Today, Explained - My Brexit brings all the boys to the yard

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

Right-wing politicians in the UK are under attack. Delicious, sticky attack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Evan Smith, you studied the history of the far right and the far left at Flinders University in Australia. Where is Flinders University in Australia? It's in Adelaide, South Australia. Okay, it's not in Flinders. No, no, it's named after the explorer Matthew Flinders. Lovely, love it. Why have you been writing about milkshakes recently? Because they've

been thrown at far-right politicians in Britain in the last couple of weeks. And this moment ties neatly into my research into the history of this kind of protest. Okay, so if we're going to look at one recent example of this surge in milkshake activity, which is the one we should look at? There's kind of three major ones that have happened recently. Okay, what order are we going through? Is it chronological? Yeah, yeah, yeah, chronological. Okay, give us the first big milkshake.

Give us ground zero milkshake. So, Tommy Robinson, who is, he co-founded the Far Right English Defence League and then has become like a kind of alt-right superstar on the internet. You say you want to stop Islamic immigration. Yes. Right. What about building mosques? We need to stop the building of mosques, temporarily. The same with immigration. So, this was a couple of weeks ago.

He was campaigning to become a member of the European Parliament. He was in the Greater Manchester area and he likes to film his engagements, for lack of a better word, with the public, often in an intimidating format. And he came up to a local resident of the borough that he was in. They were holding a milkshake. They did not want to talk to Tommy Robinson. Few people want to talk to Tommy Robinson. And he, Tommy, go on, go on. That's what you get for being a fascist!

It went viral. Tommy Robinson is patient zero for the milkshake attack. How does this escalate from there? A little while later, Nigel Farage, who was leader of UK Independence Party, was a major kind of player in the whole leave referendum he has a new party called the Brexit Party who are challenging for seats in the European election he was out on the streets of Newcastle and Nigel Farage is kind of you know a controversial figure central to this whole Brexit debate.

He's walking through the streets of Newcastle and a guy throws a five guys milkshake at him. Oh, again. Take it away. Get back to the car. Back to the car. Get back to the car. Get back to the car. Get back to the court. Get back to the court. Get back to the court. It's a complete failure. They have five guys in the UK?

According to The Guardian, it was a banana and salted caramel milkshake from five guys. I was actually quite looking forward to it, to be fair. But I think it went on a better purpose. After this, Farage goes to Edinburgh and McDonald's put in signs that they were warned by the police not to sell milkshakes on that day while Farage is in Edinburgh. What about Five Guys? Well, I don't know about Five Guys,

but Burger King, the main burger rival of McDonald's, they tweet on social media that they're happy to sell milkshakes. Okay, so what's the final milkshake incident? Okay, so there was also a UKIP candidate named Carl Benjamin. Now, Carl Benjamin is probably most famous as a kind of an alt-right YouTuber. And he was out in Salisbury, and he was also milkshaked. The Independent says that this was the fourth milkshake thrown over him in a week.

It seems like the milkshake has become a real symbol for the left. Is it kind of like the 2019 version of sticking a daisy in the end of a rifle? Yes. So the anti-fascists and the left have been kind of described by the right as violent. In the United States, there's kind of the both sides, the anti-far are just as bad as the alt-right. And this kind of milkshaking is a way of showing kind of a physical resistance to the far right

without the necessary accusations of violence. Also, it's very shareable on social media. I like that he said could have spotted that a mile off after walking straight at the guy. Yeah, it's just a man drinking a milkshake. It's not like he had a yop in a super soaker. Yeah, it's an interesting situation. It's a five quid milkshake though.

