Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

This election is about just one thing: Brexit

Can we please stop pretending this is a normal election? Everyone’s at it. Gabbing about NHS funding, arguing over energy price caps. Everyone’s acting as if it’s 2015, or 2010, or any other election year of the modern period, when mildly right-wing parties and mildly left-wing parties argued the toss over fairly technical matters and voters decided which was most trustworthy. It’s pantomime, a performance of normalcy in an era that’s anything but normal. Because we all know, somewhere in the attic of our minds, that this is an election like no other, and that it’s about one issue and one issue only.

You don’t even have to name it. It hangs in the air, a perfume of liberty to those of us who like it, a foul stench to those who hate it. It infuses everything. It exercises the hopes of swathes of the public, and chills the hearts of much of the political class. It is the maker or breaker of politicians’ fortunes. Theresa May is doing well from singing its praises; Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron are suffering because they’re scared of it, or hate it. We all live in its shadow — its vast, beautiful shadow — and yet we behave as if everything’s normal. ‘Should we build 100,000 or 200,000 new homes?’, politicians ponder, as if the entire make-up of the nation in which those homes will be built hadn’t just been shaken to its core.

It is Brexit, of course. Music to some ears, a tinny wail to others. This is the Brexit Election. Nothing else matters. You can pretend it does, if you like. You can talk about housing and nukes and how to stop children eating so many hamburgers. You can say, ‘There are other issues!’.

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