Sunday 12th November

The final battle will not be, as Star Wars would have us believe, between Good and Evil, or even Christian Values versus Muslim Fanaticism, as the Daily mail would like us to think, or even between Capitalism and Socialism.  It will actually be a battle between Ignorance and Enlightenment.

2016 was a watershed year, both in Britain and the USA.  For a long time, I struggled to understand just what the hell was going on.  How could people have been so stupid?  To have voted for Brexit, to have believed that even if there was 350 million a week (actually about half of that amount) that the Tories would ever spend it on the NHS, to have fallen for the charms of Farage and Boris rather than the words of Obama, Carnage and Osborne predicting economic chaos.  And in America, to have fallen for the bombast and crudeness of Trump.  How could this have happened?  And the answer is Ignorance.  Now, by ignorance, I do not mean that people were stupid – though some may have been, I mean the willful ignoring of all common sense, the wallowing in a mud-bath of glorious bigotry, the tribal collective security of the mob.

As a teenager I used to sometimes go to see Ipswich play soccer.  And yes, I often succumbed to the sexist and abusive chanting of the crowd, but occasionally I turned my back on the pitch and watched the supporters instead.  It was almost one homogenous mass, swaying on the (then) terraces, united in hating the opposing fans as much as loving their own team.  And it was this tribal ignorance which both the Brexiteers and Trump so successfully tapped into.  Suddenly the politically correct doors were flung open and racism was okay, dressed up as it was in phrases like “concerned about immigration”. I can remember Farage talking about Immigration and saying that “the people at home will know exactly who I am talking about”.  As did every Sun and Daily Mail headline as they screamed about traitors and freedom from the EU tyranny.  But it wasn’t only the ignorance of ‘Working class voters’ (if there are any left), it was also the willful ignorance of Middle Class Tory Britain and well-heeled Republicans in America which secured those victories.  Pandora’s box was opened.  People who had felt ignored for years suddenly had a voice.  Blair and Obama had promised change, but little had changed for far too many.

And it will only be through Enlightenment that Ignorance will be reduced (defeat may never be entirely possible).  The final battle will be hard and long-fought, it will only be won by the young.  My generation has had to learn not to be racist, not to be homophobic, not to be sexist.  And yet many have still not really absorbed these lessons – they may agree with them when asked.  But secretly they still hate gays, they really don’t like black or brown people, and as for women – well, the less said the better.

But we must not despair, things will change – the pendulum will swing back again.  We just have to make sure it swings back far enough that Ignorance never succeeds again.