On the surface, it’s a silly question. Virtually every environmentalist in the land campaigned to remain, and for good reason. For decades, European rules have been one of the few means of slowing the sacrifice of the countryside on the altar of intensive agriculture. Ever since the second world war, when the fear of starvation triggered a drive to increase our food production at all costs, wildlife has been squeezed out of the fields.

Thanks to EU directives such as those covering birds and habitats, 
and its network of Special Areas 
of Conservation, more than 900 of Britain’s most fragile natural jewels – heathland, woods and marshes among them – have been saved from the digger and the plough. And EU laws are hard to break; governments which fail to enforce them are subject to hefty fines, which can run into the millions enough to concentrate the mind of the most cynical minister.

Stripped of that protection, the nation’s dwindling wildlife looks vulnerable indeed. All the more so as farmers, struggling to make a living
 in Brexit Britain without the cushion of EU subsidies, and facing the threat of tariff barriers on food exports to Europe, could be pushed into wringing every last pound of productivity out of a fragile soil.

The news might all seem bad, but good things are happening too.

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But – here’s the but: while the EU might have sheltered some of Britain’s most vulnerable sites, it has done little for the countryside as a whole. Here, Europe’s dominant influence has been the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – and that’s anything but benign. For decades, it paid farmers production subsidies which encouraged them to overwork the land, depleting the soil and destroying habitats. More recently, it’s shifted to subsidising landowners largely on the basis of how much land they own – with few stipulations as to how it’s managed. Smallholders with fewer than five acres are not eligible for any payments at all. Therefore the CAP rewards the rich, inflates land prices, and so squeezes out potential new entrants to farming.

It has some mitigating features, in the form of support for environmentally sensitive farming under the Countryside Stewardship scheme,
 for example – but by and large it 
has fuelled destruction and neglect. Those vast arable acres drenched with chemicals, with barely a hedgerow in sight? The sickly green nitrogen-soaked mono pasture, where once a wildflower meadow swayed? The huge steel sheds looming over the lanes? You can lay 
a fair whack of that at the door of the CAP. Since its introduction, British farmland birds have declined by 54 
per cent, insect numbers across Europe have fallen off a cliff, and soil fertility has crashed. And it’s funded, of course, by taxpayers, to the tune of over £3bn 
a year.

Imagine instead a countryside that’s a rich mix of habitats, replete with hedgerows and woodland, and clusters of new smallholdings producing fruit and vegetables for local consumption. Imagine farmhouses at the centre of farming communities, rather than sold off as weekend pads for stressed-out bankers. Imagine birdsong returning to the fields, and butterflies, moths and other insects to their margins, with all the benefits of natural pest control – and so reduced need for chemicals – which would follow in their wake. Imagine farmers being
 paid to protect soil rather than exhaust it; to work together to manage whole landscapes, not just for food production but other ‘ecosystem services’ too, such as absorbing the winter rains (which at present rush down denuded fields to cause some of the devastating floods of recent years), or soaking up carbon to help meet our climate targets.

Imagine, in short, paying for a landscape that not only protects wildlife but also creates jobs, that not only curbs pollution but also looks, sounds and smells more beautiful than the 
one we have today.

That’s quite a feat of imagination. But it’s far from a pipe dream. Brexit might have dismayed many conservationists, but the prospect of knocking off the CAP has brought a powerful alliance together to dream up alternatives. Under the banner of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, more than 40 groups as varied as the National Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, have come up with proposals to turn that imagination into reality.

Imagine a landscape that not only protects wildlife but also creates jobs, and looks, sounds and smells more beautiful than the one we have today

Building on a report published 
in 2016 by the CPRE, they call for a whole new approach to countryside policy, starting with a redirection of subsidies, away from paying people 
on the basis of the amount of land
 they own, and towards rewarding environmental good practice across 
the board. Farmers would be paid according to their success in restoring soil, cutting pollution, boosting wildlife and encouraging public access, as
 well as converting to organic methods where feasible and boosting sustainably intensive systems such as agroforestry.

