Brexit and consequences…

Yesterday morning I tweeted about Brexit (as I’ve done a fair number of times), and it went just a little bit viral. Here’s the tweet:

It was an off-the-cuff Tweet, and I had no idea that people would RT it so much, nor that it would provoke quite as many reactions as it has. I’ve replied to a few, but, frankly, it’s not possible to reply to all. The responses, however, have been quite revealing in many ways. As usual, people read Tweets in different ways, and of course this particular Tweet is far from unambiguous. I was asked many times what is the ‘this’ that I’m saying is the fault of the ‘Brexit people’. And who I meant by ‘Brexit people’. I was told I was wrong to lump all Brexit people together. And that we should be looking for unity, not stoking the fires of division.

Some thought I was specifically talking about the dramatic fall of the pound. I wasn’t, but I might have been. Others thought I was blaming Brexit voters for ‘anything and everything’. I wasn’t. Actually, what I was doing was getting angry with those people who voted for Brexit but are now saying ‘we didn’t vote for this’ when they see Theresa May’s increasing nasty and xenophobic government do things like threaten to use EU citizens in the UK as ‘bargaining chips’, sending foreign doctors home as soon as we’ve trained enough ‘home grown’ doctors, and ‘naming and shaming’ companies that employ foreigners.

The thing is, if you voted Brexit you may not have wanted that to happen, but that’s the effect of your vote. And you were warned, many times, that by voting for Brexit you were helping the far right. By voting for Brexit you were ‘sending a message’ that immigrants weren’t welcome. By voting for Brexit you were likely to give more power to the worst kind of Tory. This is what I said on my blog in February, when the campaign was just beginning:

“What’s far more likely with Brexit is that an even more right-wing Tory government will come in, and with even fewer restrictions on their actions will destroy even more of what is left of our welfare state, our NHS, all those things about Britain that those on the left like. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling are amongst the most enthusiastic Brexiters. Win the vote and you’re giving them what they want.”

That’s what happened – and I was far from alone in predicting it, and warning people that if they voted for Brexit they’d get more nastiness and a more right-wing government. Now we’ve got it, and if you voted for Brexit, that’s the result.

I’m not, as I’ve also been accused, ‘lumping all Brexit voters together’, suggesting that they’re all racists and xenophobes. Of course they’re not. They have all, however, helped the racists and xenophobes. That’s what the vote did. That’s cause and effect. Some people I know and respect have strong and detailed analytical economic reasons behind their vote – and some expounded them in response to my tweet – but, frankly, that’s by-the-by. Even if their economic arguments  are sound (and I remain unconvinced), they still unleashed the xenophobia.

Others try to suggest that what’s happened is all for the good. We should be making lists of foreigners, we should be replacing foreign doctors with Brits and so forth. That’s also all well and good – but in that case, why be angry with my Tweet? You should be proud of the consequences, if you like them.

I am, of course, one of the out-of-touch metropolitan elite, and I know it. I don’t expect to be listened to. I don’t expect to have any result – but I still have the right to be angry. And I am. I only wish I’d been angrier earlier.

A poem for Theresa May

This is for #NationalPoetryDay. Short, but far from sweet.

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It’s happened before

We’ve seen where it leads

But forgotten the signs

While sowing the seeds

Of hatred and anger

Division and pain

So we’re failing and falling

All over again.

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Warning signs – and surveillance…

There are many things being said at the Conservative Party Conference that should be worrying people – from the idea that we should be sending foreign doctors home and ‘naming and shaming’ companies that have the temerity and lack of patriotism to dare to employ foreigners onwards. Military in schools just sends one extra shiver down the spine – these things, when looked at together, do not paint a pretty picture at all. The direction our government is headed is one that is ringing alarm bells for many. Even if you don’t believe the current government is ‘extreme’, the idea that it could become extreme should be taken very seriously indeed.

That, in turn, should raise even louder alarm bells at the current plans for surveillance. The powers that are being granted to the authorities under the Investigatory Powers Bill that is currently making its final steps through parliament are extremely potent and worrying even in the hands of a trustworthy, ‘moderate’ government – but in the hands of an extreme government they become something far, far worse. Tools such as Internet Connection Records, though very poorly suited to the purpose for which they are being put forward, are very good at the kind of profile-based politically-motivated population control that totalitarian regimes thrive upon. The same for many of the ‘bulk powers’ built into the Investigatory Powers Bill. It is bad enough – dangerous enough – to give these kinds of powers to a government that can be trusted, but by putting them into law and building the ‘necessary’ systems to implement them, we are giving them to subsequent governments, governments that may be far less trustworthy, and far more worrying. Governments like those that we have seen more than glimpses of at the Conservative Party conference over the last few days.

When the recent revelation that Yahoo! secretly scanned all of its customers incoming emails on behalf of the US intelligence agencies is added to the equation – with the added twist that Yahoo! had been subject to a massive hack – the picture gets still worse. As I point out in my new academic piece on surveillance, it is a mistake to think of commercial and governmental surveillance as separate and entirely different: they are intimately connected and inextricably linked. If we accept, unthinking, corporate surveillance as harmless, innovative and just about a bit more annoying advertising, we miss the bigger picture. By accepting that, we accept government use of the same techniques, government ‘forcing’ corporations to work with and for them and so on – and not just our current, relatively benign (!) governments but future, more extreme, more alarming, more dangerous governments. If Amber Rudd wants to know whether a company is employing too many foreigners, why not scan all that company’s emails, monitor all the web-browsing from that company’s computers and use profiling to work out which of the employees are probably ‘foreign’, then target them accordingly. Naming and shaming. Labelling. Deporting.

As Bruce Schneier put it:

“It’s bad civic hygiene to build an infrastructure that can be used to facilitate a police state.”

The combination of the level of corporate surveillance, the interaction between corporates and governments, and the disturbing political developments all over the world – from the Conservative Party conference to Donald Trump (and Hillary Clinton is no saint in surveillance terms!) to extremism in Hungary and Poland and more – is making his warning too important to ignore.

It is not too late to change direction – at least we had better hope it is – and we should do everything we can to do so. In the UK, all the opposition parties should fight much harder to limit and amend the Investigatory Powers Bill, for example – as should those within the Conservative Party who have any sense of the traditions of liberty that they purport to hold as important. Whether they will is another matter. This Conservative Party conference should be a warning sign for all.