Since the referendum’s result, there’s been a chorus of people repeating that the country is divided and we need to put aside our differences, by which they mean that Remainers need to suck it up.
Politicians have pandered to voters saying that concern over immigration is legitimate. It is not, not in Britain and not at this time. Cuts in public services and shifts in work structures are legitimate concerns. The stress on public services is a result of government cuts. Migrants have contributed to our economy and government coffers; yet the government has made cuts to public services and blamed migrants for every ill.
During the campaign and following the result, we have witnessed a wave of xenophobic attacks directed at European citizens and British minorities. They have been insulted, beaten up, had their windows smashed, and a shop has been fire-bombed. Apologists for Leave are keen to say that Leave voters aren’t all xenophobes and racists; yet it is quite extraordinary that people didn’t stop to think that the Leave campaign was toxic, even after an MP was murdered on political grounds (mentally ill people don’t live in a bubble). Siding with xenophobes implies that one is not too concerned about xenophobia. People might have found Farage’s ‘breaking point’ poster, with echoes of Nazi propaganda, reprehensible, but not enough to question its flawed premise about the ills of immigration.
