{"id":1793,"date":"2019-10-20T09:27:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T08:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2019-10-20T09:28:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T08:28:59","slug":"repercussions-of-a-sadness-around-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/repercussions-of-a-sadness-around-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"Repercussions of a sadness around Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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People\u2019s Vote march, 19 Oct 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A friend commented that she was struck by the sense of sadness. There was also fear, but much less of the carnival-like atmosphere of previous marches. One of the hallmarks of emotions in groups is that, if they affecting the whole group, they are less obvious because people don\u2019t look around and see others in a radically-different space. My friend\u2019s words called my up short, and made me wonder.<\/p>\n

Freud\u2019s essay Mourning and Melancholia<\/em> suggests that the big difference between the two is that, in mourning there is real grieving for something that has been lost, such as after the death of a loved one, but in melancholia, though the sadness is real, but it\u2019s not so clear what has actually been lost. That\u2019s part of the territory of depression.<\/p>\n

19 October 2019 was a day of high drama in Parliament \u2014 in its first Saturday sitting since the Falklands invasion. The media has been awash with speculation and interpretation \u2014 often adding more heat then light. Perhaps that\u2019s justified, but I wonder if it was also a distraction from something much harder to name.<\/p>\n

An un-nameable loss<\/h2>\n

I could point a finger at both the Conservative and Labour parties, suggesting that they\u2019ve both lurched to extremes, leaving many of their traditional supporters with a sense of abandonment. I could point to the serious threat of Brexit, in both economic and cultural terms. But these have all been around for a while. They don\u2019t adequately explain the sadness now.
\n<\/p>\n

A missing piece of the jigsaw is the attitude of Brexit supporters. There\u2019s a stridency and a demand to \u201cgive us what we voted for\u201d (and a refusal to engage with the rather delicate question of which of the Brexit models on offer is actually what they think they voted for). Around the march there were a handful of Brexit supporters. One earnestly tried to put \u201cthe other side\u201d and tell me that the EU is an evil empire. I had the word \u201cparanoia\u201d in mind as we spoke, but also wondered about the emotional process that leads to such a strange conclusion (perhaps related to something I wrote about a while back<\/a>). Afterwards there were a few others stridently shouting about their Brexit, though it was more clear that they wanted it than what \u201cit\u201d is.<\/p>\n

Normally the structures of government provide some stability. At present this is badly compromised. We have a government that can\u2019t get things through the Commons and has been found to have acted illegally. Boris Johnson\u2019s \u201cPeople v Politicians\u201d language might enable him to turn frustration into victory in a General Election<\/a>, but devalues the very government he seeks to lead. In a rapidly-changing world, the UK seems poised to wreck relations with a European Union that has provided stability for decades and is its most important trading partner. At the best of times these would unsettle people. They might well also make it hard to think, because the natural response to everything shaking is to shut down rather than think carefully (as people often do when highly stressed).<\/p>\n

Freud\u2019s idea of melancholia seems useful because it feels as if there is something else around. For some, particularly those of us who would prefer to remain in the EU, this links to the impending losses around Europe. But the supporters of Brexit seem loud rather than optimistic. It\u2019s reminiscent of \u201cdisavowal\u201d \u2014 pushing away painful emotions by forcefully putting something else in their place. A classic example is the person who deals with their homosexuality by being loudly homophobic.<\/p>\n

The sadness (and some Brexiteers\u2019 disavowal of it) make sense if it\u2019s not clear what\u2019s been lost, so people can\u2019t name it and can\u2019t talk about how to address the loss. <\/p>\n

What has been lost?<\/h2>\n

As someone who is British, I am very much part of the collective process of the UK, so I can\u2019t step outside to see what has been lost, think of Michel Barnier\u2019s suggestion that Brexit is about \u201cnostalgia\u201d<\/a>: I hear that as a yearning for a world that\u2019s gone and can\u2019t quite be remembered. Stories of the war are thrown around by people who only know it in films. People talk of \u201cforeigners\u201d taking from us, whether that is jobs or trade or fisheries, even as we know these things are not true. That leaves a horrible mis-match \u2014 something has been lost, but it\u2019s failing to be expressed. If people can\u2019t express what they are feeling, they can\u2019t get to the place where they feel heard, which becomes a sense that they are being ignored by a \u201cremainer elite\u201d.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen an erosion of trust in politicians, not least with the expenses scandal. There\u2019s been a gradual realisation that power is heading away from nation states through globalisation, leading to an anxiety about where it has gone. The referendum accelerated this because it was effectively politicians saying to the country \u201cyou can\u2019t trust us to make a wise decision on this\u201d. This is another loss. We could grieve it if we knew where it had gone, but that\u2019s not where we are.<\/p>\n

For Remainers, Europe has been evolving, so what the EU \u201cis\u201d to us is complicated. We didn\u2019t show emotion in the referendum campaign not because it wasn\u2019t there, but because it was really hard to find a way into words. That\u2019s a complex situation. For Brexiteers it\u2019s all of these things plus an inarticulable sense of disempowerment, that sort-of finds voice in \u201ctake back control\u201d.<\/p>\n

The fallout sounds remarkably like the paralysis of depression. The government can\u2019t get anything important done. People are saying \u2014 often quite heavily \u2014 \u201cjust get Brexit done\u201d. That\u2019s closer to the language of the depressive turning suicidal (\u201cjust get it over with\u201d) than a realistic desire.<\/p>\n

A way forward<\/h2>\n

The snag with melancholia, that lies behind the link with depression, is that it\u2019s not possible to name what has been lost in order to let it be grieved. But, just as a good parent can comfort a crying child without knowing exactly why they are crying, it\u2019s possible to restore some stability and contain the raw anxities without actually naming them. Three things might hit the spot. One is for a government of national unity under someone deeply credible, stable and trustworthy \u2014 which means Kenneth Clarke<\/a>. The second is for parliament collectively to end the madness by revoking the Article 50 notice \u2014 something it\u2019s only likely to do in the teeth of a crisis. These two are not mutually-exclusive. The third is the \u201cstrong leader\u201d who can \u201cmake everything alright\u201d by acting in a way that discharges people\u2019s anxiety. The extreme of that is fascist leadership. Perhaps the fear on the People\u2019s Vote march is the intuition that this is a possible outcome. Boris Johnson might do something daft that the courts can\u2019t stop, or he might open the door to something else. Regardless of party politics, this is a strong argument for the other two ways out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The People\u2019s Vote march on 19 October 2019 had a sadness to it \u2014 akin to depression \u2014 and which should be taken seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[72,266,2,25],"tags":[21,268,267],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit-politics","category-freud","category-politics","category-psychoanalysis","tag-brexit","tag-melancholia","tag-sadness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}