As soon as Nigel Farage triggered a by-election, the hacks descended upon Clacton-on-Sea, one of the poorest and whitest places in Britain. Indeed, Jaywick – which is in Farage’s constituency – is rated as the most deprived locality in England.
Educational levels are way below the national average and, when it comes to health, life expectancy is drastically lower than more prosperous areas of Essex.
The perpetual scapegoat
In this deprived, 95% white, and 70% Brexit-voting seaside resort, a prominent issue for many constituents is not inequality but – you’ve guessed it – illegal immigration. Yet only a small minority of immigrants are here illegally. Of around 10 million non-UK born residents, about 700,000 (approximately 7%) entered the country through unauthorised means. A significant proportion of these are in the London area. They certainly don’t gravitate towards Brexit-voting Britain but, listening to the public discourse, you’d think they did.
Sadly, views on immigration (and the solutions needed) are often based on erroneous assumptions which the right-wing media seem happy to have them believe. Of course, Farage’s cunning “stop the boats” hysteria is central to the notion that we are being invaded by hordes of clandestinos.
What these same media outlets will never say is that Brexit has made them poorer. Neither will they tell them that Leave-voting areas appear to have been hit even harder by relative decline since Brexit.
I suppose some, if confronted by such chilling evidence, might claim that Brexit hasn’t happened, or that it hasn’t been done properly and we haven’t really left the EU. Of course, there would be no detail supplied because a certain contingent are wedded to the idea that you have to just believe something. Nobody – except likes of James O’Brien – bothers to ask these people to explain what they mean by “done properly”. When O’Brien poses the question of one of his callers how Brexit could have been done better, it soon becomes clear that they don’t have a clue. And yet UK government policy appears to have been devised to satisfy the unsatisfiable whims of such muddle-minded believers.
The fear of a youth mobility scheme is largely down to the prejudices of people who do not know that freedom of movement was never a significant factor in low wages and unemployment. They just believe it was, and that’s enough.
Politicians really aren’t ‘all at it’
What of the £5mn, Posh George’s donations, and Farage’s other nice little earners? The most common response which the Brexit and Farage faithful (and quite a few others, too) have been conditioned to give seems to be pure cynicism. They assume that politicians are ‘all at it’.
Well, they aren’t. This idea, like the belief that most immigrants are here illegally, is false.
I think we can be quite sure that the Green Party’s newest MP, Hannah Spencer, lives off her salary and spends all her time in Westminster or in her constituency, as do most MPs (though many will have a partner who makes a good income).
Yes, they are paid what, for most people, seems like a lot of money but given their lifestyle and the insecurity of tenure, for many of them it really isn’t. There are a few MPs who make money on the side, but it is a minority and, for the most part, they earn nothing near as much as Farage makes. We only hear about the likes of Farage and Owen Paterson (who, let us remember, was booted out) because the sums involved are substantial.
So, the idea that all MPs are busy feathering their own nest is falsehood, but it is one of those idées reçues, like all journalists, estate agents, and car salesmen being dishonest. The truth is, only a few of them are. My main criticism of politicians is not so much dishonesty but spinelessness.
It’s always somebody else’s fault – the victimhood narrative
Far too many Britons rely on social and conventional media outlets whose financial incentive is to keep them angry, offering them lashings of fear and loathing. Many voted for governments which sold off council houses, and privatised and failed to invest in the NHS (and much else), but they seem to believe that their woes are someone else’s fault.
A victim narrative is central to populist demagoguery. Farage is good at spinning a narrative about the enemies, be they dastardly foreigners at home and abroad, or a decadent, unpatriotic, and out-of-touch intellectual class. A class which, he’d have you believe, despises honest, common sense citizens and conspires against him, the self-appointed tribune of the plebians.
Of course, Farage has benefitted from years of uncritical coverage from the media. All too often, when he appears on news outlets, he is metaphorically fluffed and is both encouraged and allowed to express controversial opinions, rather than being questioned. I cannot even begin to count the number of occasions I have shouted at the radio or TV, suggesting the follow-up question that seemed to be obvious when he was being interviewed. All we got was ‘fair enough, Nigel’. It seemed that journalists valued access above their duty to hold power to account.
And all this has meant that many Britons do not know what is going on and one has to wonder whether, if our media really did their job, more people would have seen through Brexit, Farage, and the lies about immigration.
Perhaps we should be relieved that well over half of Britons still believe that something needs to be done about the Brexit disaster and only a minority back Farage. Yet it remains painfully and tragically obvious that too many people really haven’t a clue what’s going on. And that, perhaps, is exactly how populist demagogues want it.
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