Discontent among young people did not suddenly emerge after the referendum. They were already bitter about university tuition fees, zero hours work contracts, high rents and the impossibility of getting a foot on the property ladder, and they had every reason to be resentful towards a generation who, in their eyes, had had it easy with student grants, secure employment and guaranteed pension rights. Amid the precariousness of their lives, the one positive thing they took for granted was that they lived in a continent with open borders where they could go where they liked to study or seek work, and when even this seemed to be snatched from them by the votes of the over-50s, it came as a kick in the teeth. Families were split as Brexit-supporting parents stood accused of having voted selfishly and against their own children’s future.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (2016), a young freelance writer and co-founder of the feminist online magazine Vagenda, wrote two articles for The Guardian, one on 24 June with a selection of tweets and posts, the second three days later focusing on the mixed emotions of young voters whose parents had voted Leave. In the first acrimony towards the baby boomer generation was expressed in hard-hitting terms:
‘I’m so angry,’ wrote one Twitter user. ‘A generation given everything: free education, golden pensions, social mobility, have voted to strip my generation’s future.’ Another statement, from a commenter on the Financial Times website that has been widely shared, summed up the sense of furious betrayal among the young: ‘The younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of its predecessors.’
Three days later, after young people had had time to talk (or try to talk) to older relatives, the initial anger was tinged by profound sorrow at the tensions created in family relationships, and often by difficulty in accepting the fact that their parents harboured racist or nationalistic sentiments they considered abhorrent. Among Cosslett’s collected quotations, a young woman says, ‘As much as I love my parents, this referendum has made me see them in a different light’, while a young man’s enormous admiration for his single mother does not blind him to a distasteful aspect of her personality:
I’ve always been so proud of her for all the things she sacrificed for us. She’s warm, kind, generous and funny. She has such acute sympathy that she’s been known to cry hearing about the illness of other people’s relatives. Oh, and she also hates immigrants.
The figure of 75 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds initially reported as having voted Remain was only a slight exaggeration. When YouGov pollsters had had more time to analyse their data, it was revealed that 71 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 54 per cent of the 25–49 age group had voted Remain, while 60 per cent of 50- to 64-year-olds and 64 per cent of over-65s had voted Leave (Moore 2016). The statistics are clear: those who had most of their lives in front of them had been outvoted by people whose best days were behind them, and this was not something the pro-Brexit press could brush aside.
On the day after the vote Adam Boult (2016) for The Telegraph made no attempt to distort the figures, and of the enormous number of tweets available chose to quote one posted by someone whose surname was, in the circumstances, somewhat poignant; Chai Cameron had written: ‘I’m scared. Jokes aside I’m actually scared. Today an older generation has chosen to ruin the future for the younger generation. I’m scared.’ Four days later, however, the same newspaper published a piece by an Oxford undergraduate whose parents had voted Leave, Bethany Kirkbride (2016), who urged her demographic to understand that ‘older generations are just as frustrated as young people’, and to direct their anger not at mum and dad, but at young friends and acquaintances who had not bothered to vote.
Alex Matthews (2016) for the Daily Mail quoted the YouGov statistics but in reporting on the hastily organized anti-Brexit demonstration in London the day after the referendum chose certain words that implied that the protest was not entirely peaceful: ‘Millennials have slammed baby boomers for voting Britain out of the EU as furious crowds of young people protest in London’. Young Britons are reported as having ‘voted in droves in favour of the Remain campaign’; today the word drove is used generally for a large group of people acting together, but it originally referred to a herd of cattle being driven (a drove-road was an ancient cattle track), which implies that young Remain voters had not exercised free will but had been driven by a herdsman. Unlike other witnesses to the event, Matthews saw that many of the protesters ‘wore face paint and ignited flares’ (in reality a small minority had painted their faces and hardly any lit flares), and from the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street and London Bridge they did not walk but ‘marched towards the Shard’. Of the many and varied placards in evidence, Matthews quoted two slogans guaranteed to be provocative for Daily Mail readers: ‘no borders’ and ‘refugees welcome’.
On The Mail’s website the updated version of Matthews’ article on 25 June includes no fewer than twenty-four photographs. Remarkably, the first of them shows a group of male demonstrators with, in the foreground, a young man dressed entirely in black (including cap and gloves), wearing a face mask and holding a flare in each hand. It is not clear whether he and his friends are genuinely part of the anti-Brexit protest or are using the event to promote some other agenda. Several photographs feature police officers as well as the protesters, although none shows them struggling to maintain order. Others clearly have the Daily Mail readership in mind as they focus on the more provocative gestures or the physical appearance of individual protesters: three show a young woman drenched in fake blood and carrying a placard reading ‘Brexit: What a Bloody Joke’, while another features a young person who appears to be male wearing lipstick and nail varnish.
The article contains no reference to property being damaged, people intimidated or arrests made.
In the days following the referendum several writers and bloggers referred to Sky Data figures suggesting very low turnout of young voters, which meant that not everyone felt sorry for those whose future prospects had been damaged by the baby boomers. The severest critics were young people who had braved the rainy weather to get to the polling station, such as Bethany Kirkbride cited above. Anna Rhodes (2016) for The Independent had little doubt that the young had dug their own grave.
Swaths of young people in this country have been lamenting at the fact that our futures have been ‘ruined’ by selfish older voters who probably won’t live to see the full extent of the damage they have caused.
It has been estimated that only 36 per cent of people in the 18–24 category voted in the referendum. 62 per cent of young people did not bother to take themselves down to the polling station and cast their ballot.
Turnout in areas with a higher proportion of young residents was lower across the country. So, it is rather hypocritical for the young to chastise older Brits when less of us voted than those who did not.
It subsequently emerged that the Sky Data statistics were very wide of the mark. Research conducted by the London School of Economics (LSE) found that 64 per cent of registered 18- to 24-year-olds voted, almost double the figure originally reported on Sky News although still significantly lower than the overall turnout of 72.2 per cent announced by the Electoral Commission. The same LSE study put turnout figures at 65 per cent for 25- to 39-year-olds, 66 per cent for the 40–54 demographic, 74 per cent for 55- to 64-year-olds and an astonishing 90 per cent for those aged 65 or over (Yeung 2016). Young Britons clearly did themselves no favours by not making it to the polling station in sufficient numbers but the youngest voters of all were nowhere near as culpable as the original dodgy datum suggested. Full Fact investigated the hopelessly inaccurate statistic of only 36 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds casting their ballot and discovered that it did not refer to actual votes cast in the referendum; it was ‘bas
ed on likely turnout for the 2015 election’ (Milne 2016) and misleadingly reported on Sky News.
The referendum showed that Britain was also split down the middle in terms of the winners and losers in a post-industrial and globalized economy, with the latter having used the EU vote as an opportunity to send a powerful message to a political class they perceived as indifferent to the difficulties of their daily lives. One of the first to provide an in-depth analysis of the result was David Runciman (2016), professor of politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge, who compares Cambridge, where 74 per cent of voters opted for Remain, with the nearby city of Peterborough, where 61 per cent voted Leave, to exemplify the winners and losers in the global economy. With eight science parks, two universities and one of the most important hospitals in Europe, Cambridge thrives in the knowledge economy and many of its well-educated, mobile and thoroughly networked inhabitants have undoubtedly been economic winners in the globalized world. Peterborough has relatively low unemployment but also wage rates that are below the average for eastern England, its economy still involves the production of physical goods, and over the last decade the city has absorbed a considerable number of EU immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe. Its inhabitants are precisely the sort of people likely to feel that globalization in general and European integration in particular are processes they have been subject to but had never chosen. As Runciman puts it:
The digital revolution has opened up the prospect of a future in which knowledge is the primary currency, connectivity the primary asset, and physical geography is at best a secondary concern. People who are rooted in particular places, who work in industries that produce physical goods, and whose essential social interactions do not happen online are the ones who wanted Out. They have glimpsed a future in which people like them are increasingly at the mercy of forces beyond their power to control. And they are right.
For Runciman the referendum result means that ‘the economic winners find themselves on the losing side, for what is effectively the first time in the modern political history of this country’.
David Goodhart (2017) explores a similar distinction at book-length and sees the socioeconomic right–left dichotomy of a manufacturing economy as having been superseded in the knowledge economy by a sociocultural division: ‘The Great Divide’ between ‘Anywheres’ and ‘Somewheres’.
Anywheres have no great sense of attachment to nation or place. They usually did well at school, often left home to go to university, have ‘portable “achieved” identities’ (ibid. 3) and tend to support economic and social liberalism. They have come to dominate the political agenda in the developed world, their rise to prominence coinciding with the decline of solidarity-based social democratic parties.
In contrast, Somewheres ‘usually have ‘ascribed’ identities – Scottish farmer, working-class Geordie, Cornish housewife – based on group belonging and particular places’ (ibid.). They are usually less well-educated, have been adversely affected by the loss of secure employment for the unskilled and have generally fared badly out of globalization. Somewheres have a sense of having been excluded from the decision-making process, of looking on impotently as the Anywheres call the shots. For Goodhart the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of populism all over Europe are symptoms of frustrated Somewheres fighting back.
In the specific case of the EU referendum, analysis of the results from over a thousand local government wards revealed a strong correlation between educational attainment and how people voted; graduates and people with good qualifications from school were significantly more likely to vote Remain (Rosenbaum 2017).
We saw in Chapter 4 how old Etonians leading the pro-Leave campaign managed to portray themselves as champions of the common man as the tabloids railed against lobbies, vested interests, the banks, the multinationals, the metropolitan elite and even the luvvies of the acting profession. After the referendum, the unapologetically anti-intellectual approach continued as The Mail, The Express and The Sun attacked the Remainers – renamed Remoaners – for their reluctance to accept defeat, making fun of their inability to comprehend the common sense values of the ordinary people who had not been intimidated by Project Fear. On 5 October 2016 the Daily Mail leaked the contents of Theresa May’s planned speech at the Conservative Party conference (Slack 2016).
May savages the liberal elite: PM will use keynote speech at the Tory conference to condemn those who sneer at ordinary Britons’ worries and reach out to millions of blue-collar workers
•Prime Minister to criticise people who have ‘sneered’ over immigration
•Theresa May to condemn those who dismiss voter concerns as ‘parochial’
•Set to pledge to lead Government that will intervene on workers’ behalf
•It follows Sunday’s speech in Birmingham where she outlined Brexit plan
Theresa May will today condemn the metropolitan elite for sneering at millions of ordinary Britons over immigration.
In words that will resonate across the country, the Prime Minister will criticise those who try to dismiss the concerns of many voters as ‘parochial’.
And she will savage the political and chattering classes who think the public’s patriotism is ‘distasteful’ and their views on crime ‘illiberal’.
For ‘ordinary Britons’ and ‘blue-collar workers’ we could substitute ‘Somewheres’, while ‘the metropolitan elite’ and ‘the political and chattering classes’ are clearly ‘Anywheres’. The words sneer, parochial, distasteful and illiberal imply that the elite consider themselves morally and intellectually superior to the ‘millions of ordinary Britons’ who have legitimate concerns about immigration and whose patriotism is the product of Somewheres’ attachment to place. Blue-collar workers, particularly those who are members of a trade union, may not be wholly convinced by Theresa May’s and the Daily Mail’s new-found concern for the well-being of the proletariat, but the anti-elite stance doubtless struck a chord with many people who resented being constantly portrayed as ignorant racists.
John Longworth (2017), co-chair of a pressure group called Leave Means Leave, used the word elite(s) no fewer than eight times in a short article in The Sun claiming that in 2016 working people were robbed of £35 billion ‘to fund vanity projects for the wealthy chattering classes’. The collocations are:
. . . they were exercised by the plain ignorance of the left-liberal elite. . .
. . . this privileged elite had ‘lost the plot’. . .
. . . the people on 23rd June burst the elite bubble. . .
. . . exemplified by the obsessions of the elite. . .
. . . easier for the elite to chat at the Hampstead dinner table. . .
. . . the elites are well-healed. . .
. . . nicer for the elite to be part of a superior and technocratic club (the EU). . .
. . . elites are the lucky ones, with no idea of problems plaguing the masses. . .
Like the Daily Mail, The Sun is not particularly credible in the role of defender of the sansculottes, but Longworth (who was director-general of the British Chamber of Commerce between 2011 and 2016) refers directly to the Peasants’ Revolt, then obliquely to the French Revolution in his assertion that the attitude of the elite ‘is not so much “let them eat cake” as we will steal your cake and give it away without shame and then ridicule anyone who dares to complain!’. Like James Slack in The Mail, he attacks what he perceives as the contempt displayed by the haves towards the have-nots, referring to the ‘sneering superiority’ of a ruling class preoccupied with abstract affairs and unable to relate to ‘the grubby reality of the practical and all too proximate needs of their fellow countrymen and women’. If some of Longworth’s lexical choices are not typical of The Sun – ‘the nonchalant urbanity that precedes decadence and, eventually, social dissonance’ – his conclusion is crystal clear, and evocative of the great lie of the £350 million Britain allegedly sends to Brussels each week: if the £35 billion
wasted on the chattering classes’ vanity projects were reallocated, we could ‘increase NHS funding by a quarter and Defence spending by a third and there would be change’.
Less than a month after the referendum, Nick Gutteridge (2016) in The Express used the word elite(s) in both the headline and the lead, and then five times in the body of his report of comments made by the Lebanese statistician and academic, Nassim Taleb. The collocations are:
. . . a revolution against ‘stupid’ Brussels elite. . .
. . . people’s revolution against the bumbling Brussels elite. . .
. . . the posturing of unaccountable elites. . .
. . . the entire world has grown tired of a sneering elite. . .
. . . have just realised that these elites don’t know what they’re talking about. . .
. . . that elite doesn’t have the intellectual level that you would expect. . .
. . . With the elite we’re not talking about people with huge intellect. . .
THE LANGUAGE OF BREXIT Page 17