‘We need to make our voices count like never before’

Two weeks ago the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. I am still in shock over this in all honesty and cannot believe we would shoot ourselves in the head like this. But it is done. The debate couldn’t have been worse. The nation’s future was headed on both sides by two Old Etonians who saw the whole thing as a game – or a popularity contest, but one with dire social implications for the rest of us. The pound has crashed, everyone involved has resigned, the nation stands divided and hate crimes are on the increase. A part of me has been stolen and I fear I may never get it back.

For avoidance of any confusion or accusations of bias, I am unashamedly pro-European. This has always been the case since my early childhood camping trips to northern France and my commitment has only strengthened over time as I learnt more about the world and experienced first-hand the benefits of working closely with our European counterparts. I also benefitted directly from the free movement of workers and paid off my first year uni debts by working in Germany on a much higher wage than was available in my home country.

The EU is far from a perfect institution and there is much that needs to change, but this cannot be done from an isolated small island drifting on the peripheries, it can only be done from within. This is the same reason I personally got involved in local politics and moved beyond a position of protest.

From a professional view representing Bristol City Council, I experienced the vast benefits of being a member of the EU. Projects such as ELENA enabled and financed Bristol to lead the UK in energy efficiency and generation, and projects run by URBACT defined new ways of working that could revolutionise ‘politics’.

Bristol teamed with cities all across the EU from Spain to Romania to ‘work horizontally’ – or to focus on cities sharing knowledge and best-practices, focussing on a common goal – in this case: sustainable food in an urban environment. Rather than prioritising aggressive competition, cooperation is encouraged and the solutions grew from the ground-up rather than dictated from the top-down as mostly happens here in the UK. Though we still have a way to go, this helped see Bristol recognised as an example of excellence in the UK and throughout Europe, and the Bristol written ‘Good Food Plan’ is now Bristol City Council policy.

This is the kind of politics I want to see and this is the sort of politics of a united Europe, but instead of this, the EU is seen by many as an uncontrollable monster barking unreasonable dictats at us to follow…how did we get to this point?

Much has been made out of who voted Leave and why and much of it hasn’t helped. Stereotypes focussing on socio-economic divides, on educational differences and on the age-chasm between the ‘Remains’ and the ‘Leaves’ have only helped widen the gap between us. This is at a time when we have needed to come together arguably more than at any time since the Second World War. I know many who have flown directly in contradiction to these stereotypes; Remain voters from working class background who left school as soon as they could and likewise, young university students who voted Leave or spoiled their ballots. There are deep divides within our society; this referendum has made this blatantly clear but now is a time to pull together, not focus on what divides us still further.

Linked with this is an appalling but sadly not unexpected rise in hate-crimes in the past two weeks. The referendum for some was seen as a vote against immigrants. Our society’s and humanity’s ugliest side has surfaced in a shocking number of hate-crimes all across the city and country. Has our perception and awareness of hate-crimes also increased? I hope so. All such incidents must be reported to the police. But we need to do more to tackle the real causes of this anger.

Many people I have spoken to and know who voted Leave did so for a number of reasons. Mainly these could be defined as: jobs and immigration, an unelected EU miles away ‘telling us what to do’ and a feeling that it’s time we reminded the world how ‘great’ we are again. For a few others it was to protect the NHS. These views are heartfelt and can be argued with rational and personal experience as evidence but I can’t help but feel that we have all been lied to for far too long.

There is a job crisis in the UK at the moment and to deny this would be like saying it doesn’t rain much, but this isn’t the fault of immigrants. People living in areas of high migration know this and it’s why they tended to vote Remain. Could the effects felt by working people actually be the results of the cuts – or the austerity budgets – forced on the nation since 2010 finally really taking their toll? The anger at ‘far away governments forcing rules on us’ could be as true of Westminster as it is for the EU. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Leave vote from the disenfranchised North and South West (both urban and rural) was as much an anger directed against London as it was Brussels.

We have a broken political system in the UK. What we think we are voting for is often very different from what we actually get. We are told that we have a democratic right to change things every four or five years but the unfair first past the post voting system denies us from really influencing how the government is formed, or even getting a fair say in who our local MP is. In many areas of the country our votes do not count because they are ‘safe seats’. We are constantly told to vote against what we hate, not for what we love.

Many Leave voters didn’t even realise their vote would count. This is how disenfranchised our system has made us feel. Martin Luther King Jr said that riots are the ‘language of the unheard’ and I fear that this is what the referendum on the EU became. Now we are stuck with the result.

We cannot ignore the vast influence of the mainstream media in this referendum; the Murdoch Empire specifically had everything to fight for and fight it did. But it is also a failing of how we do politics in the UK. Our top-down system meant that most of our elected MPs told us what to do or what was best for us rather than trying to explain why. It might have been better if they had simply talked to and listened to people. Gove famously said that people had heard enough of ‘experts’ and sadly he tapped into a very popular sentiment.

The most difficult thing facing us all now is to work out what to do next and there aren’t any definite answers. We need to get together and talk this one through, we need to heal our differences and remember what we have in common, we need the open and free discussions that were sadly missed in the lead up to the referendum. Instead the debate was headed by two equally untrustworthy Old Etonians. This process needs to be grass-roots, coming from our communities and neighbourhoods.

We need to have a serious look at electoral and political reform. We need to finally take back the power, to make our voices and our votes count like they never have before. We also need a vision of what we want from our society, not simply to be told what to hate. For me this is a progressive alliance that needs to be built across political lines. Now is the time to do things differently. We must focus on creating an economy with fairness and with people and planet at its beating heart and not the tired old mantra of economic growth. If we carry on doing things the same way then we’ll end up with the same results and now more than ever before, there is a need for change.

A chef most of his life, Gus Hoyt is an environmental campaigner focussing on ‘Good Food’ and Clean Oceans. He’s currently project managing Refill Britain with City to Sea and Geovation. He was a Green Party councillor for Ashley ward.