"the cause of refugees and migrants should, by rights, be the great civil rights cause of our time". Image: Amel Emric / Press Association Images. All rights reserved
The referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU may yet mark a new high in the detachment between voters and the political and media elite. While the nation’s institutions and political classes sharpen their arguments about the viability of export yields and sovereignty, the sentiment among the wider public around the campaign – an event which will shape Britain’s political landscape and place in the world for decades – remains flat and uninspired. Barely half of the 18-34 year olds say they are certain to vote.
Watching Newsnight’s first special programme on the referendum on Monday night, we were all reminded of why there is so much disenchantment in the referendum: the debate is politically narrow, and shrouded in a consciously constructed web of complexity. While we watched as Evan Davis was winched onto Sealand – the microstate on a concrete island in the English Channel – we were told that the main things we needed to understand were not competing narratives about society, but simply more facts from experts. So the BBC’s first flagship coverage of the referendum debate consisted of a head-to-head between Blairite Peter Mandelson and Tory Chris Grayling, and a panel of establishment figures – senior civil servants and lawyers – who held forth about EU trade legislation and the (never properly explained) jurisdictions of various courts.
