January 31st, 2023, the day I started to write this piece, was the third anniversary of Brexit, an anniversary that few of you will have been celebrating. The word itself, a neologism linking Britain and its exit from the European Union, was a misnomer in that the exit also formally included Northern Ireland, something that appeared to be an oversight by the shadowy millionaires who engineered the whole process. It was also misleading, disguising the fact that both Northern Ireland and Scotland had voted to remain in Europe.
For many of us, the schism was a source of extreme regret and it would now appear, three years on, that regret is the reaction of two thirds of the voting population. New words are appearing: Bregret, Bregreters and Bregretit. The pathetic attempt to characterise us as Bemoaners, rather than the Berealists we were, is now disappearing. How can we have allowed this act of national self-harm?
Recent polls suggest that there are some who voted for Brexit yet still believe it has been of benefit. Their demographic is mainly elderly and south-easterly. Their reason appears to be our trade with places like Australia, Singapore and Switzerland, and the thriving of a sector based in the City of London that trades in financial matters.
More commonly, it appears that many Brexit voters are disappointed that the claims made by the Brexiteers for the benefits of the process have not been fulfilled. Few people welcome being suckered, and a backlash of popular opinion always seemed a likely consequence. That 48% of voters who weren't fooled are now joined by a large number who were, so that at least 60% of us are now Bregreters and the proportion is rising as more young people reach voting age and we older ones die off. For it is the young who have lost most and the elderly with savings and houses who on balance have suffered least or even gained financially despite Brexit.
I have commented previously on the downward path the United Kingdom has been travelling. This is the path that led to Brexit and leads if not corrected to break-up of the UK and terminal decline of its component nations. It is what led to our unpreparedness for the pandemic and the failures of our public services as illustrated by the current industrial disputes. It is a direct consequence of Thatcherism.
Moreover, and critically, it is a leading part of the worldwide human march toward destruction of the planet's ecosystems by climate change. These are connections that many people do not make, as we are overwhelmed by the personal consequence of one or another of them – we do not always see the wood for the trees.
Here is my child's guide to what is happening. From the time of Queen Elizabeth I, England ruled the waves and progressively claimed its Empire. The process was accelerated by the Act of Union, and the genius of many Scots, with the Industrial Revolution. Coal then oil drove it. The fact that this and the associated free trade was based originally on piracy, conquest and exploitation of slaves abroad and servitude of the poor at home did not figure prominently in history lessons until recently.
Perhaps the self-satisfaction of British people reached its peak with victory in the Second World War in 1945. Thereafter, reality began to dawn on us as the component nations of the Empire asserted their rights to self-determination and the economy of our nations declined. But, for a period now forgotten, the UK became a more equal and fairer nation. We spent our money on education, housing, health and welfare. Our worldwide literary, scientific and artistic eminence stand tribute to this period of widened opportunities, but our industrial base declined.
The seeds of a reaction had already been sown by the end of the war, curiously arising in the Austrian-born Friedrich Hayek's mind as a fear of socialism being the path to serfdom, exemplified as he thought by Hitler's rise to power. Our prosperity depended on economic growth, and growth was assumed to be hindered by petty regulation – free trade and private enterprise, a small State, were the way forward. Mr Reagan and Mrs Thatcher enthusiastically took the message, its advocates owned the popular newspapers, and in 1980 the voting public was persuaded to go along with it.
For a while the economy picked up, based on financial wheeler-dealing, and we were to learn how insecure a base this was. As Sir Christopher Wren was memorialised,
Si monumentum requires, circumspice. If you want a memorial to Mrs Thatcher, look around you now – the shining half-empty towers in London and the sink estates and damp tenements in your town.
At the end of this path to Brexit and assumed freedom from the tyranny of Europe lay the present decline of the UK, marked by an extraordinary growth in wealth of the few and relative impoverishment of the many. But it is far worse than that, because the process of enrichment and pauperisation is worldwide, driven by this corruption of capitalism and the greed of mankind, exploiting the planet's resources and destroying its ecosystems.
Inevitably, sooner or later, the reaction to inequity in a nation occurs. It usually takes the form of revolution or the rise of a dictator. In my time, we have seen it with Hitler in Germany, Mao in China, the Ayatollahs in Iran, and countless revolutions in Africa and South America. It usually ends unhappily, though the overturn of the USSR was for a time an exception… and then came Putin. In the UK, it was expressed first democratically by election of the reforming Attlee Government and ultimately by joining the EU.
To leave an alliance that had brought the whole continent of Europe out of the crushing destruction of the war, and had put its economy on a par with that of the United States, seemed at first something that could not happen. But the rich people who celebrated at their champagne breakfast in a London hotel when the result of the referendum was announced had known what they were doing. All our faults were attributable to Europe and they would melt away if we regained our freedom. Money, social media and newspaper ownership had persuaded enough of the gullible and the self-seeking to swallow the slogans and vote for it.
The Brexit vote was attributable to the discontent of the less fortunate and the greed of the richest, both of which groups were persuaded that all would be well if we were less regulated. It took place at a time when the UK and Scottish governments' failure to maintain sufficient funding for health, social care and education made them unable to respond effectively to crisis. Political decisions had led to fundamental weaknesses in our society and to the inequity that was shortly to be exposed by the twin crises of epidemic and warfare. All these events, of historic importance, are connected.
Epidemics and wars kill and injure millions, but inequity and climate change are even worse as they creep up slowly, hardly noticed by most people, yet threaten civilisation itself. Rapid reaction can deal with the first two, but the second two require major change of human behaviour. We can see the effect of breaking civilisation in Russia, Ukraine, Iran and some parts of Africa. We have seen how it can begin in the USA with the Trump insurrection. And I perceive hints of it in the propaganda pre-Brexit and current attempts to deregulate industrial activity.
Politicians of left and right must be wondering what they can do to clear up the mess we are in. More of them will be found unpatriotically to have money in tax havens or to be receiving money from people who seek advantage in return. Such people cannot be trusted to act in a disinterested manner and should be weeded out by full declaration of interests at election time. The most urgent necessity in the UK now is to start correcting the wealth difference that breeds discontent.
The only value in regret comes from the impetus it gives one to make amends and from the lessons one learns. Breakage of mutually beneficial alliances is very obviously harmful to both parties and there is no reason to suppose that this will magically not be the case if the component nations of the UK take this course. The drivers of our nations' futures will be climate change and inequity – these are the two horsemen that trot, barely noticed, behind pestilence and warfare, but they are the two that will propel us on the path to serfdom if our governments do not base all their policies on addressing them. As individuals, we all have a duty to do the same and change our self-destructive behaviour, on behalf of our children and our fellow human beings.
Anthony Seaton is Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Aberdeen University and Senior Consultant to the Edinburgh Institute of Occupational Medicine. The views expressed are his own
