Una Mullally: British may do a Father Dougal over Brexit

I was on the Tube in London on Tuesday eavesdropping on a conversation between two middle-aged men. They began by lamenting what they perceived as the watering down of rock music lineups at festivals, and then the conversation moved on to Brexit. The men, who I could tell were friends, had obviously accepted a while back that they were on opposing sides. There was no argument, just some updates on how each others’ teams were doing. Man 1 asked Man 2 how his campaigning was going. Man 2 was active in the Vote Leave campaign. Man 1 was a more passive Vote Stay (or rather, ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’) voter. Man 2 filled Man 1 in on their other people who had started to help out with the Vote Leave campaign, with Man 1 expressing surprise as names were reeled off.

In situations such as Britain’s upcoming referendum on June 23rd, there is often more motivation for the underdog to become mobilised; from campaigning to actually going out to vote. Those with the strongest feelings on the issue will definitely vote, those with lukewarm feelings, or who might not care either way, are the least likely to campaign ahead of polling day, or indeed to cast a vote themselves. If it was possible to gauge emotional extremities amongst Brexit voters, and you took a sample of both sides, you’d imagine at this stage that those most motivated are the Vote Leave camp. It’s a position that provokes stronger feelings, and that kind of sentiment is motivating.

Panic is starting to set in across politics, media and society about the potential Europe-wide disaster that would unfold should Britain choose to sling their hook.

The recent Guardian/ICM poll, which showed a swing to leave at 52 to 48, was enough to spark nervousness in the currency market (‘Sterling volatility rockets after tighter Brexit poll’, the Financial Times proclaimed), even with the relatively small sample size of 1,004 people polled by phone, and 2,052 polled online. There is a correlation with the Scottish independence referendum, where polls swung like a pendulum on a grandfather clock before the vote, and then the neutral’s excitement about the country taking a bold step quickly deflated when the results started to come in.

Unless David Cameron himself wants to secretly leave the European Union, he'll rue the day he allowed boisterous joshing from UKIP and UKIP-y elements of the Conservative Party to escalate into a referendum. Just as Donald Trump ended up becoming the Republican nominee for presidency while the world scoffed, inviting the genie out of the bottle when you don't know what people want to wish for is a risky sport.

What’s interesting to watch unfold in Britain now, are the attempts to sell the EU to a society that was never particularly excited about it as an entity to begin with. The EU has a lifelong branding crisis, hard to understand and easy to distort, vast and vague, intangible yet seemingly invasive. The pre-referendum panic begets a campaign based on fear - never an ideal or intellectual solution - to stop the polls swinging any further towards ‘leave’. Fear was initially UKIP’s favoured weapon, peddling fear and ignorance about migration, fear of the ‘other’, fear of anything that didn’t enjoy ale and Union Jack shorts. This bolshy nationalism was overlooked as a minority point of view. But just like Trump over there, over here, if a watched pot doesn’t boil, an ignored one ends up setting your house on fire.

The Irish attitude towards Brexit seems to be based on the chat up line, “I hate to see you leave, but I love to watch you walk away”, a sentiment largely steeped in self-interest for our own economic ties with Britain, cut with our well sustained anti-English sentiment. Perhaps beyond the calls of Irish campaigners in Britain calling for a vote to stay, there is an unseen secret Campaign of Divilment, where Irish people in Britain ignore logic and vote leave, just to screw the old enemy over.

So as the referendum equivalent of asking Father Dougal not to press the big red button edges closer, the question is: could Britain dare to leave? Why not? Britain never fully committed to the European project, primarily held back by the bungee cord of fantasy imperialism and national self-importance. It clutched its Sterling notes in its fists while others handed their nice old money over in favour of the single currency. This referendum is something of a dare for the British people, and one the pan-European establishment is scrambling to stymy. But it’s incredibly hard to campaign against such dramatic temptation when no one has been able to articulate in a clear and simple manner how dire the consequences would actually be. For now, the finger hovers over that giant red button, and there’s a growing itch to think “go on, go on, go on, go on.”