WOLFRAM'S FIRST PRINCIPLES
A balanced look at the issues behind the issues
A balanced look at the issues behind the issues
On January 15th, 2019 I sat in a small Pub near Durham Tees Valley Airport in Darlington, a tiny airfield in the north east of England, just seventy miles from the Scottish border.
This was deep Brexit country, with 56.2% of local residents having voted to leave the EU and neighboring Middlesbrough and Hartlepool going as high as 65.5% and 69.6% respectively.
The atmosphere was tense. Screens around the pub showed the gothic halls of Westminster, seat to the British Parliament. It was the night of the first vote on Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal, an event the Guardian would later describe as the "heaviest parliamentary defeat of a British PM in the democratic era".
Saying the deal's rebuke was well received in my northern pub would be a bit of an understatement. "YEEEEEESSSSS - for the Empire!" bellowed a group of what looked like weathered factory workers and an older gentleman - so far firmly asleep - suddenly jolted up and proclaimed "they call us GREAT Britain for a reason!".
Now, I don't wanna go into the ins and outs of who called Britain "Great" to begin with (hint: It was the British) - but what is remarkable is that this is a voice that is rarely heard beyond the borders of the UK. It is a silent majority, big enough to decide the faith of an entire country, yet rarely covered by international media. To anyone who feels that this sounds similar to other silent majorities, e.g. the 63 millions of Americans voting for Trump in 2016* - maybe that's because it is.
But what drives these millions of people to vote for candidates and actions promising to isolate their countries with potentially disastrous economic and social consequences? And is there any commonality between phenomena such as Brexit, Trump or the general rise of nationalist and isolationist parties across the world?
Imagine you're a peasant in 18th century Britain, born in the afore-mentioned Darlington area. Your average village size is somewhere between 800 to1200 people. Among them - with almost complete certainty - is your future spouse and mother to your future children. Within your lifetime, you are unlikely to venture more than 60 miles from your place of birth (unless there is a war). And you are almost guaranteed to be Christian - your church attendance ensured by an ever observant community.
Life isn't great. High taxes, roaming bandits and poor hygiene conditions make for a tough existence, likely to end around your 35th birthday.
But there is one problem you do NOT have: Knowing who you are.
Your Identity, in terms of culture, nationality, race or religion is crystal clear. You live in a highly homogenous society and - apart from maybe some vague rumors about the orient or the new world - you are probably completely unaware that alternative options even exist.
Of course, this isn't the case for everyone living at the time. If you are close to the King's court, a soldier or merchant or simply living in a larger harbor city, things were more diverse. But for the population at large, identity simply wasn't a question.
Fast forward a few hundred years and things have changed significantly.
About one out of five inhabitants of today's UK has its roots elsewhere, predominantly in the countries of the former British Empire or the EU. About 60% of Brits are Christian with the next biggest portion having no religion at all and ca 13% of Britains are non-whites. This new diversity leaves citizens with a choice. One can embrace it as a set of previously unconsidered options, prompting the re-evaluation of one's identity in a global context - or one can use it as a means of distinction, hardening the definition of what it means to be "us" rather than "them".
But migration and higher levels of diversity coincide with a number of other trends. Technology, especially the internet has created unprecedented growth and global trade has been skyrocketing ever since the 1950s
This has led to a stark divide within most western populations: Those who participated and hence benefitted from this growth and those who didn't. This rift is particularly visible in England.
London, a center of global finance, home to countless startups and host to more than 20 million international visitors each year has overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU, with all of England's top 10 remain districts being located within the city.
Likewise, the younger generation - more accustomed to the rising tide of networked technology and globally manufactured products have voted to remain at much higher rates than the older generation.
The same applies for education. YouGov found that 68% of voters with a university degree voted 'remain', whereas 70% of people educated only to GCSE level or lower voted 'leave'. This is not to suggest that deciding to leave the EU is a result of poor education, but rather that higher education makes one more eligible for jobs in finance, technology or other sectors likely to benefit from globalization and access to the EU's single market.
A pretty clear picture
Putting all these pieces together, a clear picture emerges. Beyond the eye of international media coverage exists a large number of voters struggling to benefit from the rapid social, technological and economic progress of recent years. Voters searching for a strong identity to hold on to in ever faster changing times - an identity frequently found in harkening back to a "Golden Age" - a time when things where better, at least in the selective memory of the collective.
Trump voters might have found this Golden Age in the smoking chimneys and churning steel mills of the mid 20th century. For the British it was something even bigger. It was the Empire - An empire over which the sun never set.
And indeed, spanning from Canada in the West to Australia to the east, from the northern isles all the way to South Africa the British empire was the largest territory controlled by a single ruler in all of history.
Of course, today's empire is a mere shadow of its former self. Britain's hasty retreat from the Indian subcontinent in 1947 left much of the region in turmoil, still felt today in India's ongoing skirmish with Pakistan,
In 1980, Southern Rhodesia, Britain's last African colony, became the independent nation of Zimbabwe, in 1986 the Queen surrendered her constitutional influence over Australia and in 1997 - after decades of negotiations - Prince Charles formally handed over Hong Kong to its homeland of China.
To most of us then, today's British Empire is a mere footnote of history. Seeing the queens face on an Australian five dollar bill or a Canadian twenty is a fascinating reminder of its historic ties - but not much more.
But that's not at all how many British feel. Ruled by a monarch, presented as a human deity with eternal pomp, unchanged over centuries. Governed by a parliament that only stopped wearing powdered wigs as recently as 2017 and still gathers in a gothic chamber around a golden mace. And led by the "Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled" (or House of Lords in short) that still includes countless dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons joining it for hereditary reasons it is no wonder that to many Brits the grandeur of the Empire feels as present as ever.
So it is through this lens then that we have to see how many Brits, especially northerners view Brexit. It is with this magnitude, this sense of historic global relevance that a few false promises over NHS contributions or even the potential problems of a "hard Brexit" seem nothing but negligible for the proud "rulers of an empire over which the sun never sets".
This Empire is what gives many of the British people - to this day - meaning. To many it remains one of the few "stable" entities in a chaotic, ever-changing world. For many it is the closest expression of a collective identity, and this is nothing to be underestimated.
So all of us that think that the facts that have become apparent in recent years: the struggle of actually leaving the EU, the economic consequences of doing so, the contributions associated with its membership and so on would change the British wish to leave, have to realize that to someone who's still in the mindset of being a direct subject to the eternal monarch and a citizen of a nation that still rules the world these are but minor obstacles to be overcome on the way back to greatness.
Even with all the experiences and revelations that emerged from more than two years of Brexit negotiations, a second referendum is not necessarily more likely to result in a remain vote - maybe even less so, now that many Brexiteers have found their suspicions confirmed of just how much of a perceived stranglehold the EU put on this once glorious island nation.
