BREXIT Plus Plus Plus

Over human history a habit of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another, is displayed at regular intervals. We have had World Wars, Soviet Famines, The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War etc etc. At the local level people of the time think things are fine, whereupon things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we bring massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of crises it is hard to see it happening and hard to understand why. The election of Donald Trump, just like BREXIT, is that moment where we realise that things have been spiralling out of control for some time. The question is, is the spiral now unstoppable, have we awoken just in time?

What BREXIT and the election of Donald Trump have shown is that certain people feel there is a system in place that works against them, one which they have no conceivable notion of how to fight. It is a sense of hopelessness that causes sections of society to scapegoat, to toss a grenade into the fire, to burn things down. What we are seeing is a new wave of populism spreading before our eyes across the world.

How to deal with this threat is a vastly difficult question. While it may often appear that the the common ideology that joins those who voted for the UK to leave the EU or those who voted for a megalomaniacal business man is racism, this is far too shallow and simple an explanation. There is no one ideology that defines the populism we see. These populists can be the working class, impoverished students, middle class or the upper class. Similarly what these people are fighting against cannot be simply defined. We often hear that the battle is against an out of touch elite, whoever the elite may be for it seemingly encompasses everything that has any notion of authority. Just think of Gove's statement that "people have had enough of experts".

With the BREXIT campaign what we saw was practically the entire economic, legal and financial establishment join together to present the facts regarding what the reality a vote to leave would look like (and a pretty dire picture it was that was painted for which the actual reality has shown enormous fidelity). 52% of people, most of whom would not offer any disagreement to those facts, voted to leave anyway. In the case of the US voting for Trump the easy answer would be to agree with Hillary that half the country is a basket of deplorable's. You know, if the basket fits.......(obviously Trump's outrageous and egregious comments on the campaign trail make it far easier to be dismissive in this way). Yet, many of the people who voted for Trump previously voted for Obama, especially in the Rust Belt states.

Often in this blog we have spoken scornfully and pithily about post truth politics and the supremacy of feelings over facts. But considering the above, why should facts take primacy over feelings? Accusing someone of succumbing to their feelings also neatly avoids having to discuss the reasons that they actually feel that way. Perhaps this is the major failing by the 'elite'. This disregard for the feelings of people who faced with this dizzying, infinitely complicated beast called globalisation cannot articulately describe what they feel so angry about, is perhaps problem. So much so that they would end up voting against their own self interest, which one should not suppose they are unaware of (especially in the case of BREXIT). If were going down we are taking you with us!

What we are now seeing with BREXIT is the wheels very much coming off. While it is debatable whether facts should take primacy over feelings, this does not therefore mean that facts are not facts. What was warned about prior to the BREXIT vote has come to pass - plummeting sterling, steep rise in inflation, declining living standards, massive political instability, collapse in economic forecasts and the list goes on. Whether this situation is redeemable is a question for another post. The importance of highlighting this is to offer some perspective on what happens next following Trump's victory. Simply, all that despair and panic is absolutely justified, the dire warnings are correct and the world is very much going to hell in a hand basket full of deplorable's.