As 2016 drew to a close, it appeared that it had been a year overshadowed by politics. Brexit being one episode in the terrible sitcom that was 2016, that Brits won’t forget in a hurry. No matter which way you voted, Brexit is probably still a sore subject. The referendum tore through the nation and left a gaping scar that will take a long time to heal. ‘Remainers’ were heartbroken at being ripped away from Europe, and leavers have yet to see the true repercussions of their vote. The whole escapade has left the nation questioning what is going to happen as 43 years of treaties are unravelled to remove the UK from the union.
The six months that have followed the referendum have been spent in a precarious limbo. No one seems to know what will happen between the UK and the EU over the next few years as they are untangled from one another, and the timeline is extremely ambiguous. News sources still rage about Brexit and the slow, uncertain pace that it is taking. The outcome is still hotly discussed, but it seems that many people have started to see that the grass will not be greener when Britain re-establishes itself as a lonely island nation. In fact, many of the claims that were made in the Brexit campaign have been proven to be completely ridiculous.
Immigration was a defining issue of Brexit, and the main reason that many people voted to leave. Prior to the referendum 330,000 people moved to the UK every year, and around half of those were Europeans. As the campaign reached its climax, many news sources ran the stories of the refugee crisis perpendicular to those about Brexit. People began to fear the deluge of refugees, many of them Syrian, that appeared to be racing towards the British border. This fearmongering led to the victimisation of innocent refugees who were fleeing from oppression in their native countries. Brexit campaigners increased paranoia about the flow of migrants; asserting that they would wash away British identity, and this was something that many voters wanted to protect. Therefore, they attacked free movement to the UK, and claimed that if we left the EU this would be restricted. Due to this irrational paranoia about immigrants, many people surmised that leaving the EU would completely resolve the issue. However, the campaign failed to highlight that the refugees were not fleeing countries in Europe, and therefore leaving the union would not affect their migration to Britain.
LITTLE BRITAIN?