Why is anti-establishment sentiment thriving even after Brexit?

Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

There was quite a gloating article in the Guardian this week on Brexit and its consequences on the rest of Europe. In a nutshell, it said that Europe had been revolted by the self-harm the UK has inflicted on itself and the instability it has unleashed on the British economy, its politics and society in general. Despite its "I told you so" theme, it is not wrong. But the battle for the soul of Britain has been hijacked by two opposing factions: the rich on one side and the poor on the other, with paradoxically the poor unwittingly doing the bidding of those who would like to subjugate them. Anti-establishment fever tilted the vote towards Brexit, not a genuine desire to leave the EU.

Oh David Cameron, what have you unleashed? In fact, I could replace the former Prime Minister in that sentence with a number of people, like the present incumbent (whoever that is at the time you read this), or maybe a few media moguls. But this all goes back decades. It is a seething collection of pustules that has been awaiting its time to spew its fetid contents all over the skin of public life and drag the victim into a chronic downward spiral of health and well-being.

There is a correlation between the Brexit vote and the current malaise in society - let me explain...

Successive governments have run public services into the ground through cutting costs, economy drives and selling off tenders to the private sector. None of this needed to happen if it were not for ideology-driven politicians whether in national government or local councils, and their chums in the private sector from lobbyists to energy conglomerates, pharmaceutical companies to building contractors. Every one of them is partly to blame for the current situation. The situation is clear: for the last 40 years, cheap is best, and to hell with the consequences. Hospitals and health workers, infrastructure building, public hygiene, education facilities and staff, police, firefighters, the military, even libraries, have been affected by the scything down of their expenses all so that governments, councils and their contractors can say to their clients (that's you), that they have been saving money in your name.

Well I don't know about you, but as far as I am aware, it's the exact opposite of that method that leads to good running of public services. Money needs to be put into their systems, not removed. That means that instead of reducing our income tax bills, VAT payments and council charges, the powers that be should be raising them, or at least looking for ways to maximise returns. When some suited chinless wonder from the richer side of public life comes on TV and warns against voting for various politicians because "your bills will go up", people need to remember that this bozo from the landed gentry is actually worried about his own costs going up. He will be the first to see a reduction in his own income because he is earning more per year than most earn in ten or twenty years. Why is Jeremy Corbyn being picked out for special treatment? Precisely because of that. He wants public services to run properly and rich dudes fear that if they do, not only will they lose money, they'll lose the opportunity to buy into them when lobbyists have finished convincing politicians to sell.

Back in the 1980s, public services were run into the ground until the public clamour to sell those services off was so loud, that this was the most logical step. It was a tactic used time and again by the then government to make the case for its sale. This was true for water, energy, gas, telephony, public transport, even security services. What we saw, though, was a change in the accountability and rights of those public services, now they were private. Trains that were before late or didn't show up at all were blamed on strikes and militant worker-related action, whereas now the services are not much better and in some cases worse, despite being sold off. Outsourcing and selling off public services has led us nowhere, except that now those services need no longer be directly accountable to the government, and ultimately, the public. It also gives carte blanche to those companies to limit pay, reduce workers' rights and entitlements, all in the name of saving money. They have effectively written themselves out of any social responsibility.

It is this selfish ideology that has led to this moment in history (and yes, this is history - PhD theses will be written about this period in the not-too-distant future) where the gap between rich and poor has finally become too wide, and where injustice in society has become plain for all to see where once it was easier to sweep it aside with gimmicks and distractions, fobbing people off with standard soundbites and impersonal press releases.

And things are a lot more complicated than on the face of it. Far from being a country that's full to bursting, as landowners, right-wing politicians and lobbyists will tell you, there is plenty of room. Indeed, only a very small percentage of the land has been built on. The real issue is that it is a country whose infrastructure has not been invested in for a very long time, and citizens' roles in society are becoming less and less welcome, and it shows:

• the hospitals are maybe fully equipped, but many times there are staff shortages or there are not enough beds for patients, leading to dangerously long waiting times. If real investment were made to ensure there were enough fully-staffed hospitals for everyone, we would need to delve deep into our pockets 
• you should send your child to a local school no matter its ranking, meaning that pupils are liable to be turned down if their parents try to apply for a place in what might be a more suitable school outside their catchment area, even if it is just over a designated line. This means house prices in certain areas rise, and the rules prevent any logic from being used. The fallout from this is that people are being forced to do irrational things to get their children into the school of their choice
• the Royal Navy, once the envy of the world, is now a shadow of itself, as is the British Army and the Royal Air Force, all so the defence budget can be spent on a nuclear arsenal that nobody dare use
• there is a huge swathe of building land that is lying unused and empty because building companies refuse to build on it, meaning prices of houses go spiralling up, but more shockingly, their untouched land turns them a huge profit

There are many more examples of this, and people have become sick and tired of being treated like commodities. They know that successive governments have cut everything to the bone, they know the country is dangerously paired back to the very limits of manageability, they just haven't joined all the dots yet, but they are slowly becoming aware of it. 

