The way an excellent Your Call phone-in on BBC Radio Five Live was abandoned this morning when it was confirmed that the EU had given us another three months to get our Brexit shit together summed up the state of our country. A harrowing interview with the father of a 14 year old girl who had killed herself, not least because of the effects of certain social media, conducted with wonderful empathy and understanding by the brilliant Nicky Campbell, was followed by some very good calls, until the news came through from Brussels. Brexit is all that matters at the moment.
Christ, if the tragic death of a 14 year old girl is not newsworthy enough, we are in a dark place. The rolling media in particular is virtually paralysed, incapable of talking about anything else. Little or nothing on housing, which includes everything from people not being to get on the housing ladder and unable to find affordable rented housing to rough sleepers and homelessness. Nothing on the appalling levels of school funding. Nothing on our underfunded NHS, which threatens to creak and even crumble if the expected coming flu epidemic strikes as it has in Australia. Nothing on millions of people on the minimum wage or in the gig economy. Even the tragedy of the poor people who died on the lorry coming into Britain has been relegated to the “just before we go to the travel news” sections of news programmes.
There is a large majority of people who now wish the EU referendum had never taken place. I fully agree with them and indeed argued that we never should have held it. Whilst hardly anyone has changed their mind since the 2016 referendum – and it is important that we all understand that – will there come a point when people conclude that Brexit should be abandoned once it becomes clear that the fall out from leaving the EU will dominate the news for the next decade, maybe longer? I have literally no idea, although I do hope that it becomes clear just who has caused this lingering crisis and how they have sustained it.
If we ever escape the disaster of Brexit, those who railed against our unfair society and voted leave will want to see the promises made by Johnson, Farage and the like to come true. The electorate has been promised a better funded health service and they are not getting one, not least because the people who promised one don’t actually believe in it. They have been assured that we will soon be in the sunny uplands of improving prosperity for everyone. Everyone will be happier and better off. But what happens when they are not better off and it dawns on them it was all a big lie? Again, I have no idea. Blaming “remoaners” for the catastrophe of Brexit and everything bad that follows is surely not sustainable or possible, is it?
We will want to hear the media and politicians replacing dreary Brexit news with good news. This brighter day must come along for the great unwashed and not just the hedge fund managers and tax dodgers who are behind Brexit. But it won’t and in their heart of hearts the likes of Johnson knew it wouldn’t all along.
Soon, the establishment politicians, the illiberal elite, will need to improve the lives of those who society has forgotten. Or be held to account for their lies and own the shambles they created. And when that happens, radio phone-ins about the impact of social media causing suicide among young people might not be junked.