You wouldn't expect anyone, that costs more than Farage's suit. You know, outside of this particular milkshake moment we're in, it's not like this is the first time we've seen people throwing food at politicians. How far back does that go? I've looked at primarily throwing foodstuffs at the far right in Britain. So we can trace that back quite neatly back to the 1930s when Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists is around. Passing the Tower of London, 5,000 fascists rally to their mobilisation for the much advertised march through the East End. And Sir Oswald Mosley, black shirt leader, arrives at Royal

Midst Street to inspect his followers. There are incidences where BUF members are on the streets and there is rotten fruit, eggs and bags of flour thrown at them. Thousands of EastEnders prepare to resist the invasion, eradicating the path the fascists will take. In the 1950s, when Oswald Mosley went to speak at Cambridge, on two separate occasions he was hit with a dessert, once with jelly and once with a custard pie. In the 1970s, one of Thatcher's mentors, Sir Keith Joseph,

he went to speak at the University of Essex in 1977 and he had an egg thrown at him. With each kind of version of anti-fascism in the UK and kind of rebellions against the hard right and the far right, you see food being used in these forms of protest. Getting back to the milkshake moment that we're in right now, what is it that's led people to resort to throwing dairy desserts at politicians? How did things get to the point where people needed to sort of innovate a new form of political statement? I think that it is something which has come up from kind of a

political despair. A lot of people might feel that the usual ways of protest don't really work. People have talked about riots and talked about public disorder as a sigh of the oppressed possibly these uh milkshakings work as a way of showing their resistance they're showing their distaste for these politicians who are all over the media who are all over the news who are walking down your street and what can you do as one person on the street of Newcastle you can throw a five guys banana and salted caramel milkshake at someone after the break nothing milk can stay Tim, here we are. You got the toothbrush from me,

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Oh, no. It didn't help. Jen Kirby, Vox, this was a nutty week in the U.K. Someone had to have gotten milkshaked. Yeah, that's for sure. So President Donald Trump was visiting the U.K. on his official state visit, which brought out a slew of protesters. But a few pro-Trump fans also hit the streets,

and there were a couple of altercations, including one where a milkshake was tossed at a pro-Trump supporter. Then it erupted into an altercation. Stop me! I'm not your son! Stop me! And that kind of hints to, you know, some of the critics of the milkshaking that it's a slippery slope from kind of funny, humiliating joke to potentially escalating into violence. And this guy was not a famous politician. He was just a regular protester. Did it kind of feel like the United Kingdom was on edge all this week? Well, President Donald Trump is extremely unpopular in the UK,

so that certainly created a stir since he was getting, you know, a royal welcome, literally. Visits by American presidents always remind us of the close and longstanding friendship between the United Kingdom and the United States. Huge state banquet. He took a private tour of Westminster Abbey, and a lot of people objected to

the US president getting the red carpet treatment in the UK. Humour was very much at the heart of these protests. Trump was portrayed as a gorilla being kept in a cage and was depicted as a schoolboy sat on a toilet writing tweets. But it's not just international politics. Britain is facing its own political dysfunction in the form of a new leadership contest to choose the next leader of the Conservative Party and eventually a new prime minister. On top of that, two weeks ago, the United Kingdom participated in the European elections along with all of the other European countries, which was particularly contentious because the UK wasn't supposed to be participating because it was supposed to have left the European Union at that point.

The results of the election showed that this pro-Brexit party basically won those elections. It was a night of triumph for the Brexit party, capitalizing on national anger with Westminster over the failure to leave the EU. Count after count, their people were elected. And now this week, Theresa May is officially stepping down and there'll be a new contest to replace her as prime minister, who will ultimately be the one who will have to figure out this Brexit mess. OK, well, there's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with the president's visit. Was there any political significance to it or was it a lot of handshaking and funny costumes? There was a lot of handshaking going on, but this visit had particular significance because

you may remember that Trump actually got invited quite a while ago, back in 2017, for the state visit. And one of the ostensible reasons for his trip was to make sure that the UK really bolstered its relationship with the United States, because when it left the European Union, it was going to create all these trade deals. And obviously, the United States is a very attractive trade partner in this. So Trump coming on the heels of eventual Brexit is really significant in that sense. The other issue was Trump loves to get involved when maybe he shouldn't. Last year when he went to the UK, he insulted Theresa May by saying somebody else would make a great prime minister. I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it,

