Today seems
like a significant day. A referendum result
that has been described as heralding the most significant political change for
a generation, the resignation of a Prime Minister, strong views, on either side
being expressed and reflected upon.
I’m a
political person, I joined a political party as a teenager and remain in it
today. I’m interested in the ebb and
flow of the drama that politics provides, but I also think it matters. More importantly than that though I am a
person of faith, my Christianity defines my politics as it does everything else
about me, so I’ve had cause to reflect on how I might pray, and otherwise
respond, to all that has gone on.
I am
disturbed this morning, not because the democratic process produced a result
different to the one for which I voted, I’m used to that, but because it seems
to have painted a stark picture of a country, my country, profoundly
divided. Of course, the binary nature of
a referendum, and a 52/48 outcome, means that is fairly obvious, but it seems
to me to go deeper than that. The
campaign itself was a divisive one, I’ve no problem with robust political
debating and campaigning but, on occasions, the last few weeks have seemed to
go beyond that. More important still, the
outcome appears to have split fairly uniformly along lines of class, culture,
geography, education and age. I am an
ABC1 London based graduate and so voted the way I did entirely predictably, I
guess I ought to be flattered that the only way I bucked the trend was in
voting younger than my years! Given the
significance of social media, and the way it so often serves as an echo chamber
of our own prejudices, many people woke up this morning amazed that so many
were so different to them – ‘Everyone I know was voting the same way as me’ has
been a constant refrain.
It seems then
that the politics of the early 21st century is a politics of
disenfranchisement and of disillusion.
The product of a form of globalisation that is perceived to have
benefited only a favoured few, the much scorned ‘elites’ , at the expense of the ‘ordinary person’, particularly so if they are disadvantaged in
any way. People look around them and
see their hopelessness, or their privilege, reflected back, it’s us and
them. Add to this the familiar issue of
immigration and the easily induced fear of the’ other’ readily produces a
rallying cry to rise up and be angry.
You don’t need to be a great historian to recognise the mix of economic
pressure, rising nationalism and an increasing fear of the outsider can have
ugly repercussions.
This is why I
am disturbed. My faith based politics is
centred on social justice, a sense of God given irreducible human dignity, a
seeking for peace, a universal commitment to take responsibility for each other
and to share fairly both the benefits of prosperity and the hardships in times
of challenge. I am not naive or
ignorant enough to think that everyone who votes differently to me are opposed to those broad values, still less are
they racist or bigots, but I am also convinced that yesterdays referendum would
not have gone the way it did but for an
appeal to that darker side of all our human natures. Righteous political and
community leaders, of all sorts, have a responsibility in the arguments they
deploy and the language that they use to appeal to goodness not pander to
fear.
