Patrick Freyne: ‘Britain’s not a gazelle. Britain’s a lion’

“The ‘neverendum’ is what I call it,” says retired Reading man David George, and after just three days immersed in Britain’s EU referendum, I’m inclined to agree.

“I’m Reading born and bred,” George says, “strong in the arm and weak in the head.” He explains why he thinks people in this southeast town will, on the whole, vote to Remain: They are comfortable with multiculturalism. “The local paper first produced a separate Polish edition back in the ’70s.”

He says the Brexit side are "in cloud cuckoo land".

“They keep making these statements, but nobody knows what’s going to happen if we leave. I’m not a passionate EU advocate, but I think we can do more inside than outside, and the bile that the Leave side have engendered is beyond compare . . . but I have no idea what people think anymore.”

He laughs. “I’ve stopped listening.”

I’ve been driving around the UK since Monday. There are few posters. I’ve only ever met canvassers by appointment, and the campaign literature I have encountered the most are leaflets produced by a Eurosceptic pub chain, Wetherspoons.

Many of the people I’ve met did not have particularly strong views on this issue a year ago. Young people are more inclined to vote Remain. Older people are more inclined to want to leave. People variously characterise the EU as a glorified chamber of commerce, a necessary utopian project and a nefarious federalist empire.

Sometimes people from both sides describe it as though it’s a combination of all three.

Economic sides

Most Remainers are concerned with the economy; most Leavers talk about “unfettered” immigration and are cynical about economics. Many Remainers recount the business argument without enthusiasm.

For every Leaver who depicts post-Brexit Britain as a Panglossian triumph, there’s another who makes it sound like a fatalistic last stand.

Reading is the first place I’ve been where I meet more Remain voters than Leave voters.

“What do I believe?” asks Bruno, a self-employed Portuguese window-cleaner sitting in a cafe with his mother and uncle. He sighs. He can’t vote, he says, but he thinks he would vote Remain, “though it’s hard to know what’s what”.

Bruno’s fiancee is English and she’s voting Leave. Even though he is Portuguese? He laughs. “Well, I’m not going to get kicked out now,” he says.

But why is she voting Leave? “She thinks it will help the country financially and she’s worried about the Turks coming in.”

She’s no racist, he stresses. “She’s a carer and lots of her friends from work are African.”

Stefan Kowal, who I meet on nearby Broad Street, dislikes what he sees as the EU’s antidemocratic overreach, but he dislikes the rhetoric of the Leave campaign more. “I’m the son of a Ukrainian refugee. I hate the way they’ve conflated migrants and refugees. Some of the things they’re saying about immigrants are just awful.”

Laighton Yeo, a former civil servant, also dislikes how immigration issues have been "grossly exaggerated". He asks me if I've heard of the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought skilled immigrants from the West Indies in the 1940s.

Yeo’s father worked alongside one of them. “The history of our country is a history of immigration. I’m proud of that.”

No dogs or Irish

At the Irish Centre, there is a daily lunch for older Irish people in the community. It’s overseen by Anne Morris, a trustee of the Hibernian Trust. She’s a retired Westmeath woman who came here at the age of 18. Her brother came a little before and told her about the “no dogs, no blacks, no Irish” signs.

Most of the people I meet at the centre are voting Leave. They do not see parallels with their migration to the UK and migration today, but Morris is a Remainer. She’s sympathetic to immigrants – “Sure I’m an immigrant, amn’t I?” – and her granddaughters convinced her that leaving the EU would be bad for jobs.

She likes the debates. “Maybe that’s why I’ve lost my voice.”

Out on the street, I talk to some younger people. A homeless man named Lee Staunton says he’s voting Leave because he thinks foreign labour makes it more difficult to get work. “It’s not their fault, though,” he adds. “In their place, we’d do the same thing.”

Liam McTiernan says most young people want to Remain. “We don’t want all this restructuring going on as we leave university and are trying to settle into our careers . . . I know no young people voting out.”

His friend Calum Fullbrook is frustrated by his older relatives. “They think leaving will have an effect on immigration, but I’ve tried explaining that any trade deals we do will involve freedom of movement. Immigration is not going to stop . . . I’ve written essays on it.”

Joseph Guard has a different view. He is with his Irish-born mother Nora, who probably won’t vote, and his dog Saoirse. Guard is a loquacious man.

BYOG

“When you have a party,” he says, “you want your friends to come and have a good time. But you need bouncers on the door to make sure it’s a harmonious party. You don’t want strangers coming in and drinking all your grog. If they do come, you want them to bring their own grog.”

He believes Britain needs to be able to make autonomous decisions. He likens Britain’s relationship to Europe as an abusive one it has to “walk away from”.

“Always with the analogies,” says his mother.

I observe that the Irish are more pro-European than the British. “No offence,” Guard says, “I have Irish heritage, but Ireland has a reputation of being slightly dependent.”

“Careful,” says his mother.

Guard exhibits a confident brand of British exceptionalism that I’ve come across a lot this week.

“Look,” he says, “the Remain side say that we’re ‘stronger together’, but that’s missing the point. Gazelles are stronger together. Zebras are stronger together. Britain’s not a gazelle. Britain’s a lion.

“Lions don’t need to keep together. Lions can go it alone.”