{"id":36,"date":"2016-06-25T11:14:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T03:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2021-06-03T11:36:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T03:36:56","slug":"thoughts-on-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I arrived in London as a migrant from the United States in 1966, racial prejudice and inequality was prevalent even in the school playground where someone with a foreign name was taunted and called a ‘wog’. The England I left as a professional journalist in the mid-1980s was at last shedding bigotry and prejudice as British society adjusted to the new global norms of freely moving people and equal opportunity.<\/p>\n

On recent visits back to the UK, I have been impressed by the remarkable accommodation of diversity and recognition of difference. Whether it’s the Bulgarian property agent, the Polish plumber or the Czech bus driver; England at the start of the second millennium embraced – even celebrated – pluralism, and left behind the obstinate small mindedness that used to mean no one bothered asking how my Greek name was pronounced properly.<\/p>\n

Suddenly all that progress seems like a fanciful dream. Brexit heralds the return of the cold hard stares at foreigners and ‘why-don’t-you-go-back-to-your-own-country’ taunts I vividly recall as a teenager growing up among ‘snowcem’-clad semi-detached homes and vinyl-roofed Ford Granadas in the North London suburbs.<\/p>\n

For all the talk of independence day, this is no return to the mythical Arthurian realm, British pluck and a ploughman’s lunch; it’s the victory of the lager louts. The referendum showed plainly enough that a great mass of people don\u2019t share the aspirations of comfy armchair internationalists and globally mobile professionals; they feel locked out of the Shard, the Gherkin, and other symbols of Global London.<\/p>\n

So break out the woad, pan along those austere white cliffs, hide the muesli and quinoa. If the long forgotten satirical magazine Punch was still publishing, the Brexit cover might depict a red-faced John Bull, his slobbering bull dog straining at the leash and lunging for a plate of roast beef swimming in gravy.<\/p>\n

Bye bye ‘Cool Britannia’: Welcome to Little England!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I arrived in London as a migrant from the United States in 1966, racial prejudice and inequality was prevalent even in the school playground …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mvatikiotis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}