They would be rewarded for ecosystem services like flood prevention – which in turn could save the economy hundreds of millions of pounds otherwise spent on flood defences and repairing flood damage. And smallholders would be actively encouraged, rather than – as at present – discriminated against. The shift wouldn’t just be financial, either. Countryside planning rules could be amended to encourage the release of land for new entrants into farming, particularly smallholders 
and community supported agriculture schemes, aimed at reconnecting people with the land on which food is grown.

It’s a beguiling vision which might sound far removed from prevailing attitudes in Westminster. But its advocates have discovered 
the unlikeliest of allies. Environment secretary Michael Gove, a Brexit bulldog whose appointment was memorably demonised by his predecessor Ed Davey as “putting the fox in charge of the hen house”, has delivered a succession of speeches which have left campaigners daring to hope that change really is in the air.

He’s backed a sweeping EU ban on pesticides associated with the decline in bee numbers, while rejecting the notion of allowing imports of chlorinated chicken from the US – and in so doing, signalled a refusal to shift to the sort 
of US-style light touch approach
 which many feared could be the future of British agriculture. He’s declared 
his commitment to ‘gold standard’ environmental policies, and spoken
 of the need to restore soil fertility with a passion more associated with an organic convert than a Tory minister: “If you have heavy machines churning the soil… if you drench it in chemicals that improve yields but in the long term undercut future fertility of that soil, you really are cutting the ground away from beneath your own feet.”

It’s a beguiling vision which might sound far removed from prevailing attitudes in Westminster. But its advocates have discovered the unlikeliest of allies

His words in turn drew praise from unlikely quarters. “This is amazing,” declared George Monbiot. “One by one, Michael Gove is saying the things I’ve waited years for an environment secretary to say.”

Not everyone’s convinced. Green MEP Molly Scott Cato believes “Gove is posturing on a series of cheap wins merely to establish himself as a sheep, before revealing himself as a wolf.”

Maybe. But perhaps, just for once, we should take a politician at his word. There will be plenty of time for bitter recriminations later. For now, though, there would appear to be that rare thing in the history of the British countryside: a slim, sparkling sliver of hope.

This article is featured in issue 92 of Positive News magazine. Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.

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The UK’s co-operative sector has grown by £1bn since 2014, despite – or perhaps because of – economic uncertainty caused by austerity and Brexit, finds a report released today by Co-operatives UK. In contrast, the same period saw blips disrupt the steady growth in the UK GDP that had followed the 2008 economic crisis.

Ed Mayo, secretary general of Co-operatives UK, said co-ops offer a solution to the growing sense of powerlessness people feel over the economy and their lives. “Underlying the political shocks the country has experienced over the last year is a call from many parts of the UK population for an economy over which they have more of a say and from which they get a fair share,” he said.

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The annual Co-operative Economy report reveals that there are now 6,815 independent co-ops across the UK, from shops and tech startups, to farms and housing providers – which last year turned over a total of £36bn. It found that UK co-ops employ 226,000 people and the number of active members is growing by almost 1 million each year, currently totalling 13.6 million.

Lyndon Edwards from The Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative

The report’s authors suggest that increasing public frustration with big business, politics, and precarious living and working arrangements, is leading more people to join and establish co-ops. Some 15 per cent of the UK’s workforce is now self-employed; home ownership at its lowest level since 1986; and FTSE 100 companies pay their top earners an average of 129 times more than their lowest-paid workers.

According to figures from a YouGov poll carried out in May for Co-operatives UK, two-thirds of people feel they have no control over the economy and only a quarter feel that they have influence in either their workplace or their local area.

Co-ops give people a say in what they do and how their profits are used

“Co-ops give people a say in what they do and how their profits are used,” said Mayo. “They offer a practical way to reimagine an economy in which people have more control over their homes, work and local areas.”

UK co-operatives take many different forms. They include a pub in Brighton run by locals; oyster farmers in the Shetlands who market their produce together; a co-op for student housing in Edinburgh; and a relatively new yet growing network of creative and tech co-operatives in London.

