generation, the EU is a foreign power that has dictated how they should live for decades and wanted all their money for it. The British will be much better off on their own, the world is just waiting to sign great trade deals with them. Besides, Poles and Romanians have taken good jobs away from their children. Like car mechanics or plumbers.
I was surprised. Not only by the distorted image of the world and the EU, but also with regard to the evil EU immigrants. On the way to the party, we had wandered through many streets in our rental car before we found our destination (more on that later.) There, we had only seen people that looked, well, stereotypically British.
A few Poles and Romanians might have moved to the area, but not in such numbers that they would have taken away the jobs of a whole generation of Britons. When asked, my interviewees acquiesced. Their children all had good jobs. But they knew someone and his son's friend probably didn't get a job because a Pole had cut him out. Or something like that.
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[1] My favourite category is that of identity. People from England identifying as “British” were more likely to vote to stay in the EU, “English” to leave.
[2] Boris Johnson was a member of the House of Commons during the Brexit campaign.