An Invitation to the Land of Hope: A Conversation with Bill McClay

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1. S P Chakravarty says

   September 29, 2019 at 11:04 am

   Mr McClay asserts that the “Brexit vote happened because a significant number of Britons had come to fear that they were losing the means and the capacity for self-rule. ” Assertion does not make fact. Opinion polls in January 2016 suggested that no more than 10 per cent of the respondents regarded that EU membership was a matter of concern, good or bad. Then, in the course of the referendum campaigned, the impact of six years of austerity on the health service became an issue. It was falsely claimed, emblazoned on the side of a campaign bus, by Boris Johnson and his ilk that billions of pounds of money would become available to the National Health Service almost immediately on departure from the EU. Fear of non-white immigration, which has been part of the dog whistle politics of the UKIP win of the Tories, which has been of concern to many voters was brought to the fore although the population of the EU countries is overwhelmingly white. The spectre of Turkey joining the EU and potentially over-running Britain with 90 million non-whites taking advantage of the free movement of citizens to seek employment or set up means of self-employment, enshrined in the terms of the single market, was raised. Paradoxically, some of those like Nigel Farage who raised the issue of immigration appeared to suggest that leaving the EU would allow the UK to seek out better-than-EU-origin immigrants from around the world. Then the slogan of taking back control over immigration, instead of having to accept job seekers from the EU, began to get traction. Exactly which of these arguments contributed to the Brexit vote is not possible to ascertain. It is likely that all of these and more contributed in various measures to the Brexit vote.

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