Artists at the Ceramics Studio Co-op, based in New Cross, London

In financial terms, co-operatives are strongest in retail: they turned over £25bn last year – largely due to the two giants of the co-operative sector: The Co-op and John Lewis. In sheer numbers, co-operatives are most prominent in the sports and social sector. This is a reflection of the fact, finds the report, that many of the most-loved clubs up and down the UK – from sporting bodies such as Lancashire Cricket Club to local working men’s and social clubs – have been formed by ordinary people wanting to create organisations that work for them and their local area.

Co-ops offer a practical way to reimagine an economy in which people have more control over their homes, work and local areas

“It’s no surprise we’re seeing a spike in interest in co-ops,” said Mayo, “whether it’s social care providers finding that a co-operative approach can give its users and workers a voice, or young designers and web developers seeing co-ops as a natural way to collaborate at work.”

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Shortly after taking over as prime minister, Theresa May put “the spirit of citizenship” right at the heart of her vision for Britain. In his farewell speech in January, Barack Obama declared the citizen “the most important office in any democracy”. He and Michelle have placed citizenship at the heart of their vision for his Presidential Center in Chicago and the associated Obama Foundation. Suddenly, it seems citizenship is all the rage.

But a hot concept is a contested concept. Because of its surface associations with legal status and national boundaries, the idea of the citizen is at risk of co-option by those who want to divide people. Indeed, for all the positive potential in May’s speech, at last year’s Conservative party conference she was guilty of exactly this, arguing: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.”

Such statements corrupt the true spirit of citizenship, setting up a choice between identities that is both dangerous and nonsensical. I can be a citizen of my town, of England, of the United Kingdom, of Europe, and of the world, whether or not any of these have a legal status. Thinking and acting as a member of the community at each and every one of these levels is what it takes to live a good life; not choosing between them. Citizenship is not a question of what passport we hold; it is an idea of who we are as human beings, a question of what we can do, and what we should.

Citizenship is not a question of what passport we hold; it is an idea of who we are as human beings

As such, the idea of the citizen is better understood in contrast to two other ideas of who we are: the subject, and the consumer. The story of the last century is the story of an underlying shift from one to the next, in search of a fuller human experience.

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In the early days of the 20th century, we were subjects: we were told what to do by our betters, with little or no power to shape the course of our own lives. Coming out of the second world war, this idea was replaced by the consumer. We gained the power to choose and the right to complain. As a shift from the subject, this was liberating, a raise in status that should not be underestimated. The idea drove huge improvements in material standards of living across the world. It has, however, outlived its time.

What’s coming next is the citizen. If, as consumers, we gained the power of choice, as citizens we are gaining the power to shape the choices. If, as consumers, we could seek the best deal for ourselves as individuals, as citizens we are starting to work together to understand what is best for us as collectives.

Once you start to look at the world through this lens, you see the change happening in every aspect of society, everywhere, much of it reported in the pages of Positive News. In politics, it is the shift from representative democracy – limited to the occasional consumer choice of the vote – to the participatory democracy of Taiwan’s Gov Zero movement, Better Reykjavik’s civic forum, Portugal’s nationwide participatory budget, and Mexico City’s crowdsourced constitution, for example. It is the shift in perception of the role of business: from exploitation to empowerment, from shareholders to stakeholders, from profit to purpose. Perhaps most importantly, in local communities, it is the shift from consumers complaining to citizens reinventing structures from the ground up. From nimbyism to swimbyism (Something Wonderful In My Backyard), manifesting in everything from local food to local energy, and supported by the explosion of local currencies.

The citizen is coming. But it is fragile, and not yet fully formed

That all this is happening is undeniable: the citizen is coming. But it is fragile, and not yet fully formed. The consumer remains, shaken but intact, and its sustained dominance as an idea is driven by its dominance in our language and our media. Such words matter: they are the scaffolding on which we build our thoughts, values, attitudes and behaviours. This, in the end, is why it is so important that today the idea of the citizen must not become co-opted or reduced.

