The Day Brexit Got Trumped

2016 is going to go down as the year that turned politics on its head. A year in which we learned, as if we were not already aware, that politicians can and will say just about anything that they think will get the electorate on their side. And that the electorate's capacity for the unexpected should never, ever be underestimated. Naturally, having seen Britain make a spectacularly unexpected - and to many, spectacularly stupid - decision, America seemed to say, "Anything you can do..."

All politicians thrive on  saying what the public want to hear; take Tony Blair for example. Blair tapped into the public consciousness on subjects that the masses were thinking about. On the National Health Service, in the run up to Labour's 1997 General Election win, he said, " We have 14 days to save the NHS." Nearly twenty years later, despite ten years of Blair in Downing Street, the NHS apparently still needs saving. When Princess Diana died, also in 1997, he exploited the zeitgeist when he called her "the people's princess."  And his talent for the soundbite extended even to the moments when, arriving in Belfast for the talks that led to the Good Friday agreement - a not inconsiderable achievement, it has to be admitted - he said, without a trace of irony, "A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. I really do."

Blair understood what the public wanted to hear, and gave it right back to them. This year his legacy has been felt in the run up to Britain's referendum on membership of the European Union, an unedifying campaign aptly described by the author Robert Harris as, "The most depressing, divisive, duplicitous political event of my lifetime." The EU Referendum campaign featured the most egregious falsehoods and obfuscations as both sides sought to exploit the public's fears. Take the claim that leaving the EU would save us £350million a week, all of which could be spent on the NHS. The claim was widely discredited at the time and the 'pledge' to fund the NHS with this sum has been dropped since the referendum result - if indeed anyone in the Leave camp itself ever believed it would actually happen - but enough people were probably swayed by the claim to put their X in the Leave box.

I didn't believe this...

...I'm struggling with this.

Rabble rousing and tub thumping, the Leave campaigners tapped into the public's dissatisfaction with the EU - and let's face it, even among those who voted Remain, I imagine that there are many who would admit that the EU is not without faults, but voted as they did on the basis of remaining being the lesser of two evils - and that is the way politics is for me these days. Far less campaigning on the positives of what the candidates can do, more about how bad it will be if the other lot win. Any positives that a candidate or party claim will accrue from their victory are vague soundbites along the lines of "Taking our country back" or "Making this country great again." Formless phrases, ambiguous claims without substance but which enough people will believe, and which will drive enough people to vote that way.

And there even appears to be a perversity among people that will drive them to do one thing despite it seeming that the most appropriate course of action is the exact opposite. In the aftermath of the referendum the newspapers, radio and TV featured a perplexing number of members of the public who admitted that they voted Leave despite supporting Britain's continued membership of the EU - a position that appeared to spring from a desire to say that if it all went horribly wrong, they could distance themselves from that decision on the grounds that they voted for Brexit. Perhaps this sort of perversity is the reason why I turned on the television yesterday morning to find that Donald Trump had been elected President of The United States. From coverage of the campaign it became clear that there were enough Democratic Party supporters who would not vote for Hillary Clinton on personal grounds - maybe they would not vote Republican, but they weren't going to vote Clinton - giving the Democrats a major disadvantage with so many of their traditional supporters disillusioned about their choice of candidate.

Terry Pratchett in Thief of Time.

Meanwhile Donald Trump - like Tony Blair and so many other politicians before him - was campaigning on a platform of telling the public exactly what they wanted to hear. The average man (or woman) in the street, whether they are American or British or German or French, wants pretty much the same thing. A job, a decent standard of living and security from  harm or danger. So when Trump said he would "make America great again," when he promised to create 25 million new jobs, when he promised to be tough on Islamic State,  to "just bomb those suckers… there would be nothing left,"  when he dismissed climate change science as "a hoax" he spoke to a great rump of people who had seen their jobs disappear - largely outsourced or offshored - who worry about terrorism and who are sceptical about climate change. And in a country where there are more guns than people (112 guns per 100 people), he did his popularity no harm by speaking against gun control.

He spoke to the people who felt that they had been left behind, ignored and unconsidered, put a metaphorical arm round their shoulders and told them that he would look after them. He flattered them into believing that, unlike Obama, unlike George W, unlike any of his predecessors, he cared about their plight and more importantly, would do something about it. Now, he may even believe that himself, but as the saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time, and for many, Trump's ascent to the position sometimes known as Leader of The Free World is going to lead to the same sort of disappointment and disillusion that attends the outcome of any election.

On our side of the pond we have been feeling the effects - real, and opportunistic, of Brexit - ever since 23rd June, and the recent High Court ruling that MPs must vote before Article 50 can be invoked - a Government appeal against which will be heard in the Supreme Court on 5th December - leaves us in a kind of limbo, which at least is not the case in the US, albeit that the outcome of this week's election may have provoked the same kind of disbelief. The key difference is that for those who truly think that Britain made a mistake when it went to the polls in June there remains a possibility - no matter how remote - that the vote may eventually be judged exactly what even Nigel Farage has admitted it was, that is, merely advisory and not binding on Parliament. However, no such get out of jail card exists for those members of the American public currently cringing at the prospect of a Trump Presidency.

"God Bless America," goes the song by Irving Berlin. Today he might have written "God Help US."