There is nothing about 2016 that wasn’t inevitable

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is nothing about 2016 that wasn’t inevitable. Nothing that hadn’t been brewing for years.

Whether you’re looking at Brexit, Trump or ‘untimely’ celebrity deaths. 2016 is the year things caught up with us – it became a melting pot for events we had arguably been dodging

It may not be a fashionable opinion but as “Changes” by Bowie came on to my iPhone this morning and I remembered that night at New Slang in Kingston in January with friends where we belted out his lyrics thinking how tragic his early death was I began to think. 2016 was an annus horribilis for sure. But was it one that could have been avoided?

Like many, I was continually plagued by shock and disbelief as the year unravelled. However it was only with less than 24 hours to go that I realised this has been partly due to my circumstance and, frankly, living in leafy South West London.

Over Christmas, as we, like many, lamented the deaths of George Michael and Carrie Fisher, mum piped up – this isn’t a curse of 2016. These people took a lot of drugs. Drank a lot of alcohol. They did what we are told not to every day. This fed their artistic brilliance. But it also meant they were susceptible to human weakness. Of course their deaths were sad and tragic but could this be used as an education piece for young people? These lifestyles the media glamourises and encourages had real consequences. One lasting legacy of this year would be to make people think about these actions and how we all live.

Equally as the year closed in professional circles many people started to talk about President-elect Trump.  One person I spoke with posed the question – was Trump Obama’s legacy? Was it the pace of  change too fast and coupled with the disappointment that he couldn’t deliver all the change he pledged? Was it the Democrats’ inability to find another leader as they had spent so much time trying to secure a positive legacy for the man who was once the poster boy of hope? Or did he simply deliver the wrong form of change? None of this can be answered right away, but all of these things add up to one – an inevitable victory for the right.

And then we have Brexit. Let’s be honest about it, the reason people had always been so hesitant to call a referendum was one reason and one alone – it was clear that a referendum would mean we would be out.

Years of demonising the EU, of consecutive governments blaming the institution when it couldn’t deliver on pledges, had led to a nation that was intrinsically eurosceptic. Even the biggest of europhiles know how far from perfect the institution is. Equally, years of not allowing a proper and open debate about immigration took its toll.

There was a dangerous combination of those who truly disliked the EU, those who wanted to further their career, and people feeling like this was a way to get their voice heard – whether it was that the EU needed reforming, that they were left behind and wanted to shock the establishment or that they just didn’t want immigrants in the country. It came to symbolise the only way to get the sort of change people felt they had been deprived of by the liberal elite.

Instead of hanging our heads it should be a wake up call – we should be putting more time into awareness of the side effects of these lifestyles the media has glorified for so many years. Policy makers should be leaving Westminster. Going out to Clacton, Sunderland, Havant, Cornwall, not to pay lip service and take a photo but to spend time understanding, not berating, those who voted for change.

Perhaps by doing this, in 70 years we can prevent a rerun of 2016 – but history teaches us that people don’t learn and that this won’t just be one year that will shock the establishment – we won’t wake up tomorrow and things will be better. If anything as so many times before, they probably need to get worse first.

* Roisin Miller is a member in Kingston and Surbiton and is a senior communications consultant, working with global multi-million and billion dollar companies. She is also the treasurer for Lib Dems in Communications. To find out more about Lib Dems in Communications, email [email protected]

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16 Comments

  • Simon McGrath 2nd Jan '17 - 11:12am

    “And then we have Brexit. Let’s be honest about it, the reason people had always been so hesitant to call a referendum was one reason and one alone – it was clear that a referendum would mean we would be out.”
    Not the case at all. The polls showed and we all thought we would win – which is why an In /Out vote was in our manifesto in 2015.

  • If Roisin is saying that the world/country/community/politics/culture that we want requires that we are in it for the long haul, simply being able to recognise that is good news rather than bad.

    I joined the Liberals in the early sixties as we were hauling ourselves out of near extinction. I have found it helpful over the decades to regard myself as living in an alien country with appalling politics, a brittle electoral system not fit for human relationships, and a corrosive celebrity culture.

    I have also found it helpful to give absolute priority to your values. When you depart this life, if those values are worth having then others after you are guaranteed to carry on the struggle. In the midst of it all there are modest advances to be celebrated. Many of Roy Jenkins reforms have survived and become entrenched.

    I find it difficult to imagine seeking celebrity while holding firm to lasting values that are infinitely bigger than you. If you have celebrity thrust upon you, let it be unpremeditated (this is the Lord Mayor of Bradford speaking!) and try to combine it with a good dose of self-deprecation – possibly a legitimate British tendency – I prefer to avoid the phrase “British values.”

    Mutual support and affirmation (such as that in evidence amongst the mad people who turn up from across the country at Parliamentary by-election campaigns) will be much needed over the next decade or so. We are not going to disappear so long as core values are our ultimate fuel and lubrication.

  • There’s a lot of common sense in what you say, and I agree with you, Roisin.

    However I do think there is a danger we all get a bit precious about 2016. Sure, celebrity deaths are sad, but let’s get a sense of proportion.

    One hundred years ago, in 1916, and under a Liberal led Government, we had the terrible battles of the Somme and Verdun. Among the casualties was the PM’s son, Raymond Asquith. Altogether there were at least 38 million casualties throughout WW1.

    As to show business celebrities, not a lot was made of the death of Basil Hallam Radford (better known as Gilbert the Filbert) on the Somme shortly before the death of his friend Raymond Asquith.

    PS Radford’s big hit ‘Gilbert the Filbert’ is on youtube for any anoraks out there !!

  • Both the EU Referendum and the US election were narrow enough that they could have easily gone the other way. Would you have been making the same arguments had both flipped?

    Besides, when the “other side” wins something do they worry about understanding and accommodating? Perhaps the lesson is we should do less of those things and more being angry.

  • @ Geoff Reid Just picked up your post, Geoff. As an ex BGS boy myself, I can confirm what you will already know. The Bradford Pals took a terrible mauling in 1916 and it created a heartache in the City such as we will never know. Long may they be remembered and respected.

    Best wishes in your Mayoral Year.

  • paul barker 2nd Jan '17 - 3:14pm

    Events always look inevitable after they have happened, in fact both Trump & Brexit were close. If we had not joined The Coalition in 2010 the Referendum could have happened 3 or 4 years earlier.
    As a long-term suffererer from Depression, a lot of this article sounds like depression talking.
    The crucial point about 2016 is that it wont come again & we cant change it. 2017 is ours to make.

  • 2016 wasn’t all bad though, the first year since 1968 where British Service Personnel have not died on operations.

  • Eddie Sammon 2nd Jan '17 - 7:22pm

    I don’t believe the victories were inevitable but I’ve thought for a while that the status-quo in politics can’t continue. You have the public who are a bit more authoritarian than the commentators but both can’t be right.

    I’ve thought for a while that it is the public who are more correct than the commentators. We have a lot of electoral evidence for what voters are likely to do, but there still seems to be this belief that we are marching towards an ever-more liberal world, or there was until 2016. The height of this belief seemed to be before the 2015 election, but then people found out that right leaning governments could still get elected in the age of Twitter and mass social media participation.

    Therefore, in many ways 2016 was a reality check. But support for the disadvantaged has not gone away and nor will it. Hillary won the popular vote, but it shouldn’t have been close.

  • Jayne Mansfield 3rd Jan '17 - 9:57am

    @ Roisin,
    Listen to your mum.

  • Simon Banks 3rd Jan '17 - 12:35pm

    The use of the word “inevitable” is deeply depressing. None of that was inevitable. There are underlying trends which point in directions we don’t like, yes. These make the election of someone like Trump possible, when in the sixties, the election of a much more moderate and thoughtful champion of the American right – Barry Goldwater – was virtually impossible. They made the Brexit vote possible. Not inevitable.

    Had the Remain campaign been less muted and poorly-organised, had Cameron allowed votes at 16 for the referendum, that result might have been different and then the trend would have been in our favour as disgruntled older people in my generation were replaced by more liberally-minded young people. Had Joe Biden or Michelle Obama (or, I suspect, Bernie Sanders) been the Democratic champion against Trump, we would be talking about the dead end the Republicans had driven themselves into.

    As for the excessive pace of change under Obama, the pace of change does create a right-wing, illiberal backlash which doesn’t necessarily triumph, but the mani nproblem with Obama’s presidency was the slow pace of change because of the gridlocke3d American system.

    In the 1930s, all sorts of trends favoured Fascism. It lost. People stopped it.

  • Matthew Huntbach 3rd Jan '17 - 3:46pm

    Simon Banks

    As for the excessive pace of change under Obama,

    What excessive pace of change? I don’t see that Obama changed much at all.

  • Matthew Huntbach 3rd Jan '17 - 3:50pm

    I do not believe that Trump or Brexit will deliver anything like what those who voted for them thought they would. Indeed, I believe they will deliver the exact opposite. We need to stand firm and say this. Agaim and again, challenge them about how exactly they are going to deliver the fairer and more equal society that they tricked people into thinking voting for then would give, when the reality is that they are controlled by sinister extreme wealthy types whose main aim in politics is to defend their own wealth.

  • Matthew Huntbach 3rd Jan '17 - 3:55pm

    Eddie Sammon

    You have the public who are a bit more authoritarian than the commentators but both can’t be right.

    Well are the public more authoritarian, or is it that they actually experience what Thatcherites and Orange Bookers think of as “liberalism” as being the opposite of that? Do people now think we live in a society that is more free than we had decades ago? No, I don’t think so. For many reasons, freedom for most is less. Most obviously because of the loss of freedom caused by the loss of easily available housing we had when we had council housing. Bit also the more general top-down hierarchical society we get when it is so dominated by big business with those at the top squeezing ever more wealth from everyone else, making everyone else scared and insecure.

  • Matthew.
    Good points, but I would had actual freedom to the list. Coz really we live in a world with camera’s everywhere and where the people’s republic of social media aided by the press demand public displays of contrition like Chinese courts.

  • Ruth Bright 4th Jan '17 - 9:12am

    Mark Wright – surely Carrie Fisher’s courage was marked by her speaking out about how she was exploited as a young actress and the connection she made with mental illness and having to live up to an unattainable ideal. The day she died I counted no fewer than three pictures of her in my ten year old son’s room. It must have been pretty wearying for a woman of Fisher’s fierce intelligence to know that even at 60 she was still “Princess Leia” in a daft costume with little chance of forging something new.

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