In
their attempts to reverse the democratic decision that is Brexit, the
imaginations
of many Remainers have become quite
feverish. Yes, Remainers have resorted to fiction/fantasy about
“Brexit
lies”,
the false
consciousness of
Brexiteers, and all the monumentally disastrous things which will
happen once we leave the European Union...
Basically,
some of the claims of Remainers are so outlandish that it's worth
discussing some of the reasons why that may be the case.
English Remainers
are overwhelmingly leftwing or Lib-Dem. They're also
mainly
based
in
London,
the Home Counties
and British
universities.
(Students and professors are generously funded by the EU.) This isn't
the same as saying that “the North voted for Brexit” (as it's
been put) because, according to some
accounts,
slightly more southerners voted this way. However, that doesn't stop
it from being the case that Remainers are mainly from London and the
Home Counties; as well as being disproportionately made up of recent
immigrants (again, who're mainly based in London).
On
the whole, these Remainers don't see the dark sides of the EU. And
even when they do, they're quite happy with what they see.
This
means that it's not surprising that most writers and artists are
Remainers too.
Particularly,
it's clear that it's those infamous Brexit
lies
which have strongly inspired various novelists and writers. In other
words, many of them decided to advance the Remain cause through their
fiction or fantasy.
So
let's see what various authors and novelists have had to say on the
subject.
Novelists
for the EU
An early “post-Brexit” novel was Michael Paraskos's Rabbitman; which was published in March 2017. This book ties together the election of “a right-wing populist” American president with Brexit. The new American president also happens to be a rabbit (which is, I suppose, hilarious). Both his victory and Brexit were the results of “Faustian pacts” with the Devil.
This
book also chimes in with Remainer end-times' prophesy because not
longer after the UK leaves the EU, society collapses and - wait for
it! - the British people then become dependent on EU food aid!
(Really? Germany, for example, depends
on us:
in 2016 it sold about £26 billion more to us than we sold to it.)
I'm surprised that Michael Paraskos didn't also paint a picture of
the UK becoming a Nazi state led by a white-supremacist serial killer
who was formerly a member of Brits
for Trump.
However, the EU food aid is almost as good a touch.
In
the introduction I mentioned Brexit
lies.
This takes us neatly on to Amanda Craig's novel, The Lie of the Land; published in June 2017. (Yes, note the title of this book.) In The Lie of the Land we find ourselves in 2026. At this future date, a posh couple from Jeremy Corbyn's Islington is forced to move (because of “austerity”) from London to Devon (which, the Guardian tells us, is full of “casual racists”). The author sees Devon (which is “poorer than Romania”) as a pro-Brexit heartland. Not surprisingly, Amanda Craig gives a more or less Marxist/Corbynite account of Brexit in which it was the case that “the disparities in society that led to June’s result”. (I don't know, perhaps, being superior and so utterly non-provincial, this fictional Islington couple could no longer afford three foreign holidays a year and the fees for their kids' private school – such austerity!)
One
piece of fiction which occurred after the Brexit
result
was
that “hate
crimes”
immediately
increased. On close inspection, this was shown to be, at worst,
false; or, at best, extremely speculative.
That didn't stop politicians, anti-racists and Remainers going on
about this ostensible
“spike” in hate crimes. (See this
account
of these hate
crimes.)
The
novelist Mark Billingham might have picked up on all this Brexit hate
when he wrote his book Love
Like Blood (published,
yet again, in June 2017).
Love
Like Blood charts
Brexit and the subsequent rise in “xenophobic
hate crime”.
(The Guardian
talks about “Little
Englanders”
in relation to this book.) What I never understood about this
supposed spike in hate crimes is that if Brexit was seen as a
positive result when it came to the amount of immigrants coming into
the UK from oversees, then why would that cause an increase
in racist crimes? Surely if the result had been negative (i.e., in
favour of remaining in the EU), then that would have caused rage and
then an increase in racist crimes. If British racists found out that
there would be less immigrants coming into the UK in the future, then
why the increase in hate crimes?
However,
forget the crimes of those racist Brits (basically, all non-leftwing
whites): what about conspiracies about a government quango?
In
David
Boyle's
The
Remains of the Way
(yes, published in June 2017), Brexit was brought about not by the
votes of
51.89%
of
British
voters;
but by an old government quango which, miraculously, still worked
within Whitehall. It gets worse. This quango was set up by Thomas
Cromwell under King Henry VIII. What did this quango want? It wanted
a “Protestant
Brexit”. In addition, after
Brexit the UK suffers famines and general destitution. However, I'm
not sure if the EU then supplied the UK with “food aid”, as with
Michael
Paraskos's Rabbitman.
On
a very similar theme, we also have Stanley Johnson's Kompromat.
According
to this work of fiction (replicated by some Remainers), Brexit was
the responsibility of “Russian influence” on the referendum. (But
what about that Protestant
quango?).
However, thank God that Stanley Johnson believes that his book is
“just meant to be fun”!
*******************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment