It is not true, as claimed in "That's the spirit — here at home, let's apply it to the Met Council" (June 28), that the "biggest complaints that the residents of the United Kingdom had of the European Union was that they did not have the power by voting" to remove representatives or change laws.
I am a British citizen now living in the U.S. Every British citizen knows that the E.U. is a democratic body, because like all other E.U. citizens, they elect members of the European Parliament. They are further democratically represented by their nationally elected representatives in the Council of Ministers and the European Council.
The biggest complaints among "Brexit" campaigners, in fact, appeared to be about immigration, and the money that the U.K. contributes to the E.U. Both those concerns were exploited and inflated by the "Leave" campaign using lies and misinformation.
The Leave campaign claimed, in big, clear letters on their campaign bus, that the U.K. sends 350 million pounds weekly to the E.U. that should instead be spent on the U.K.'s universal health care service. That claim was untrue on two counts: In reality, the U.K. net contribution to the E.U. is closer to 160 million pounds per week, and in return the CBI (a leading U.K. business organization) estimates that the U.K. has a net economic gain of around 1.5 billion pounds a week. What's more, within hours of winning the referendum, Leave campaigners denied that they had pledged to spend the E.U. contributions on the National Health Service.
The Leave campaign also exploited general anti-immigrant sentiment, in one notorious instance producing a poster featuring a picture of Syrian refugees with the slogan "Breaking Point: The EU Has Failed Us All". They gave the electorate the clear impression that the refugee crisis was somehow related to the E.U., and that leaving would reduce immigration. And again, within hours of winning the referendum, they denied that they had made such a promise, or that a significant reduction would happen.
A proportion of the U.K. electorate now feels that it was lied to, for the simple reason that it was. A petition calling for a second referendum has already attracted almost 4 million signatures.
If there is a lesson to be drawn here for the U.S., it is not that the U.K. has "gloriously started to take back government." The U.K. has in fact lost democratic representation in a body whose decisions will continue to deeply affect it. The lesson to be drawn is that when you vote, make sure it is not based on anger, fear, half-truths and lies. And make sure that the news you read is based on facts.
Alex Jeffery lives in Minneapolis.
