I am one of those who before and after the referendum decried the fact that such a complex question was put to a referendum at all. We are and have always been a representative democracy, relying on the people we elect to make the best decisions on our behalf. This is their job: they are paid to devote their time to this task because the rest of us are busy doing the other things that need to happen in order to keep capitalism going. In devolving responsibility for the most important decision about our country in the last 40 years, the politicians that we elected failed in their duties to us. I am not joking when I say that each time a government decides to hold a referendum, the costs of that referendum should be met out of their salaries.
As if to emphasise their lack of effort and their half-arsed attitude to their jobs, most of the major players in the referendum have decided that now the easy part is over (the bit where the public did their jobs for them) they're going to give up being involved at all. Contrary to his pre-referendum promises David Cameron has resigned, making sure he abdicates all responsibility for dealing with the consequences of his thoughtless attempt to avoid the schism within his party. Boris Johnson, the face of Leave whilst he thought it would make him prime minister, has now decided to return to a life of punditry, scoring easy points from his comments as a journalist without having to take any responsibility for them. Indeed in a recent Telegraph article, Johnson had the audacity to call on the prime minister to make the positive case for Brexit, when the rest of us are still waiting for Johnson to do that. I'm talking about a real reasoned case, rather than some empty waffle about taking back control. In many ways only Nigel Farrage cannot be seen to be shirking his duties, he was never more than an single issue protester, with one empty aim and seemingly no care for the consequences of his actions. His record as an MEP was a clear indicator that he had no interest in actually engaging in the business of a serious politician, but rather was happy to take money and votes off anyone foolish enough to give them to him. Like many of the most feckless and useless members of our society, he managed to convince us that others were a drain on our resources whilst personally being a much bigger drain than many of his favoured scapegoats put together. If you really want to make a principled stand, it always looks better if you don't profit greatly from it.
Of course, if any of these people genuinely cared about the state of our democracy or indeed our country, they may have thought about the other consequences of their abdication of responsibility. The feeling that led to that protest, the feeling that many of the 17 million people who voted to remain in the EU probably felt in some form or another, the feeling that 'leave' voters would have felt if the result had gone the other way, that feeling was different to how one feels about any other kind of defeat. It was personal, we knew that 18 million of our countrymen had changed the future of our country in a way that we fundamentally disagree with. They did it to us; it was personal. Almost anyone we encountered could have been partially responsible and could be blamed. If the politicians had taken us out of Europe without implicating the rest of us in their decision, we could have blamed them. That would be fine, it is their job to be blamed for stuff; we elect them to take decisions on our behalf and take responsibility for those decisions. Nigel Farage never wanted this, he never wanted to take responsibility for anything, he just wanted to be popular, so he offered an easy answer with no concern for the consequences. He didn't need to care about the consequences, he could just blame them on the elites that he detests so much (presumably because they invite him to so many lunches). Of course the most hopelessly vain of our politicians saw what popularity Farage got from the easy answer and wanted some of it for themselves, so they let us take responsibility for the consequences of the easy answer and now we resent each other for it.
I've been fascinated by the Spanish civil war for a number of years, fascinated by a society that can become so utterly entrenched in an ideological schism that it sees no solution but war. Of course, it also required a hard line element in the military, and a lot more mediaterran passion than the Brits could muster, but I couldn't help but think I sensed its echo in the protest I encountered the evening after the referendum. I hear it when everyone I speak to says they can't help speculating on whether each person they encounter voted leave or remain and judging them accordingly. I see it in the vitriolic tweets of the hardened Brexiteers laughing at the losers, stopping short of calling them gay, but only because the implications of modern language paint a broad spectrum of society with the same weak/fey/degenerate bully-fodder inference*. They feel validated by the democratic process - some even seeing the result of what became a vote against immigrants as an endorsement of racial hatred. The other half (or 48% to be precise) feel entirely cheated by the democratic process, cheated not only by the politicians who forced the most important decision about our country's future on lies, but cheated by our fellow citizens. The faintly patronising liberal mantra since the referendum that people voted leave because of a lack of education attempts to hide the fact that plenty of perfectly well educated people voted leave. Indeed I heard a senior colleague with a good degree declare that he would vote leave because he wanted to give his sons a better chance of getting a job. People voted based on the same shortsighted misguided selfishness that governs most of the rest of their lives. That is the reality of modern Britain that this vote has only served to emphasise: we are no longer the reasonable moderate types we like to present ourselves as to the rest of the world. David Cameron gambled on the reasonable nature of the British people and lost, this was the final confirmation of the passing of the 'traditional' British character of moderation. We are left with a country divided by an unspoken antagonism that will fester and genuinely has the potential to spill over. More so when many of those who voted leave realise that their protest vote solved none of their problems and addressed none of their concerns. We may not have the Mediterranean passion (or hopefully the overtly politicised military) that catalysed the Spanish civil war, but we no longer have the moderating force of, well, moderation.
The recent Tory leadership coronation aims to paper over the cracks and carry on as if it's business as usual, but it isn't. Our country will probably never be the same again, not because it it will no longer physically be a United Kingdom (which it may well also not be) but because we have realised we think as two different countries, and that is an attitude that it is hard to change.
* perhaps a small victory for equal rights: a broader spectrum of people are now discriminated against.
