Playing with fire

This is a trailer for a book that is worth your time and money. Much of the discussion of Brexit is about economics, but a large section of the vote to leave was about immigration. What some people were voting for was the forcible expulsion of foreigners. They didn't phrase it that way. They used euphemisms like 'ending freedom of movement,' but they meant something a little more savage. The referendum has led to increased incidents of hate crimes, as this chilling Panorama programme shows. This and the book tell us about the human cost of playing politics with people, people who didn't even have the right to vote on their fate.

Racism was harnessed by the leave campaign to win it. This is not to say all leave voters are racist, far from it, but enough were to swing the result. Nor did Brexit create xenophobia. However, this accursed referendum has acted as a legitimating tool and has ended inhibitions against the expression of hate. Something good about the country has died.

Nationalism and racism are potent forces for mobilising the worst in society. They are a curse that has killed millions through war and genocide. The EU was a response, and a clever one. It didn't try and create the European super state of myth. It didn't try and abolish the nation state. Instead of utopianism, it gradually softened borders. It did that through integrating trade in a single market and through ensuring that every EU citizen became, in effect, a dual national. We are citizens of both our own country and the EU. It was practical too. Driving licences, pet passports, mobile phones, reciprocal health care, and others became Europe-wide, making life easier. Freedom of movement is part of that softening. It is a heavily circumscribed right. Any stay over three months is subject to stringent conditions (not that the UK enforced them). But it opened up opportunities to live and work in different EU states, without onerous bureaucratic restrictions.

Nationalists, and that means most Eurosceptic politicians in the UK, resented this and wanted to firm up borders again. They used the worst of populist rhetoric, spread lies, and dropped dark hints. It was playing with fire, but they preferred winning their game to the risk of being burnt. They thought they were safe anyway, the flames would only consume others. Their behaviour was contemptible. They encouraged dark forces to emerge from the corners to where they had been confined. They wanted their right-wing fantasy at all costs, costs that were born by the people in this book and documentary. I look at Brexit and sometimes wonder, what have we become?