Being able to name this change will be crucial to our ability to bring it into being.

Jon Alexander is founding partner at the New Citizenship Project, an innovation company that aims to speed the shift to a more participatory society.

Artwork: Give Up Art

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Democracy to get excited about

Better Reykjavik: a civic forum that connects citizens to the Icelandic capital’s city hall

• Around 17,378 registered users have submitted more than 6,168 ideas and 13,171 points for and against, since the website was launched in 2010

• Over the course of a month (before and after Reykjavik’s municipal elections in 2010), 40% of the city’s voters used the platform

Participatory budgeting

• More than 158,000 people voted in the latest round of the participatory budgeting programme in Paris, deciding how to spend €100m (£87m)

• This was a 39% increase on 2015

• The project plans to have spent €500m (£436m) by 2020

• In 2016, Portugal announced the world’s first participatory budget project on a national scale

Powerful communities

The switch from nimbyism to swimbyism (Something Wonderful In My Backyard) is seeing communities create their own local food to local energy, all the while being supported by the explosion of local currencies.

Notes from the neighbourhood

• There are 300 alternative or local currencies listed worldwide, but the true figure is estimated to be nearer 4,500

• Local currencies include: The Cardiff Pound and The Brixton Pound

• There are approximately 400 local exchange trading systems (LETS) in the UK and approximately 75 time banks

Tasty territories

• 71% of UK shoppers believe that buying local produce is important

• The UK has 65 foods with protected status, including Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese, Isle of Man queenies (scallops), and Anglesey sea salt

Share a round

• Around 60,000 people have invested more than £124m to support more than 400 community businesses in the UK since 2009

• The Plunkett Foundation estimates there are now around 45 community-run pubs in the UK

Artwork: Give Up Art

This feature is from issue 89 of Positive News

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The post All together now: ‘the age of the citizen’ in facts and figures appeared first on Positive News.

New data announced today by the New Economics Foundation suggests that if all UK-based migrant workers stopped for working for one day, the UK would lose four per cent of its daily GDP – £328m. The findings come on the day that tens of thousands of people across the UK have pledged their support for migrants by celebrating their contribution to British life.

One Day Without Us is a national day of action timed to coincide with UN World Day of Social Justice. For 24 hours, people will stand in solidarity with migrants. Actions range from the symbolic, wearing badges or posting selfies to show people’s support, to the literal. Some are holding five minutes of silence while others are lobbying to guarantee the rights of residence of EU citizens. A number of businesses will close for the day to make the point that Britain couldn’t manage for even one day without the contribution of migrants. Street celebrations are taking place in Chinatown in London, ‘poetryathons’ are being held in Sheffield and picnics in Aberystwyth, among others up and down the UK.

One Day Without Us is about celebrating the many diverse ways in which migrants have contributed to Britain

Migrant workers in the UK make up 10.9 per cent of the total workforce. But according to the Migration Observatory, that number increases dramatically in certain key sectors. Some 31 per cent of cleaning and household staff and 26 per cent of health professionals are foreign-born.

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The loss of migrant workers would be “an economic calamity and an affront to the hard-won openness and inclusivity that exists,” said Stephen Devlin, senior economist at the New Economics Foundation. For the food system, he described it as particularly “life threatening”.

“Fruit pickers in the strawberry fields of Scotland, warehouses full of vegetable packers in the East of England, Lincolnshire factory line workers checking Marks & Spencer chocolate eclairs, the cashier at the corner shop where you buy your milk, or the baristas at a London Pret a Manger, so many of these jobs are done by migrants,” said Devlin.

“Today is about celebrating the contributions that migrants make to all aspects of life in Britain, including the economy. Many of our industries are entirely reliant on foreign-born workers, and we should never forget that. Our research shows that if those born overseas were to down tools for a day, our whole economic system could grind to a halt. We urgently need to address the helplessness which so many people feel in the current economy. But we will not do that by succumbing to hatred and xenophobia. So today let’s celebrate the contributions made by everyone, no matter where they were born.”

