“How old are you?” asks a middle aged man. “May be 16 or 17” he answered the question himself. “I have been in this country more years than you,” he added.
The above conversation is from a video that is gone viral. The video is of an event that took place in a tram in Manchester. An American man is chased out of the tram by some youngsters for they think he is an outsider and his rights to travel freely are cancelled after the Brexit. The conversion took place just before he was forced to leave the tram.
Many people, including the prime minister and the opposition leader, believe such hate crimes will increase as a result of the Brexit vote. They said so in the Parliament.
And they are correct. During the four days after the Brexit vote racist crims have increased by 57 percent.
Sima Koteh, a BBC reporter, was called a ‘paki’ in her town first time in her life. A Halal meat shop owned by Muslim was burned down in Walsall near Birmingham. A Polish Cultural Centre in London was painted with hate message. Life has become a bit more uncertain for all the immigrants in the UK.
But they are not the only ones. It has increased for all people in the UK. And not sure who has gained, may be neo-nazi parties like the UKIP, the BNP and Britain First.
Many graduating young people who had job offers from the financial sector are being told they would have the jobs only if they are willing to relocate to Germany or other European countries. However the uncertainty that has engulfed the leading political parties is the main conversation.
Until June 30 noon, the political pundits were sure Boris Johnson who led the Leave campaign for the Conservatives would be the next prime minister, but then he refused to stand for leadership contest. That leaves open the field to many others. Under the given contest, it has to be a person from the leave side that has the better chance to get elected. That makes Michael Gove a better chance.
The situation of the Labour party is more miserable. Its MPs passed a non-confidence in their leader Jeremy Corbyn for his non-energetic campaign against Brexit. But Jeremy has refused to go on principle that the party leader is elected by the labour party members and only they can ask him to go through a re-election. It is believed he would win the election whenever it is held.
First of all very few the present MPs voted for him when the election for the leader was held last September. The issues for which he has campaigned all his life, against war, increasing minimum wages, for housing rights, against zero hour contracts, against university fees, against the dismantling of the welfare state are all dear to the working classes of the UK whom the labour party is supposed to represent.
However none of his campaigns have been very successful as Labour Party itself had changed its basic orientation and became ‘Red Tories’ under the leadership of Tony Blair. He had convinced the labour party members that the only way to come to power was to think like the Tories. If Corbyn is re-elected it is likely that the Labour Party would split as Blairites still dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The election of Corbyn as the leader and his popularity among the masses is seen as a reaction to the austerity measures that the earlier Labour government and the present Tory government have been implementing since the Great Recession of 2008.
The main economic argument was that the budget needs to be balanced and it can be done only by enforcing cuts on the welfare state activities and selling public properties. But none of these steps have reduced the deficits while the homelessness and absolute poverty has shown an a big rise.
People are slowly realising these steps are a trick to transfer wealth to the already rich. Already the junior doctors have gone on strike. The university teachers who went on strike for two days will strike again on pay freeze. However this is not noticed by the public as it is exam season now. Lately the school teachers have also voted to go on strike. Trade unions are exploring the possibility of calling a general strike.
With the uncertainty in the leadership to discuss the issues affecting people all the protests are likely gain momentum and the ordinary UK citizens hope the austerity measures will be reversed. In fact that is what they wanted not Brexit.
The uncertainty of leadership is also likely to increase the racist attacks on migrants. The campaign and voting itself threw up many contradictions. London which has large concentration of migrants voted to stay in while many areas where migrants very few voted for Brexit.
Nigel Farage’s ( UKIP) ancestors were Protestant refugees from France and he has a German wife while Boris Johnson’s ancestors came from Turkey. And still they had the nerve to put all the blame of the economy on the migrants.
No British journalists asked this disturbing questions to these leaders, but a Bulgarian journalists asked Nigel and he looked lost.