Having an ideology of saving money for the sake of it has proven recently to be a myth that has badly exposed the long-term dangers of such recklessness in playing with people's dignity and respect, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the case of Grenfell Tower in West London. What has struck me is how someone came up with the idea of saving a few thousand measly pounds by choosing an inferior cladding material in a refurbishment project to make the outside of a tower block more aesthetically pleasing while neglecting the inside, where residents - who are human beings, by the way - live.

The sentiment of grief turned to anger very quickly, leading to a general feeling of ill-will towards the Prime Minister, the government, Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, and various contracting firms. This is not surprising, but it is a microcosm of UK life in general. The protests we saw in Whitehall and at Kensington Town Hall are just a spit in the ocean of general British dissatisfaction with the way life is going at the moment, and this is manifesting itself in so many ways.

The Brexit referendum last year, in my opinion, was won by a three-way split between different sections of the public: 

• easily-led individuals who believe everything that the right-wing press tells them, as well as unadventurous, stay-at-home monolinguals who know nothing about the wider world except the two-week drunken jaunt they undertake every summer to some touristic Mediterranean concrete jungle
• people with vested interests in pulling out of the EU, such as some unscrupulous employers, financial investors and politicians, who have been heavily sponsored to say negative things about the EU, and finally
• genuinely disaffected, forgotten and ignored people all around the country who wanted to vote for a change and saw it as their way to stage a protest; effectively kicking the government where it hurts for their constant overlooking of their issues (it is these people I can forgive for voting the way they did - so would I, probably)

What the last group fails to realise, is that by voting the way they did, they have done exactly what the people who are profiting from making their lives a misery wanted them to do; that is to say, they are turkeys voting for Christmas, which makes this such a national tragedy. There is also a gap between the educated and the under-educated, leading to a startling decline in trust in true facts and expert opinions, and a worrying rise in people's willingness to tie their misery to any popular movement that will get them out of the terrible hole they are in, whether that be extremist religion, militant political organisations, support groups, pressure groups or general grumbling to mates at the pub. Brexit had very little to do with many people's actual wishes and more to do with a genuine national mood of dissatisfaction with their circumstances.

What the UK needs right now is a long healing process and a coming to terms with the fact that the people have been lied to for many years for profit and nothing more. The recent election on 9th June reflected people's mistrust of the current incumbents and their handling of social matters as well as Brexit negotiations, where even the Daily Mail has revealed that 69% of people favour a softer departure from the EU. People need to regain a modicum of trust in their politicians and their public services.

Anti-establishment sentiment is thriving in lots of little pockets like local issues, or even as a cause of adverse personal experiences with authority, but when the dots get joined up and everyone realises that it is a national issue, there will be a mass protest at the gates of the high and mighty. People just don't realise yet who is to blame, but this is slowly revealing itself now that people see that cuts in services and selling out to corporate greed have led to the situation we find ourselves in the early summer of 2017.

If you want nice roses, you do not cut at the bottom.

UK Election 2017: tell your old folks their time is up

We live in an age where the source of your news will determine who you vote for and where in the social pyramid you probably find yourself. Most people will read from a news source, but there are stark differences in how those news sources treat various events and deal with diverse opinions. For one newspaper a scandal, for another an amusing anecdote. For one TV news broadcaster a waste of money, for another a long-term solid investment. Who to believe? And why does it matter to read all different sources of news?

My grandfather, who was also my uncle (long story cut short - my mother and her mother married two brothers), once gave me a very important life lesson. I asked him one day why he read a left-leaning newspaper but also a right-leaning one. His answer was clear: you have to know what the enemy is up to. I have never forgotten that line and I have stuck by it ever since.

Today, we live in a multi-faceted media world. We can get our news from someone's Facebook feed, or feeds from sources we ourselves have accepted. We can get it from watching Sky, Fox, ITN, or the BBC. Indeed, we can find it from a rejected newspaper in the train, or maybe we buy our newspapers at the corner shop every morning.

