Brexit is the symptom, not the cause

It was once said that a week is a long time in politics.

It’s a saying that carries a lot of truth. Especially as we all seem to forget what has happened very easily and just as soon.

Whilst we would probably all share the view that it feels like there has never been anything other than Brexit happening in British Politics today, the reality is that it is only a feeling. And one that is far from true.

The term ‘Brexit’ wasn’t even around before the European Referendum in 2016. Yet we all feel like it must have been the first word that the language specialists had on the list when the first dictionary was made.

Because the narrative suggests that Brexit has taken over everything to do with Government, it has become just as easy to conclude that it is responsible for all the problems that we are having. The truth is that it is not.

Brexit means different things to different people. Because it has brought an identity or slapped a label upon solving what for everyone might be a different view of the problems with Government.

Every problem has been neatly packaged up ready for a solution or remedy in a way that identified Leaving the EU as the way that it could all be cured.

That focus, distillation of ideas or coming together over a common cause has also made it easy to blur the edges of the contributory issues and causes of those experiences that we have as being just the same.

This has meant that those looking for the source of their own anger about Brexit have concluded that every problem and issue that the Public have with government are synonymous with Brexit. And that with Brexit stopped, they will simply disappear, and everything will return to being the same.

They won’t.

The issues that we have with Government and Public Services, the old politics based on self-interest, the malign influence of EU Policy on almost every part of life; all came into being and have been developing as significant contributory factors that prompted a majority of the British Public to Vote to Leave the EU in 2016.

This is how Brexit was made.

Brexit is a symptom of many problems. But Brexit is not the cause.