Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 4 July 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
And so England, but not London or Scotland, has voted to leave the European Union. You are in England at the moment. What’s the mood out there?
Jack Black

Normally, I feel a twinge of jealousy when I read my English friends’ posts on Facebook. They do not have to witness the daily unravelling of their nation, the shameless gutting of democracy and astonishing levels of corruption and instead, they always seemed to be able to enjoy life’s normal pleasures and heartaches. But with the result of the Brexit referendum, they had their country irrevocably ripped apart and changed completely. The England that I knew with them back in the 1980s is suddenly gone forever. That England of my youth was the most fun place I had ever known. They (we) enjoyed that playground and we smugly knew the world was watching us with envy and that one day, they would become us. It was dank and insular, disconnected from Europe and we all wanted to leave and experience the world. The food was awful and a sophisticated night out in London’s New Cross was a trip to the one-desk Chinese takeaway called China Jade, which a friend aptly renamed the Jaded Chinaman (he truly was). Eventually, I left for Malaysia and many of them have gone on to live and work around the world. Many have stayed at home but always with an international outlook (even if far too many of them think sar-tay is Thai).

Today, I am not jealous of my English friends at all. I see on their timelines their deep concern for the future as their country has been turned upside down, and I commiserate with them. Right now, I am sitting in an English garden on a summer’s day, just a few miles from where Penang’s Francis Light was born. I would normally be enjoying this so much but I feel like it has disappeared from me, been taken away from me. I feel like a country that has been so dear to me has suddenly chosen to drop off the map. Still, we’ve always got London and Scotland. They voted to remain in the world.

I am in England at the moment and had spoken to many “regular” English people before and after the referendum. Where I have been staying, the vote was 70/30 in favour of leaving the EU. Their main reason for wanting to leave was fear of immigrants but there was an abundance of other reasons. One friend posted that her mother wanted to leave because “Land Rover didn’t pass its EU emissions test. And something about fish”. Another said she voted to leave because her friend had just lost her job and a lot have said they did it because they did not think they would actually win. But they were all completely oblivious to the economic consequences. I told several that the pound sterling would suffer but even as I was saying this, I realised that they neither knew nor cared what that might mean. They had no conception that the pound sterling was an internationally traded currency and that their livelihoods might be affected by its worth and stability. For them, sterling is the pound that is used to buy many cheap things in a shop called Poundland. Now that the English vote for Brexit has guaranteed Scotland’s desire for independence and, therefore, the end of a United Kingdom, an English Facebook friend has suggested that the country be renamed Poundland. The response to my fears for the pound sterling was, well, it is all so complicated and nobody really knows what will happen. But others obviously did know what would happen and before the referendum result was even announced, the pound sterling had plunged nearly 10% against the US dollar.

Talking to the English about their currency made me realise that “regular” Malaysians have a better understanding of basic economics than their equivalent in England. We are used to being buffeted by the whims of global economics and by having our choices changed when investors react to our politics, even if we have no personal control over anything. Since the beginning of time, Malayans have watched global commodity prices and currency exchange rates and seen the entire physical landscape change with the collapse of tin, the rise of palm oil and the ebb and fl ow of rubber.

I have met far too many in provincial England who assume that global economic trends are unimportant and that it is within the government’s ability to supply them with work, which is a sense of entitlement that far too many Malaysians would agree with because by no means are all Malaysians aware that there is a world out there that simply does not care about them. Far too many Malaysians are as cosseted as the English, who think that the collapse of their outdated coal mining, steel and car industries is entirely the fault of their government and who are unaware of London’s ability to suck in vast amounts of the world’s money that helps underwrite their consumer choices.

When Polish migrant workers leave the dying economy of England because it no longer offers any work and the overpaid bankers shift their operations from London to Frankfurt, the English will happily declare a nativist “good riddance!” And then they will expect the government to supply them with a job. I think the economic consequences of Brexit will be calamitous for England and that the vote to leave was desperately stupid. But I cannot help wondering how Malaysians would vote if they were given an equivalent choice.

Reprinted with the kind permission of