Britain’s establishment just won’t accept the results of 2016’s EU referendum. Though it was a 52 percent vote in favor of Brexit, politicians and the media alike have used a variety of bad tactics to discredit the referendum and its result. Brexit protesters often argue that Brexit was primarily a vote by the elderly at the expense of the young, that the move has “ruined” the future of Britain’s youth.
A 2016 op-ed in the Guardian was entitled “Nostalgic elderly Brexiteers have stolen my future.” It is true that only 25 percent of young voters chose to leave the EU. But it’s precisely these voters, that 25 percent, who could open up a much-needed dialogue regarding the U.K.’s bright future outside of the EU. Yet, they’re consistently a subject of scorn and abuse.
Young Brexit supporters don’t fit the mold of the regressive “Leave”-voter. They are neither old nor do they necessarily live up to the demeaning stereotype of Brexit voters as insular and anti-immigrant. In fact, some of the most vocal young proponents of Brexit have made a decisively classical liberal case for Britain’s independence. Perhaps this is why “Remainers” find them so confounding.
Tom Harwood was one such campaigner. As the organizer of the national student wing of the “Vote Leave” campaign in 2015-16, he found Britain’s campuses rife with anti-Brexit sentiment, including what he described as “systematic bias and groupthink that damages confidence of many students, and hampers intellectual curiosity of others.” Students in favor of Brexit, Harwood said, faced extraordinary restrictions to pro-Brexit activity during the referendum campaign. “Student union activists and the organized left, who don’t represent students but shout twice as loud,” he said, adding that, across the U.K., campus pro-Brexit campaign groups were even forbidden from accessing rooms to hold their meetings.
Student organizations have been more than vocal about their desire to thwart Britain’s exit from the European Union. The Observer reported last year that almost 1 million students had joined forces to demand a second referendum on a Brexit deal in what they described as a “young people’s revolt.”
Opponents of Brexit have every right to insult and critique “Leave” voters, but the cultural impact of widespread intolerance toward young Brexiteers has damaging consequences for the fundamental free exchange of ideas in British society.
Most prominent “Remainers” want to prevent Parliament from acting on Brexit. In order to achieve this, they must depict Brexit voters as ignorant, racist, or imperialist. Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, accused “too many” Brexit voters of being motivated by the longing for “a world where passports were blue, faces were white, and the map was colored imperial pink” at his party’s 2018 spring conference. This isn’t a stigma that young people, anxious to be liked by their peers, are willing to be obvious in supporting.
“Remainers” have gone to great lengths to depict Brexit voters as regressive relics in the most morbid of ways. They even launched “deatherendum” website as a counting ticker of how many Brexit voters had died since the referendum. This sort of antipathy toward people with a different viewpoint has pushed most young people to fervently disassociate themselves from Brexiteers. Indeed, if a second referendum occurred, young voters would likely overturn the “Leave” result.
Too many “Remainers” fail to see that Brexit isn’t a form of decaying, nostalgic politics. In many ways, it’s disruptive and bold and far more aligned with a youthful, optimistic worldview than most “Remainers” would ever admit. Young Brexiteers make an overwhelmingly strong case for a radical new vision for Britain as an independent proponent of both free trade and freedom of speech. This would be a progressive departure from the European Union’s aversion to liberty and its penchant for trade barriers and authoritarian speech regulations.
Much like the average young adult, Brexit itself is fundamentally misunderstood. Rather than undermining and obstructing young Brexit voters, “Remainers” should turn to them in order to better understand the wider frustration with the EU, an undemocratic, centralized body which infringes upon individual liberties by imposing unwarranted authority over personal, economic, and international political questions. Young Brexit voters represent a unique section of the population.
They could serve to better explain the variety of ideas that led 52 percent of Britons to vote for independence from the EU in 2016 — if only “Remain” voters would be willing to listen.
Tamara Berens (@tamaraberens) lives in the U.K. and studies at King’s College London. She is a Young Voices Free Society Fellow and writes about free speech, Brexit, and political activism.