but she didn't agree with it. She didn't listen to me. What did she say? She didn't listen. No, I told her how to do it. That will be up to her to say. And now that Theresa May is resigning, there was a lot of worry that Trump would insert himself

into this new leadership contest to replace her. And did he? Sort of. Even before he got there, he had touted his friendship with Boris Johnson, who is the former foreign minister and the former mayor of London, who's extremely pro-Brexit. When you look at the EU now, it reminds me, it makes me think, as I've been walking around this wonderful factory, it makes me think of some badly designed undergarment that has now become too tight in some places, far too tight, far too constrictive, and dangerously loose in other

places. Trump had previously said that he would have made a great prime minister. And so there was a lot of talk about whether Trump would meet with Boris Johnson when he came overseas, because right now Johnson is the presumed favorite to be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. And Trump also met with Nigel Farage, who is the pro-Brexit provocateur, so to speak, who's not in the Conservative Party, but just likes to rile British politics. Theresa May is stepping down. Is there any sense that any of these other potential leaders could have better luck with Brexit than she did?

— That's a really good question, and I don't think anybody really knows at this point, because the Brexit mess Theresa May is leaving behind is the same mess that the next prime minister is going to inherit. — And how does the U.K. look right now to Europe? — Well, that's sort of the reason why the Brexit mess is going to be tricky to inherit. And how does the UK look right now to Europe? Well, that's sort of the reason why the Brexit mess is going to be tricky to solve. The European Union has said that the deal they negotiated with Theresa May is still the only Brexit deal on offer, which means I don't know how the next prime minister is going to find a solution around that. One of the issues is whether

the next prime minister will actually take the UK out of the European Union without a deal when the next Brexit deadline comes along, which is October 31st. And there's some speculation that maybe the European Union might be more eager to come to the negotiating table if you have a prime minister like Boris Johnson who really threatens to take the UK out of the EU. But I'm a little bit skeptical of that because a no-deal Brexit would be far worse for the UK than it would be for the EU. And I think there's a lot of exasperation among EU leaders about the UK's dithering. I think it's very interesting when the UK asked for an extension, the EU Council President Donald Tusk basically was like, don't waste this time. And what is the UK doing? It's spending its summer trying to figure out a new prime minister.

There was a time when a no-deal Brexit seemed like the nuclear option here. And now, after over a year of Theresa May trying to find every other option and asking for extensions, that's the best the UK would leave without a deal was unfathomable. But now I think because of the delays, because of the inability to get a deal through Parliament, because of the lack of clarity on the future relationship, people who supported leave have kind of almost gotten more extreme. Tories hoping to replace Prime Minister Theresa May said the results were a demand to deliver Brexit no matter what. And now they see that the only way to really extricate themselves from the European Union is to just break off all contact. And the only way to do that is through this no deal Brexit where all the trade agreements, all of the relationships just at the stroke of midnight go away.

Jen, you've been covering this for like a year at this point. Is it more surprising to you that the remain or the stay vote hasn't had more of a resurgence? It is sort of surprising to me. Obviously, there is a huge contingent of people in the UK who really, really do want to remain. In March, there were massive protests in the street calling for a second referendum, essentially it would be another opportunity to decide if the UK wanted to leave the EU with a deal or with May's deal or potentially just keep its current deal, which would be remain. And polling shows that if another referendum were held, like the 2016 referendum, which the options were leave or remain, that remain would potentially win. Obviously, polls are unreliable. But I was talking to somebody who studies public opinion in polling, and he was telling me that this isn't because a bunch of people all of a sudden decided to change their mind, that a lot of this would be people who sat home the first time around and

then realized, oh, I should vote because I want to remain. And also maybe some young people who weren't old enough to vote in the first time around and tend to be more pro-EU. So this is not a lot of people changing their minds. While regretters do exist, it's not an overwhelming amount. And if anything, in some respects, the country has become even more polarized around the Brexit question. Jen Kirby writes about the world for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham, and this is Today Explained. Thank you. We'll see you next time. help. It starts at just $25. You can find out more at getquip.com slash explained where your first refill pack is free. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained.