It’s been not quite a full week since the Brexit vote happened. There’s a lot of wreckage to assess and understand the nature of here. To be fair, I am not certain that I do understand any of it just yet.
There’s the demographics of it. Scotland and Northern Ireland versus England and Wales. Old versus young. The splitting of the Conservatives’ ranks, along with UKIP versus everyone else.
There’s the murder of Jo Cox.
That last item doesn’t seem to get much attention since the results of the vote broke. Not from the commercial news services, or the publicly-owned ones either. And the sick joke of it is that her killer – judging by his reply when asked his name for the court’s records – may have gotten exactly what he wanted.
That makes me angry.
As a Canadian, I am one of those people across the planet indirectly affected by the Brexit vote. Most likely, the effect will be on what there are of my retirement savings. But since I’m not a citizen of any of the components of the United Kingdom, there are a number of people who will no doubt tell me that it’s not my knitting to worry about.
The problem with that is, as I have said, that I am affected by the choices of others regardless of that fact. The same applies to the American election process underway at the point when I wrote these words. I am going to be hit by consequences. I have a stake in the outcome of these things, despite not having a lawful vote in most of them.
As a Canadian, I cannot help but look back at the two referenda on Québec independence. As a non-Québecois, I had no legal voice in the outcome, but as a Canadian, my future was going to be impacted anyway. And there were those people who – some cheerfully, some in resentful anger over past offences against them by others – told the people in my situation that ours was to shut up and let it happen to us.
That too made me angry.
That anger couldn’t be allowed to overwhelm me. Others did allow it in their own hearts. Still more channeled that anger in more productive ways, or so I think looking back. That’s part of why there’s still a mostly united Canada.
Another part is the Clarity Act. Brought in during the Chrétien administration, it set up rules for how referenda on seccession from Canada should be held: with clear Questions and a clear majority percentage to trigger the beginning of any negotation process that results from the answers to such Questions. By contrast, the political parties of the UK seem to have made the error of going with a simple majority instead. Not unlike the “Fifty plus one” stance of the Québec separatistes and those who agreed with such rules elsewhere in Canada, whatever else they thought of the separatiste project to begin with.
That the Brexit referendum is officially non-binding seems to cut no ice at all with the winning side, nor with the leaders of the Remain forces. Certainly not with key figures of the European Union who insist that “leave means leave”. The call from such people now is to bind the whole of the UK to such results. No matter the narrowness of the Leave side’s win, no matter the breakdown of the vote’s demographics, no matter the misgivings of many who did vote Leave and now find themselves shocked at the reaction and consequences.
Simply bind and damn them all.
And that too makes me angry.
And I do not know where to put that anger yet.
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