Friday morning commutes are great. With the growth in working from home/indifference/unemployment there are less people on the trains. The atmosphere is different too. On Monday the carriages are full, the travelers withdrawn, clenched almost, steeling themselves for the vocational storms to come. By the end of the week we’re all a little more relaxed. If we weren’t British we might even entertain the idea of high fiving each other as we walk down the train aisle to our favourite seat, whooping and exclaiming “we’ve made it” to each other. Seeing as we’re very much in the land of tea, passive aggression and lives index linked to property prices it’s a bit more subdued but the vibe’s still there. The guy with the beard and the overstuffed rucksack who always sits two rows down to the left glances at me and that’s our celebratory salute. Yeah baby! it’s Friday. We’re coasting to the weekend. I take my seat, yeah my seat, the one I always sit at when it’s free, the one at the table half way down the carriage facing forward. Diagonally from me is some bloke I’ve never seen before. It’s allowed, strangers are permitted to use our train carriage. I’ll let him off just the once. Work’s taking over a bit. Same old story. Won’t bore you with the details. I often spend the journeys reading something I’d never find time to in the office or going through the emails that have come in overnight. Or I’m playing backgammon on my phone in a long running battle to the death against the computer who often cheats, especially when it beats me. Anyway, I look up from my screen and my attention passes over to the guy across the table. He’s on his phone looking at shit. Everyone’s on one or more devices. No one’s talking. I catch sight of his screen. He’s on some dating app. He’s looking at pictures. He’s swiping. He looks at a picture for a second and he swipes. An appraisal of a life to date in over less than a heartbeat. Not that I’m nosey of course, but even though they’re upside down I realise that all the pictures of men. He’s on grindr.. Hey ho, this is modernity in itself. This is contemporary society in which a young gay man can be comfortable in his sexuality and be able to look for hookups in a relatively public location. And then I think about the time. It’s 6:20am. Scheduling! No one should be swiping left or right that early in the morning.
It’s light when we commute now, even on the first service into the city. The darkness of winter is in our past. We pretend it won’t soon return. The trees speed by in our windows. As do houses, roads, rivers, aspirations and time too. From arriving in the station there’s more of a bombardment of the senses. Travel here. Wear this. Drink that. Amidst it are the rolling news tickers: sports team beats sports team, actress holds perspex trophy. But these are the welcome diversions. In 2016 there has been but one news story for us. Europe. To stay or go. On June 23 the country will vote in a referendum to remain in the European Union. From Christmas onwards the campaigns for and against have ramped up with daily headline attracting statements. There’s no actual debate, just strongly asserted statements as to what will happen if we leave or stay. The tone was set early and it quickly became a daily attrition between the campaigners, the media and us, the poor bedraggled voters who can’t think for ourselves. One time, back in February you could see the barely concealed joy on a newsreaders face to be reporting on a collapse of a power station with workers either dead or missing. It was something not about Europe. Other than that and the odd refugee boat sinking in the Med it’s all been Europe, Europe, Europe. Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Remain, remain, remain. If a story can be spun beyond Europe’s event horizon it's linked too. There’s no escape. The refugee crisis is down to us not being able to control our borders. If we leave then our security is weakened and we’ll be knee deep in terrorist attacks. Different tranches of leading business people tell us we’ll be going back to the stone age or overtaking China economically. Not having to implement Brussels’ rules will allow us to have whatever shaped bananas we want and none of that pesky human rights legislation. And on and on it deluges. David Cameron is waging a campaign based on fear opines Team Brexit before pausing and adding that by next year children will be placed in labour camps as part of a Euro technocrat Sharia state.
Ah yes the politicians. This is all of their Christmases at once. From being a near 5 year irrelevancy comet we’re getting a bonus year of them shining in the spotlight. It's a well worn trope but there’s a strong assertion that Europe has been a cancer within the Conservative party for a generation. Leadership for both campaigns would come from their own ranks. Members of the cabinet, mostly ones you wouldn’t want to be left alone with, vanguards of humanity like Iain Duncan Smith, John Whittingdale, Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers and Priti Patel formally announced that they would be campaigning to leave. Boris Johnson stayed quiet initially courting press attention in a classic will he won’t he story like some fresh off the production line porn star deciding whether to do anal. With the flash bulbs popping Boris came out as team Brexit or anti-Cameron based on some spat at Eton 30 years ago. With Boris it’s difficult to move beyond the suspicion that the real prize for him here is the role of Prime Minister and Europe just a high value piece worth sacrificing on the board. Rest assured, with Boris seizing the campaign reigns we were a hop skip and a jump from him waving cornish pasties from a battle bus whilst comparing the EU’s ideology to that of Nazi Germany.
It’s not all about the Conservative Party of course. If we look at the activities of the official opposition, the Scottish National Party, we can see a strong pro-European stance with the added risk of the UK voting for exit resulting in renewed calls for devolution and the breakup of the union. Of late Nicola Sturgeon has kept a low profile. This is probably for the best. Whilst Dear Leader stylee popular north of the border in England she comes across as unbearably smug. And Scottish. If you squint she’s quite Thatcheresque. If not in policy but in power suits and cult of personality she’s one step away from decrying “the mars bar’s not for deep fat frying”.
Labour look on in their new befuddled mannerism. Whether it’s favouring the European movement of Russia in 1917 a mistrust of the anti-democratic European power base or a sign of in-party feuding their response was slow and limited. Begrudgingly coming out as pro-remain early but then not campaigning for months as if it was a filthy act he'd committed whilst blackout drunk and wasn't “that kind of guy” Jeremy Corbyn has shown all the passion for Europe as Tottenham Hotspur, going missing when it counts.
My favourite of all the arguments is that Europe erodes our sovereign democracy. I’ve not voted for a victorious MP for most of the elections I’ve voted in so excuse me if I feel that I’ve spent the majority of my democratic life feeling unrepresented. And for those victorious parties that have governed over the years what have we experienced? Just a flip flopping of policies to suit their own agendas, which results in little more than lapping waves at a shore than anything of lasting permanence. Countries need a long term strategy, a vision. Politicians operate in pragmatic short termism. Sovereign democracy is a cheerleader for the status quo and you have to infer promoted by those who desire to advantage of such short termism. This is the religion of the stock market, of investing in sub second trades, not in a company to grow in the future. If we get rid of those European busy bodies we can do away with all the human rights nonsense, workers protection, minimum wages and the like. Maybe if the proletariat can take their rightful place back in those dark satanic mills we might have a chance of making Britain Great again. Speaking of lowest common denominators much of this wonderful election appears to be coming down to money. The relatively affluent want to stay in even if that’s less a drive for greater European unity and more not upsetting the economic apple cart. The less affluent want out big style on the bet that exiting will mean all foreigners driven from our shores and a possible uplift from this economic pogrom. Our economic culture is the lowest bidder winning the contract. This is why we outsource overseas, why Romanians are picking our Fruit, the cliched Pole putting in our new bathrooms. And the very people team Brexit are turning to are the ones at greatest risk. There’s a dark humour indeed in willfully voting to be exploited.
I guess we can blame Europe on Charlemagne. King of the Franks in the middle ages, in part the founder of both France and Germany, he had aspirations to control much of western Europe. Not exactly a Team Brexit pin up. I’ll close with one of his bon mots - “Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.” For many voters in this referendum there’s genuine uncertainty as to what right is. Scheduling again is a problem On 23 June we’ll all be voting. For something. Or nothing. Or both.
