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Comment
Published
online June 29, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30903-5
1
Ulf
Andersen/Getty Images
David Levenson/Getty
Images
AFP/Getty
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Alex
Wong/Getty Images
Offline: The
meanings of Brexit
Slavoj Žižek,
in his 2014 book
Event
, perhaps
describes the
way many
(certainly 16
141
241) people
feel about our
present Brexit
moment: “the effect that seems to exceed its
causes...an
occurrence not grounded in sufficient reasons”.
For those who
voted to remain, it has been tempting to
let emotion
take (back) control—shock, sadness, anger,
recrimination,
blame. A forlorn feeling that maybe
xenophobia,
intolerance, racism, extreme nationalism,
and even
violence have emerged as new national values
in post-Brexit
Britain. The Science Media Centre collected
a round-up of
rapid reactions from the UK’s medical and
scientific
elite. Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the
Royal Society,
said, “we must make sure that research,
which is the
bedrock of a sustainable economy, is not
short
changed”. Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick
Institute,
noted that Brexit, “is a poor outcome for British
science and so
is bad for Britain”. Robert Lechler, President
of the Academy
of Medical Sciences, called Brexit, “a very
disappointing
outcome for medical science”. Although
understandable,
these responses were dispiriting.
The
“surprising emergence of something new which
undermines every
stable scheme” (Žižek) surely demanded
reflections
that were less self-absorbed.
*
The
“insufficient” causes and reasons of last week’s vote
suggest
uncomfortable truths. The divisions between
old and young,
north and south, and England/Wales and
Scotland/Northern
Ireland threaten the cohesion of not
only our four
nations but also communities up and down
the land. What
is the origin of discontent among those
who voted to
leave the European Union? In one word—
unfairness.
For those with fewer resources and in the face
of
unemployment, deindustrialisation, urban decay, rural
poverty, and
the excesses of globalisation, there was a
strong sense
that governments and political institutions
(such as those
of the European Union) had turned their
backs on those
they purported to serve. Many people
feel forgotten
at best, ignored at worst—humiliated,
alienated,
dispossessed, and culturally lost. Brexit was
a triumph for
direct democracy. It exposed the failure
of
representative democracy. The chief question now
is what does
the UK stand for? A clue might be found
in
Magna
Carta
, one of the
founding documents of our
country: “To
no one will we sell, to no one will we deny
or delay,
right or justice.” Brexiteers were protesting that
they had
indeed been denied “right or justice”.
*
Here is where
the UK’s medical and science communities
have a crucial
part to play. Medicine and science embody
values of
solidarity and society. The purpose of both,
through health
and knowledge, is to build stronger and
more resilient
communities, to provide foundations for
the fulfilment
of hope and aspiration. Our task must be
to defend the
800-year-old promise of “right or justice”.
That means
delivering the right to the very highest
attainable
standard of health. It means attacking the
social,
political, and economic determinants of inequality.
It means
investing in children and young people as the
foundation for
a sustainable future. It means improving
daily living
and working conditions throughout the life
course. It
means restoring as best we can some measure
of unity
across geographies and generations. This task
will not be
easy, since the arguments that underpinned
the Brexit
campaign are inimical to a strong cohesive
society. The
Brexit dogma thrives on division and
conflict.
Boris Johnson, a leader of the Leave campaign
and a
potential future Prime Minister, put it this way
in 2013—”some
measure of inequality is essential
for the spirit
of envy...that is, like greed, a valuable
spur to
economic activity”. Those who led the Brexit
campaign seek
to build a society based on envy, greed,
and
inequality. They see these attributes as “essential”
prerequisites
for national success. Science and medicine
urge something
very different. The National Health Service
is a core
social institution that makes equity and altruism
central values
in our society. The response to Brexit from
our scientific
and medical leaders should be to widen the
circumference
of their concerns, not implicitly endorse
a philosophy
of competitive greed that some Leavers
wish to
foster. Instead, we should be strengthening our
associations
across society, encouraging a less selfish and
more generous
spirit in our public words, and promoting
a more
constructive internationalism that recognises that
there is a
slowly emerging world society, one that will
depend on our
full participation and engagement.
Richard Horton
Published
Online
June 29, 2016
S0140-6736(16)30903-5
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