I suppose I should say something about Brexit. It’s a topic I’ve tried hard to avoid since the referendum. It’s a disaster we’ll just have to live with, at least until the nation comes to its senses and demands we rejoin Europe. Or perhaps that the whole world situation changes in ways that make the whole debate irrelevant.
Not that I’m a big fan of the European institutions, but we have gained enormously from our membership of the EU in so many ways, while managing to negotiate extremely favourable terms – which we won’t be able to regain when we re-apply. And the EU will have changed in many different ways during our absence without us having been able to have our say.
According to the Free-Find search on My London Diary there are 31 references to Brexit on the site, between June 2016 and Jan 2020. It probably isn’t entirely accurate and may ‘double count’ some occurrences, but it gives a fairly good idea of how much I’ve photographed related stories. The pictures here are a fairly random selection of the many I’ve taken in that three and a half years.
I did cover the large anti-Brexit protests that took place in London, but many times as I’ve wandered through Westminster to other events I’ve come across Steven Bray and his SODEM protests, just occasionally stopping to take photographs.
Rather less frequently I’ve met Brexiteers, and taken photographs. At times they have been rowdy and obnoxious and I occasionally felt personally threatened. I also photographed them behaving in extremely threatening ways towards Bray and also to Anna Soubry – which resulted in probably the only sales to newspapers of my Brexit-related pictures.
Brexit of course was not really about Brexit. For many of those who voted leave it was a protest vote about feeling neglected by government and powerless. Fears about immigration obviously played a part – though more so in areas with relatively few immigrants than in cosmopolitan London. A feeling that those in Westminster didn’t understand what was happening outside and didn’t much care – which remains undoubtedly true. A disillusion with the state of politics, enlarged by the war on Iraq and the 2008 crash. For those who drove the leave campaign a desire to keep their tax havens and weaken human rights and laws which protect workers and thus restrict profits.
Since it’s largely this latter group who will be leading our negotiations with Europe and with the rest of the world I think we who aren’t in the top percent or so of the most wealthy are in for a pretty raw deal over the next few years. I’m fortunate enough, though certainly not rich to be reasonably financially insulated against their worst, but I fear for the poor, the disabled, the sick, the homeless, refugees, asylum seekers…
Of course leaving is now a done deal, and there is little that can be done other than hope that our negotiations are carried on rather more sensibly than seems likely. The arguments over Brexit have been a tremendous distraction over the past three years from so many other important issues which perhaps can now be fought.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Tags: Brexit, EU, Europe, leavers, protest, Remainers, Westminster