2016 Referendum Quotes

On the morning after that referendum, Friday June 24, 2016, a group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs met in the Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House. Some were simply jubilant. Some were struggling to assess what it meant. Everyone seemed to assume that the argument was over. So I stood up and gave a warning.

However, for better or worse, elections and referendums are not about what we think. They are about what we feel. And when it comes to feelings, Einstein and Dawkins are no better than anyone else. Democracy assumes that human feelings reflect a mysterious and profound “free will,” that this “free will” is the ultimate source of authority, and that while some people are more intelligent than others, all humans are equally free. Like Einstein and Dawkins, an illiterate maid also has free will, and therefore on election day her feelings—represented by her vote—count just as much as anybody else’s. Feelings guide not just voters but their leaders as well. In the 2016 Brexit referendum the Leave campaign was headed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. After David Cameron resigned, Gove initially supported Johnson for the premiership, but at the very last minute Gove declared Johnson unfit for the position and announced his own intention to run for it. Gove’s action, which destroyed Johnson’s chances, was described as a Machiavellian political assassination.4 But Gove defended his conduct by appealing to his feelings, explaining, “In every step in my political life I have asked myself one question: ‘What is the right

Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said in 2016, in the run-up to the EU referendum, that ‘the United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its twentieth-century history.’ Funny, because Britain is in fact one of the few countries in the world that literally did bury a good portion of its twentieth-century history. During the period of decolonisation, the British state embarked upon a systematic process of destroying the evidence of its crimes. Codenamed ‘Operation Legacy’, the state intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office conspired to literally burn, bury at sea or hide vast amounts of documents containing potentially sensitive details of things done in the colonies under British rule.25 Anything that might embarrass the government, that would show religious or racial intolerance or be used ‘unethically’ by a post-independence government was ordered destroyed or hidden. The Foreign Office were forced to admit in court about having hidden documents, then were unforthcoming about the scale of what was hidden, to the point that you’d be a fool to trust anything that is now said. But from what we know, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were destroyed and over a million hidden, not just starting in the colonial period but dating all the way back to 1662. This operation was only exposed to the public in 2011 as part of a court case between the survivors of British concentration camps in Kenya and the government.

Despite Project Genesis being part-funded by a grant from the European Union, 55 per cent of North West Durham voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.8

Is Gay Political? Ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK, the actor Sir Ian McKellen was interviewed about which way he was planning to vote. The interview’s headline quote was ‘Brexit makes no sense if you’re gay.’ In the piece Sir Ian – who has done an enormous amount to advance fundamental gay rights over the decades – said that, looking at the vote from a gay perspective, ‘there’s only one point, which is to stay. If you’re a gay person, you’re an internationalist.

When the Conservatives privatised the contracts for housing asylum seekers in 2012, the companies sought housing where land was the cheapest – in deprived areas, places already suffering from neglect and the stranglehold of austerity. In 2016, in Middlesbrough, one in every 152 people was an asylum seeker; in Rochdale, one in every 204 and in Bolton, one in 271. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these towns all voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. While the feeling of being swamped was blamed on an external threat, it was in fact caused by internal inequality, organised from deep within the system of England: the price of land.

Nor will there be freedom of movement without border checks throughout the EU while Britain, Denmark, and Ireland retain their controls. Brexit might resolve the British exception, and possibly the Irish one too, although this will depend on the post-membership arrangements for free movement on the island of Ireland. However, the Danish referendum in 2015 that confirmed its opt-out status makes it very unlikely that this will change, especially given the (increasingly protracted) ‘temporary’ suspensions of Schengen provisions by various states in the wake of the refugee crisis since 2016.

British society has always been deeply divided about its links to Europe, to the point that Prime Minister Cameron felt he had to promise a referendum on staying in Europe as part of the Conservative election manifesto in 2015. Historical circumstance meant that the June 2016 referendum took place in the midst of the refugee crisis, which tipped the balance in favour of leaving. Today the result might be different, but in point of fact half of British society has always been hostile towards Europe and always will be.

Buoyed by the EU referendum result, the arch-monarchist Tory MP for Romford, Andrew Rosindell, chair of the All-Party Flags and Heraldry Parliamentary Group, tabled a parliamentary motion on 3 November 2016. This called for the reinstatement of ‘God Save The Queen’ at the end of each day’s transmission on BBC1.

In hindsight, the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum in 2016 were intended to divide the 99%, thus diverting attention from the real authors of human misery… money power and centralised control. Prior to both Trump and Brexit, more people were awakening to the reality of centralised power but since then, the “99%” have turned on each other. Meanwhile, the trajectory towards one world government and the new world order continues. Trump is not his own man and Brexit is an illusion and theatrical distraction; the UK’s military, financial, legal, social and legal arrangements are being woven ever tighter into the dictatorship of the European Union, NATO and the United Nations.