Newspaper readers in particular are very difficult to wean off their paper of choice. You could never give a Sun reader the Guardian and presume they will like it immediately. And vice-versa. Besides, it is not just a question of politics - it is also a matter or familiarity, intellect and taste. But it really matters. Because getting your information from one source is detrimental to acquiring a balanced opinion. Malcolm X once said, "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." If you stick to one source of news, over time, you are likely to believe everything written in there.

I acquire my news from the BBC, the Guardian, Mail Online and the Independent. I sometimes read the Economist, the Telegraph and watch Channel Four News on their website. I also see a lot of posts on Facebook from very diverse outlets such as Al Jazeera, CNN, and France 24. Most treat issues with the same seriousness and neutrality. Some find a unique angle to report from, some give statistics, some show a non-commentary video to tell the story. But the vast majority do not try to influence you one way or the other, because most of us accept certain issues as already fact, or because the news outlet wants you to make up your own mind through what they present. That is not always the case when it comes to politics.

That brings me on to the upcoming general election in the UK.

Where to begin? Let us start with the spin and the influencing. Take Theresa May's non-appearance at the BBC Election Debate on Wednesday night. She was replaced by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. Predictably, the left-wing press said this was a mistake, and she was scared of meeting the people, terrified of debates and not interested in ordinary people. The right-wing press predictably said it was not worth her turning up as it was a waste of time because twice as many people were watching BGT on ITV and because she was out on the streets instead, talking to the people who matter.

Where does the truth lie here? It probably lies somewhere in the middle - Theresa May knew a few weeks ago that she was a country mile in front, so she thought it best to steer clear of controversy and stay on-message, however sterile and boring that is. Saying that, I would say this was a bad error of judgement, as it gave five of the other six debaters the chance to stick in the sword.

Then there were the debates themselves and how they were reported. I watched the last half, and I saw highlights of the rest on highlights clips on YouTube and Facebook. I thought Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, Angus Robertson, Caroline Lucas and Leanne Wood were quite eloquent, but they spent a long time attacking each other and especially the Tories, and not enough time talking about their own party's credentials. Amber Rudd was robotic and smiled when the audience laughed at her comments, like "judge us on our record". It was as if she knew this was just a soundbite, and she realised the audience knew as well. Paul Nuttall was like a builder's bumcrack at a society ball. He was excess to requirements. He got nearly no applause and when he opened his mouth to speak, he came across like Sean Spicer's less talented stand-in.

How did the newspapers report it?

Take a look at this article in the Guardian, on how biased the media has been behaving against Jeremy Corbyn, which seems to have a lot of credence. This one attacks Corbyn for befriending terrorists, this one shows Corbyn as a security risk, and this one bemoans the left-wing bias of the BBC. They're all from the Daily Mail.

If one runs a Google search for Daily Mail articles on the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, one can find hundreds and hundreds of them criticising and attacking. The same newspaper's treatment of the Conservatives and Theresa May? Pretty clement, even towards Boris Johnson, the current incumbent of the people's Naughty Step:

In the end, this article is about Boris Johnson's masterful handling of an ice cream known in Britain as a 99 and nothing about policy at all. Funnily enough, there were no negative stories at all, except the one on the PM's refusal to attack Trump for pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and a mild one on her decision not to go to the BBC debate. Press bias is a feature of both the left and the right, and although left-wing ones are quite strong, they don't hit nearly as hard. Nowhere is it more vitriolic and more effective in its premeditated viciousness and underhand manoeuvres than in the hands of the right-wing media. They manipulate stories, change angles and points of view depending on who they are defending or attacking. But now, the tide is turning and many reasonably-minded press outlets are calling them out. Here is one of those, handled very effectively by the Huffington Post.

So, before you put your mark on the ballot paper next week, do a lot of research and question everything. You may even end up changing your vote preferences. For that reason, we need to get the message to the old. They are the ones most heavily influenced by newspapers, especially the right-wing press, and the ones most likely to vote. Demographically, in 5 to 10 years, there will be a lot fewer of them around, and my own feeling is this time is seen by the oligarchs in charge of the UK's press as being the final opportunity to make a landgrab for more wealth and influence.

Fortunately, the young are fighting back. Hundreds of thousands of new registrations to vote have been placed recently, and mainly by the young. This has caused a massive tilt in the opinion polls and a surge towards Labour, but these young people are notoriously languid on polling day. We can only hope they do go out to vote in their droves. The UK needs an effective opposition, especially if the Conservatives win a majority.

The Internet is full of images and graphics, like this one below, debunking the myths and lies spread by the right-wing media. The problem is, old people do not see these things, because newspapers do not have the same scope as the Internet, and so many old people are unaware of these simple issues.

(continued below the images)

These images containing meaningful messages are doing the rounds on the Internet, and so I challenge anyone with a family member over 60 who is without Internet: dig around for 5 to 10 simple yet effective memes of this kind, put it on your laptop or tablets and visit your relative to persuade him/her to vote for a party that wants to look after everyone.

Let us face it, the old have had their day. They need to be told the world will still be going on once they have departed, and it will most certainly not be the same world we have now. The elderly need to be persuaded that in fact, they do not have to put up with the decisions they make. The young do. Make way for youth, go and persuade your grandad to stand aside for the benefit of his descendants.

Why the electoral system in Britain is broken and how to fix it

In the beginning, the Labour Party went barking mad. Then the Conservatives got sleazy. One party in power alone, and the dangerous ideology that it implements, has caused untold damage to the nation, and now many people are reluctant to allow either of them to govern alone. Where do we go next?

The Labour Party of the sixties and seventies was full of paranoid militants and fist-pumping demagogues that were able, at the drop of a foreman's hat, to hold the country to ransom with one-out-all-out strikes and hard-cheese speeches if they didn't get their way. People saw through it all and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party won by a thumping landslide. Even my left-leaning father voted Tory in 1979. Due to their utter profligacy, Labour had left the country in a serious financial crisis. They were also being held to ransom by firebrand union members who had seen to it that the electric regularly went off and the shops weren't fully supplied if they didn't get their way. With Labour unelectable, the Tories just ran roughshod over those they could bully and cajole (the unions, Northerners, Scots and the poor among others) and alienated whole swaths of the electorate that they didn't care about. Sometimes this was for the good of the nation (hence the swift but ruthless reduction in the national debt) but often the upshot was the sale of another government enterprise for a fraction of its asking price to a friend of a friend of the minister responsible, who also got a cut somewhere along the line.

The swivel-eyed lunacy of the left kept them out of power for 18 years, until the back-stabbing sleaze of the Major administration made Labour understand that by rebranding itself, it could win once more. Tony Blair realised socialism was a dirty word, but people wanted to throw out the Tories, and they voted for New Labour in their droves. Sworn capitalists, bankers, even right-leaning newspapers gave their blessing to the new set-up. The country went into a deep euphoric trance brought on by spin doctors' magic touches and Tony Blair's messianic speeches, which made the nation realise that at last they had a leader they could say was punching above the country's weight abroad and redressing the balance at home. The trance was so deep, Blair even got re-elected despite a highly unpopular war in the Middle East.

...However...

...However...

What we didn't realise, on that day when Blair gave up Number 10 saying, "it is over, goodbye," was that he had handed over the keys to the nation to Gordon Brown on the eve of a financial meltdown and a global recession that would have far-reaching consequences for some time to come, probably a generation. It didn't have to be like that. Other countries, like Canada, Germany and Australia, avoided it. He was, quite frankly, spending his way into people's affection. Buying popularity. The most narcissistic and deluded Prime Minister of a Western democracy there has ever been decided to bail out when the money dried up. Nice.

And in stepped Gordon Brown, the last Prime Minister of a one-party government we will have for a very long time. It wasn't his fault. This was Blair's ultimate revenge for his great rival: leave him to pick up the pieces; let him take the hit. And so he did. Officially voted the single-worst PM in living memory (after Callaghan and Heath that's quite some doing), Brown made sure Labour was to lose the 2010 election by being indecisive, dithering and looking gloomy even when he was smiling. He had no real policies, just improvised "ideas" from the many think tanks New Labour employed at the taxpayer's expense.

And finally in May 2010 the electorate decided there was another way. Out went old confrontational politics, in came consensual politics. The Con-LibDem coalition that formed held together pretty well for the full 5 years, and I think, according to the polls, David Cameron and his two-party government didn't do badly, getting the UK out of some pretty tricky situations. But during the last 5 years, several things happened that have transformed the landscape of UK politics forever:

a. the Scottish referendum mobilised a whole nation, and despite the failure to secure their own nation state, the SNP is poised to win nearly all the seats in Scotland. Labour made themselves toxic in the country by siding with the hated Tories in the referendum debate. I fail to grasp why the Scots should think this, because it's only on this one opinion, which was demonstrated by all the parties except the Greens. I'm sure Labour and the Tories think trees are green and the sun is bright: it doesn't mean you have to hate one party because they agree with your enemy.

b. This has caused other parties to seize their moment. Plaid Cymru in Wales, the Greens in England and UKIP have cajoled their way into mainstream politics to such an extent, that they found themselves sharing a stage with the Big Three (well, the Big Two and the little coalition partner) during the recent leaders' debates. The smaller parties proved themselves worthy of being there too. To such an extent, in fact, that in some polls even the Greens are ahead of the Lib Dems.

c. Labour and the Lib Dems have lost credibility - the former due to Scotland and the last time they were in power, the latter over broken promises to cancel tuition fees. This has let the others in. The majority of party swingers are Lib Dems to the Tories or UKIP and Labour voters to the SNP, Plaid Cymru or UKIP.

The problem now is that the parties and their leaders really don't have a clue how to operate in these new conditions. Miliband and Cameron are refusing to talk about the deals they would do with any coalition partners; Miliband has said emphatically that he would rather the Tories got back in than be part of an SNP-Labour coalition in any shape or form. How many of us really believe that? He was stupid to say it, because he will be held accountable after Thursday, if the mathematics mean it is the only option. Cameron is tight-lipped about his party's future, just like Miliband, and dodges any question about coalition. These two are the living embodiment of a country experiencing the death throes of two-party politics. People's allegiances have changed, much like their shopping habits. No longer do we go to the same shop for the product we want; we look around for a better deal, and at the moment, we think the better deal is a combination of parties, to keep checks on the bigger ones.

What is likely to happen after 7th May is anyone's guess, but I would hope that whoever is there will be grown-up enough to fix the electoral system. These are two scenarios:

1. All parties' leaders choose their brightest minds who are to remain impartial and non-partisan, to discuss how to implement a better and more representative chamber, maybe where you get the same percentage of MPs as the electorate voted for you. It is ludicrous that the Greens, if they get 7% of the votes, might still only get one MP.

Problem: although the Lib Dems, UKIP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens would benefit from this, the SNP, Tories and Labour, crucially the three biggest parties, would not. A fudge would most certainly happen that would please nobody and further alienate an already tetchy electorate.

2. I would favour keeping the constituencies but having a two-round election, where the two candidates in a constituency with the most votes would go through to a second round the week after, thus guaranteeing MPs garnered more than 50% of the votes in their chosen constituencies, but keeping them on their very best behaviour as they may very well not make it to (or through) the second round. This way, we keep the tried-and-tested constituency set-up, which assures MPs remain attached to their electorate, and at the same time ward off that most undemocratic and elitist list system favoured by some countries that should know better. Although proportional representation assures correct apportioning of seats, it distances party grandees from their voters as they know they're top of the lists and thus don't need to do any campaigning at all. They can just hire some party stooges to hand out balloons to passers-by at supermarket car parks. So I would be loath to unleash such a badly thought-out system on such an engaged and active electorate.

Problem: I can already see most politicians being fervent opponents, as this system means their electorate, instead of voting for whom they want, would possibly vote for the other candidate in a sort of "anyone but that lot" exercise. Tactical voting on a whole new level. However, if an incumbent MP has done a good job, most people would put party politics aside and vote with their heads. I know Tory supporters who vote for their current Lib Dem MP because he's been very good for their town.

Considering the looming hung parliament and the unfathomable mathematical hangover it is likely to create, it would not surprise me if the Tories and Labour went into some kind of German-style Grand Coalition just to keep their two wannabe sister parties, UKIP and the SNP respectively, out of government. I doubt it, but it is an interesting scenario. Could you imagine the stunned looks on the faces of the ruling coalition backbenchers, when some wealthy, landed Eton/Oxbridge alumnus with no chin and an accent that could cut glass is reluctantly siding with a tieless, comprehensive school-leaver wielding a thick regional brogue and bus driving and a stint at a supermarket checkout featuring heavily on his CV? Angus Robertson of the SNP would be the Leader of the Opposition. It wouldn't last long... but long enough to cause Scotland to chip itself off. Who outside Scotland remembers The Vow any longer?

Lastly, if big-party politicians want any credibility, they need to stop treating the electorate as idiots. If they are to do deals with other parties, they need to say so, so that the electorate can make up its mind better. This whole campaign has been about nothing but ignoring the vast elephant in the room that is the next coalition. I, for one, am not scared of the SNP; far from it. Considering the efficiency and straighforwardness of the Scottish government, I think the Westminster parties are scared the SNP will come in and sweep up too many of the little comforts the established parties took for granted. Complacency has no place in British politics any more, and I think a dose of SNP in government will do the country good. Leave the SNP out, and they risk Scotland breaking off altogether.