Economist Milton Friedman leaves a meeting at Downing Street, 1980. Photo: / PA Archive/Press Association Images. All Rights Reserved
After the EU Referendum vote for Brexit, change in UK politics is moving so fast that daily newspapers are out of date before they are published while the weekly magazines are just recording recent history. Hourly radio news bulletins and social media are the only channels that can cope with the new frenetic situation that “an hour in politics is a long time.”
It would be a foolhardy enterprise, therefore, to write an essay on this fast-evolving scene on the implications of the Brexit result. A few rather anodyne scenarios may be sketched out, but all they would do is add to the extensive jumble of journalistic speculations on offer. These speculations invariably identify the main influences behind Brexit as growing inequality, regional differences, educational disparity, inter-generational division as well as ethnic factors and alarm at the prospect of mass immigration. They are identified as principle reasons for the increasing public disaffection with politics, seen to be mostly composed of an aloof elite preoccupied with themselves rather than the needs felt by the electorate. Hence, the ‘protest vote’ triumphed in the referendum.
