How Our Politicians Created an 'Island of Strangers' So They Don't Have to Make Our Lives Any Better
The Non-Solution to Life's Struggles
'Today, I feel like I've woken up a stranger in this country'. I was discussing the "shock vote" for Brexit with another remainer on the afternoon after the EU Referendum. Immediately described by the commentariat as a "protest", one newspaper noted that, after years of people 'waking up and feeling like strangers in their own country', those who voted to leave had finally demanded to be heard.
That was the last reference to British estrangement I remember, before Keir Starmer's recent speech on the need to stop the UK becoming an "island of strangers".
In 2016, the Brexit vote launched a frenzied analysis of the problems that had led to it. They have all been consistently ignored since.
While tackling immigration was a prominent reason, the analysis was that who was coming to the UK and why was a secondary problem brexiters landed on when looking for answers to many others: industry had declined, the nature of work had changed, economic inequality was continuing to rise, town centres went neglected, public services of all kinds were stretched, insecurity pervaded, the very fabric of community had frayed.
Boris Johnson paid political lip-service to this with his promise of a 'levelling up' that didn't materialise. The hard Brexit Britain ended up with on his watch was merely a psychic victory: the 'will of the people' prevailed, but their lot hadn't actually improved. Brexit, the pandemic, a cost of living crisis, Liz Truss' mini budget, and public services that never recovered from austerity have meant things are only getting harder.
And there are no solutions: only immigration.
Tackling immigration was a solution before Brexit. Tackling immigration is now a solution after Brexit. In highlighting it so prominently, Starmer has joined a long line of politicians using it to distract from the absence of any more tangible fixes to complex issues - aided by a media that interrogates none of the deeper questions this is meant to avoid.
EXCLUSIVE
The Story of Brexit is the Story of Empire: Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
The complicated love-hate relationship of immigrants from former colonies with the British Empire cannot be ignored if lessons are to be learned in post-Brexit Britain, says Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
His suggestion that immigration is a key reason why we risk becoming an "island of strangers" is a cynical ploy: a hyper-real solution for people's discontent, when those in power know it's more complicated than that.
"I think Nigel Farage is trying to speak the truth but I don't trust any of them anyway," one resident of Dartford told this newspaper on a visit to the town just days after it elected three new Reform UK councillors in May's local elections. "I've heard it off everybody else. He's going to do this, he's going to do that, whatever."
Nothing, indeed, changes - except for the certainty that immigration is both the cause of and solution to life's struggles; a key reason why people should be dissatisfied, why their lives don't seem to be improving.
By trying to convince us of this, while doing nothing about any of the systemic issues causing people's daily struggles, politicians like Starmer are both the creators and sustainers of this "island of strangers" - a place not only of supposedly 'alien foreigners', but a land of Brits alienated from themselves and from a political system of no use for their troubles.
Alienated from the Truth
Beyond the political rhetoric and nativist undertones - designed to appeal to those residents in Dartford now opting for Nigel Farage's Reform - the reality is too big and complicated to confront: everything has changed, and that change has impacted people in different ways, while things continue to shift all around us, imperceptibly and then as if all at once.
We are estranged and it is an estrangement - from our society, from our communities, from ourselves - that politicians like Starmer reinforce by refusing to add...
'Today, I feel like I've woken up a stranger in this country'. I was discussing the "shock vote" for Brexit with another remainer on the afternoon after the EU Referendum. Immediately described by the commentariat as a "protest", one newspaper noted that, after years of people 'waking up and feeling like strangers in their own country', those who voted to leave had finally demanded to be heard.
That was the last reference to British estrangement I remember, before Keir Starmer's recent speech on the need to stop the UK becoming an "island of strangers".
In 2016, the Brexit vote launched a frenzied analysis of the problems that had led to it. They have all been consistently ignored since.
While tackling immigration was a prominent reason, the analysis was that who was coming to the UK and why was a secondary problem brexiters landed on when looking for answers to many others: industry had declined, the nature of work had changed, economic inequality was continuing to rise, town centres went neglected, public services of all kinds were stretched, insecurity pervaded, the very fabric of community had frayed.
Boris Johnson paid political lip-service to this with his promise of a 'levelling up' that didn't materialise. The hard Brexit Britain ended up with on his watch was merely a psychic victory: the 'will of the people' prevailed, but their lot hadn't actually improved. Brexit, the pandemic, a cost of living crisis, Liz Truss' mini budget, and public services that never recovered from austerity have meant things are only getting harder.
And there are no solutions: only immigration.
Tackling immigration was a solution before Brexit. Tackling immigration is now a solution after Brexit. In highlighting it so prominently, Starmer has joined a long line of politicians using it to distract from the absence of any more tangible fixes to complex issues - aided by a media that interrogates none of the deeper questions this is meant to avoid.
EXCLUSIVE
The Story of Brexit is the Story of Empire: Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
The complicated love-hate relationship of immigrants from former colonies with the British Empire cannot be ignored if lessons are to be learned in post-Brexit Britain, says Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
His suggestion that immigration is a key reason why we risk becoming an "island of strangers" is a cynical ploy: a hyper-real solution for people's discontent, when those in power know it's more complicated than that.
"I think Nigel Farage is trying to speak the truth but I don't trust any of them anyway," one resident of Dartford told this newspaper on a visit to the town just days after it elected three new Reform UK councillors in May's local elections. "I've heard it off everybody else. He's going to do this, he's going to do that, whatever."
Nothing, indeed, changes - except for the certainty that immigration is both the cause of and solution to life's struggles; a key reason why people should be dissatisfied, why their lives don't seem to be improving.
By trying to convince us of this, while doing nothing about any of the systemic issues causing people's daily struggles, politicians like Starmer are both the creators and sustainers of this "island of strangers" - a place not only of supposedly 'alien foreigners', but a land of Brits alienated from themselves and from a political system of no use for their troubles.
Alienated from the Truth
Beyond the political rhetoric and nativist undertones - designed to appeal to those residents in Dartford now opting for Nigel Farage's Reform - the reality is too big and complicated to confront: everything has changed, and that change has impacted people in different ways, while things continue to shift all around us, imperceptibly and then as if all at once.
We are estranged and it is an estrangement - from our society, from our communities, from ourselves - that politicians like Starmer reinforce by refusing to add...
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