There is a whiff of betrayal in the air across Britain’s Brexit heartlands where many impatient voters fear Prime Minister Theresa May is going soft on implementing last year’s decision to leave the European Union.
May’s gamble in calling a snap election on June 8, only to lose her parliamentary majority, has thrown the future of Brexit into doubt and the opening rounds of divorce talks have raised the prospect of a complex and expensive withdrawal which could take years to complete.
Throw in a visceral distrust of the London political classes, and for many voters it all points to one thing: a plot to water down, or even stop, Brexit.
“We voted to come out, so why didn’t they do it straight away? Why have we got to wait?” asked 64-year-old Chris Murdoch, in the small English town of Chatham, 50 km (30 miles) east of London. “We won’t come out completely because it’s not in their favor.”
Her husband Peter, a retired construction worker, added: “They’re all in it for themselves. They’re all two-faced … We don’t trust any of them.”
Like 52 percent of Britons, both Chris and Peter Murdoch voted for Brexit last year and, like most, according to recent opinion polls, they haven’t changed their minds.
Such views in Chatham, a stronghold of May’s Conservatives in recent years, are shared widely in much of the country. That spells danger for May who must unite her party, divided for decades over Europe, to drive Brexit legislation through parliament and win approval for the final deal with Brussels.
It also means likely disappointment for those European politicians who hope Britons will have second thoughts about the wisdom of Brexit, and settle for a close relationship with the EU if the divorce has to go through.
Many Brexit voters in Chatham now fear that Britain’s leaders – who they say have ignored their interests for decades and are beholden to big money – are plotting to betray their dream of a clean break with the EU.
May called the early election to win a mandate for her vision of a ‘hard’ Brexit that prioritized immigration controls above the interests of the economy. Instead she emerged wounded, reliant on a small Northern Irish party to win major parliamentary votes and under pressure from her party’s pro-European wing and business to compromise with Brussels.
Some European leaders seem still not convinced by May’s mantra that “Brexit means Brexit”. French President Emmanuel Macron has said the EU’s door remains open and European Council President Donald Tusk even invoked the lyrics of John Lennon to ‘Imagine’ a Brexit rescinded.
At home, former Conservative prime minister John Major has said there is a credible case for giving Britons a second vote on the Brexit deal. His successor, Labour’s Tony Blair, has said repeatedly the process can and should be stopped.
LITTLE SYMPATHY
There is little sympathy for this in Chatham, one of a cluster of towns on the banks of the River Medway that for centuries acted as part of England’s naval defense against the fleets of its European enemies.
Earlier this year the town marked an ignominious chapter in English history: the 350th anniversary of a daring raid by Dutch ships which caught the King’s defenses napping, sailing up the Medway to capture and burn prized assets of the fleet.
Nowadays Chatham’s dockyards are a museum, the barracks are being converted into flats and despite regeneration efforts, a higher-than-average 12.2 percent of the local working-age population receive government social payments.
The Medway towns, including Chatham, backed Brexit by almost two to one. Like so many of the towns outside England’s major cities that overwhelmingly voted to leave the EU, it has long struggled to adapt to a decline in traditional industries.
“My fear is that they won’t follow it through and they’ll find a reason to stay in,” said former postal worker Trevor James, a 61-year-old Brexit-supporting voter from Chatham.
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