Wednesday June 15th 2016 was a very memorable day in the British EU referendum campaign.
Nigel Farage and a number of Leave supporters joined trawlers sailing down the River Thames in a protest over EU fishing policies. The scene became surreal when they were intercepted by a flotilla of Remain campaigners, led by Bob Geldof. While there seemed to be some tense exchanges between the two camps, it earned plenty of bemused and amused headlines around the world too - a strange, almost comical spectacle during an otherwise (mostly) serious referendum campaign.
Thursday June 16th 2016 was memorable for very different reasons.
The death of Labour MP Jo Cox marked a very dark day in British - and indeed global - politics. Even if the killing transpires to have been completely isolated from the referendum campaign, it is a tragedy - having happened how and when it did - that history will likely always group with the Brexit vote, whether it’s justified or not.
There was another dark moment on June 16th, however, more explicitly linked with the referendum. Nigel Farage unveiled his instantly infamous ‘Breaking Point’ poster - a visual manifestation of the anti-immigration rhetoric that has become a major talking point throughout the campaign.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage launching the controversial EU referendum poster campaign | Photo: PA Images
The condemnation of the poster was swift and unambiguous - and the controversy resumed following the temporary suspension of the campaigns follow Mrs Cox’s death. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the poster as "vile and racist", while British Chancellor George Osborne said it was "disgusting" and had "echoes of literature used in the 1930s".
However, campaigners on the Leave side were equally as critical. Justice Secretary Michael Gove saying he "shuddered" when he saw the poster and Chris Grayling calling it "wrong". The outrage culminated with Conservative Sayeeda Warsi opting to defect from the Leave to the Remain camp (although some Leave politicians have questioned whether she was committed to Leave in the first place).
She said: "That 'breaking point' poster really was, for me, the breaking point to say: 'I can't go on supporting this'. Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me, that's a step too far.”
In a culture where almost anything could trigger an ‘outrage’, the response to this poster feels like a genuine one. There’s something particularly raw about it. Having these human faces - people likely fleeing warzones or other appalling situations - used for political capital feels very wrong, and a departure from the troubling but more abstract manner of most immigration debates.
None of this is to say that immigration isn’t a worthy subject of debate - of course it is. It remains a crisis in Europe that the EU has struggled to respond to effectively. Only last week, charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that it will refuse donations from European governments for their ‘shameful’ response to the situation - and frankly it’s hard to disagree with their decision. There are definite consequences and difficulties with mass migration, for the hosts and migrants alike.
However, history has shown us - in no uncertain terms - the solution definitely isn’t to dehumanise or marginalise refugees and migrants as an ‘other’ to be feared and pushed aside. When the rhetoric of fear is pushed and pushed (and you have to look no further than the front pages of some major British newspapers over the last few months) it creates a very toxic culture.
The ‘Remain’ campaign has indulged in toxic tactics too, of course. As Lisa Mckenzie argues in The Guardian, levelling accusations of racism and ignorance against everybody who wants to ‘Leave’ is a dangerous approach too. “Whenever working-class people have tried to talk about the effects of immigration on their lives, shouting ‘backward’ and ‘racist’ has become a middle-class pastime,” Lisa argues.
“The referendum has opened up a chasm of inequality in the UK and the monsters of a deeply divided and unfair society are crawling out,” she adds. Neither side is innocent.
Pro-EU campaigners have, indeed, arguably been even guiltier of 'scaremongering', albeit from different angles (mostly economic). "We've had almost nothing but vicious negativity from the Remain camp," James Delingpole suggests. "The scaremongering of Project Fear [and] the daily piling on of dire warnings from supposedly neutral authorities."
Anti-establishment politics
The Brexit debate is, in many respects, simply another example of the sort of political activity and discourse being seen around the world. More extreme political viewpoints are gaining more traction - inevitably, almost, in the aftermath of crippling austerity. Far left & right parties have enjoyed notable success in a number of European countries. In some cases this has been a much-needed challenge to the political establishment. Elsewhere it has marked a resurgence of the sort of violent ideals many would have hoped had been consigned to history.
A quick look at the Twitter or Facebook wars that wage underneath political news stories or whenever a prominent politician tweets, well, anything really will show the sheer levels of anger, extremism, division and frustration out there. Those emotions have always been there - behind closed doors and occasionally out in the open - but the public nature of discussion in 2016 makes them seem all the more prominent.
Then there is, unavoidably, Donald Trump.
In this file photo, Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Albuquerque | Image: Brennan Linsley / AP/Press Association Images
Perhaps the living embodiment of modern populist politics, Trump has built his campaign around hysteria and bluster, proposing vague but radical ‘solutions’ to any number of hot-button topics. Politics has always been a nasty game, but it has rarely stooped to the straight-up name calling seen across Trump’s social media feeds and campaign speeches.
It’s an approach that has forced the mogul's rivals to adopt more extreme language too. And yet, when his presumptive Democratic rival is Hillary Clinton - an establishment politicians if ever there was one - it’s reasonably easy to see how he has gained the ground he has.
Voters are clearly feeling disillusioned - and they have every right to given the way they’re often treated by politicians and corporations alike (the two categories sometimes worryingly interchangeable). There’s a very real danger, though, that people are being taken advantage of by people who are telling them exaggerated versions of what they want to hear - threatening to create even deeper divisions in society in the process.
Different ideologies and beliefs are essential in politics - it ensures a healthy, fair system. And the existing establishment needs to be challenged wherever possible: much of the frustration out there is entirely justified (if sometimes misdirected). There’s a fine line, though, between healthy divisions and more toxic ones - and unfortunately it’s a line we’re seeing crossed a whole lot more often.
In her first speech as an MP, Jo Cox said: "While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us." Let's hope that's something more politicians take to heart.
