Watching the fall out from the 2016 Brexit vote has been met with increasing alarm and bewilderment. No matter what side of the debate you are on.
The increasingly entrenched tribal views of each side of the Brexit question have added to the mess. No one is listening anymore. Hard, extreme core groups are facing off against each other, making it hard to see a sensible way forward or any palatable compromise that can get passed by the UK parliament that is also acceptable to the 27 EU member nations, and that also honours the ‘Leave’ result of 3 years ago.
At this stage, no one knows what the end result will be. At the time of writing almost anything is possible: from a no deal crash out of the EU, to a managed exit with some kind of deal, to a long delay, to a total change of mind and remaining in the EU.
The poor British public are losing the will to live – they are either saying “get on with Brexit!” or “for goodness sake, stop this Brexit madness!”
It’s an extremely complex issue, as global and regional trade, business and politics are intertwined in all kinds of ways. Hundreds of thousands of companies in Europe rely (and have been built up on) free movement of goods, people and services over the past 45 years, and to rip that up is very destabilising.
Even more so, when those businesses have no idea what the final outcome of all this wrangling will be. Uncertainty is the greatest killer of business.
What happens to the millions of Europeans who have settled in the EU, and those Brits who have done likewise in Europe? What happens at the Northern Ireland/Irish border, and what implications does this have for the 1998 peace deal (‘The Good Friday Agreement’)? What about Gibraltar?
It is for these precise reasons – and many more – that a complex issue such as Britain’s membership of the EU should never have been boiled down to such a simplistic choice of Leave or Remain in 2016.
Lunatics taking over the asylum
It’s akin to asking school students whether they would like to ban homework or not.
I bet if you held that vote in pretty much any school, it would come down on the side of ‘Leave’.
“We want to take our lives back!” you could hear the Leaver camp scream. “It’s a golden, new future that awaits us – we can do this!” they would argue. “Imagine all the time you would have now to do those other things you can do, like social media, listening to music and going to parties?!”
Sounds like much more fun. I am sure it would get up. It’s easy to bash things that are difficult to understand. Even easier if you want to stick it to those in power.
No doubt there’d some some brave souls arguing the benefits of remaining with homework, the educational benefits, the long term lessons it teaches in working independently, solving problems yourself and solidifying your understanding. The study skills it teaches. The self reliance. The confidence. The feedback on learning it provides.
But they’d be drowned out by the leave populists. Why not try it? What’s to lose?
On the Leave side, there may even be some arguing against homework stating its adverse impacts on education, how only the richest kids have nice study areas at home and how divisive this is. And how mean it is to set homework which some students can’t complete. But mostly, the Leave arguments would be based on emotion, not facts.
“I don’t really accept your alleged ‘facts’ about the benefits of homework,” a Leave proponent would say, “I am more interested in how homework makes students feel.”
And so, when it comes down to it, on polling day, a majority vote to ban homework. Great celebrations ensue. The lazies love it. They can’t quite believe it.
But it’s not long before issues start to take hold.
So we’ve voted against homework, does that mean all work done at home is banned (Hard Leave) or just that teachers can’t set and grade homework (Soft)? It was not all that clear. Leave meant different things to different people.
Parents and teachers bemoan a further dumbing down of an entire generation of students, and the results the school can deliver. The older students are only a year out from uni anyway so aren’t as bothered. It’s the youngest ones that will suffer.
The implication of banning bright, studious pupils from doing work at home is becoming hard to implement. There’s a back lash against the vote, and the decision to even hold it in the first place.
(It was only held to appease a noisy hard core of teachers who had had enough of marking homework. The head teacher had been pressured to hold a ‘put up or shut up’ in or out vote. That head teacher has since resigned and the much-harangued successor is now feeling duty bound to follow through on the decision.)
A mass exodus of families starts as they move out of the school catchment area, selling their houses and buying in other suburbs where the local schools still have homework. House prices fall around the school.
Sounds crazy right?
The Real Politic
Politicians are elected to make decisions in a representative democracy.
This means they represent their constituents and make decisions on behalf of the people. It’s why they are there. They don’t go back to their people every time they have a decision to make. The public have their own lives to live, and differ among themselves anyway.
Politicians are then held to account at the ballot box every few years. They make the decisions and vote on behalf of the people, for what they believe is in their best interests.
The referendum was flawed from the outset. Even leavers could not agree on (nor know) what they were leaving for, and how that would be arranged. No one is happy. One lesson from the mess is not to ask a simple question to a complex issue; especially if those answering it have little idea of the long term consequences, or understand what’s good for them.
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Photo by Deeana Creates from Pexels
