There'll be a lot of hindsight after the result of the Remain/Brexit vote is announced. We'll hear explanations of why it was always going to be this way (hold onto nurse...), or perhaps a consensus will form on what was the decisive moment, or intervention, and then we'll all settle into a relentless "national conversation" about who's likely to take over from David Cameron as leader. "Ordinary people", as the BBC insists on calling us, will get on with their lives. But the media-political class will keep its knives out ("for fear of something worse," to continue the misquotation of Belloc), and the governance of the country will amble on it its present-participle near-stasis.
This post a memo to self: remember the hyperbole: the peculiar confidence in forecasts of doom; the absurd number of incumbent politicians and office-holders who feel confident enough to warn us of the dire consequences of getting the vote wrong. Remember the straight-faced reporting of all the doom-saying; the solemn discussions of what "could" happen. And the strange bedfellows - political enemies suddenly together on one side or the other. Remember the expression "The Facts". We're given "The Facts" to help us made up our minds, except that "The Facts" are always open to challenge.
And we - the "ordinary people" - seem to take all this in. Except that I suspect we don't. This is the day on which councillors in North Yorkshire decided to allow fracking despite 4,000 protests from local people, plus intervention from Greenpeace et al. [Strictly, the day after the decision, unless the act of reporting the decision makes it real; where's Schrodinger's hypothetical eccentric cousin when you need him?] Perhaps there were rational arguments in favour of fracking. Perhaps "We just don't want it" carries no weight among elected representatives. A Labour canvasser came to my door the other day. Discussion a local group opposed to a specific development, she said in passing, "Of course, there were some nimbys among them, but..." the rest could be taken seriously, was what she seemed to mean.
It's okay not to want it in your back yard, as long as you don't just not want it in your back yard? What's the logic of living somewhere, electing a representative, and then being disregarded? What happens if a referendum's campaigning ceases to be believable? Yes, I know the difference between an elected representative and a delegate, but there haven't been that many indications recently, have there, to suggest that our elected representatives, and their media harriers, have any idea of what the "ordinary people" are thinking.
Or indeed, that we take any notice of them, when deciding which way to vote?
This post a memo to self: remember the hyperbole: the peculiar confidence in forecasts of doom; the absurd number of incumbent politicians and office-holders who feel confident enough to warn us of the dire consequences of getting the vote wrong. Remember the straight-faced reporting of all the doom-saying; the solemn discussions of what "could" happen. And the strange bedfellows - political enemies suddenly together on one side or the other. Remember the expression "The Facts". We're given "The Facts" to help us made up our minds, except that "The Facts" are always open to challenge.
And we - the "ordinary people" - seem to take all this in. Except that I suspect we don't. This is the day on which councillors in North Yorkshire decided to allow fracking despite 4,000 protests from local people, plus intervention from Greenpeace et al. [Strictly, the day after the decision, unless the act of reporting the decision makes it real; where's Schrodinger's hypothetical eccentric cousin when you need him?] Perhaps there were rational arguments in favour of fracking. Perhaps "We just don't want it" carries no weight among elected representatives. A Labour canvasser came to my door the other day. Discussion a local group opposed to a specific development, she said in passing, "Of course, there were some nimbys among them, but..." the rest could be taken seriously, was what she seemed to mean.
It's okay not to want it in your back yard, as long as you don't just not want it in your back yard? What's the logic of living somewhere, electing a representative, and then being disregarded? What happens if a referendum's campaigning ceases to be believable? Yes, I know the difference between an elected representative and a delegate, but there haven't been that many indications recently, have there, to suggest that our elected representatives, and their media harriers, have any idea of what the "ordinary people" are thinking.
Or indeed, that we take any notice of them, when deciding which way to vote?