We urgently need to address the helplessness which so many people feel in the current economy. But we will not do that by succumbing to hatred and xenophobia

Marc Stears, chief executive at the New Economics Foundation, added: “Britain has a long and proud tradition of openness to people from overseas and our research conclusively shows that migrants have more than repaid for the welcome they have received. Our future as a country depends on the economic, cultural and social contribution that migrants make. As countries all around the world succumb to the siren call of populism, we need to remember that contribution and to celebrate it.”

Rachel Taylor-Beales, one of the organisers of One Day Without Us, said: “One Day Without Us is about celebrating the many diverse ways in which migrants have contributed to Britain. And these extend well beyond the economy. But it is striking to see just how much migrants do add to economic output in a single day and what this country would lose if they weren’t here.”

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In these turbulent political times, we need to create more space for listening, believes social entrepreneur Sofia Bustamante. A strong feeling of disillusionment around the UK’s Brexit vote prompted her to run a ‘listening cafe’ in August: “I saw that the social divide was making people more anxious than usual and I wanted to do something to help them feel heard,” she explains. “Some people didn’t feel safe enough to express their views.”

Bustamante is a facilitator and coach who set up London Creative Labs in 2009 to help individuals find meaningful work. After having the idea of a listening cafe, she issued an impromptu call-out and eight people turned up to the first session at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, south London. Though a small start, messages of support were sent from across the country and more than 200 people quickly joined the Facebook group she set up.

During the session, attendees divided into two groups and discussed basic rules for good listening. Each then spoke for four minutes, with a minute’s silence between each, before a free flowing conversation. Subjects aired included loneliness, financial precarity, the need for intimacy, the joy of human connection, a desire to play more and frustration stemming from parking tickets.

Members of the Urban Confessional project who voluntarily listen to the public. Image: Alicia Chandler

Bustamante has also taken to the streets, holding ‘free listening’ signs and offering strangers opportunities to be heard. She is tapping into a movement that is gathering pace worldwide. Sidewalk Talk sees therapists offer their ear for free on high streets in the US, while another free listening project, Urban Confessional, is now active in 50 countries, including Pakistan and Peru.

Rachel King, a community mediator and therapist, is a fellow ‘free listener’. She tells how a young man who was “feeling very disillusioned by London life”, took the opportunity to discuss the particular responsibility that many young people feel. “He explained the pressure to perform and achieve, to produce results and pay rent and bills. He was hesitant at first, but then was delighted to talk.

“Listening is an act of kindness,” agrees Bustamante, who plans to repeat the Brixton event each month “When we feel heard and have time and space to hear others, we feel connected, safe and accepted.”

Bustamante has also been asked to facilitate a listening cafe for the NHS. In time, she hopes to develop an app that will encourage people to chart the number of new people they make the effort to listen to.

When we feel heard and have time and space to hear others, we feel connected, safe and accepted

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If we take the mainstream media’s word on Brexit, it seems we are a divided Britain. Looking about, it’s pretty difficult to disagree. Those who voted to remain are largely depressed and anxious about the future, while those who voted to leave are looking forward to the country “taking back control” and prospering.

For some people, electing to leave was a protest vote — discontentment, disillusionment, and distrust in experts and the establishment put rocket boosters under the Brexit campaign. Of course, some people voted to leave because they genuinely believe that our economy will be stronger as a result.

But the EU was an easy scapegoat for media moguls, politicians and business leaders who wanted out — a handy peg on which to hang a plethora of complex, interrelated social and economic problems. That’s not to say that the EU is beyond blame: the forcing of austerity measures on countries already in recession has been harsh to say the least, while David Cameron’s calls for reform fell on deaf ears.

Now that Theresa May’s government has begun the unenviable task of negotiating the UK’s withdrawal, I suspect those who voted to leave will find that exiting the EU does little — and possibly the opposite — of what they have been led to expect.

I doubt we can expect our neglected high streets to suddenly bustle once again, our shuttered pubs to spring back to life; for Britain to return, newly powerful, as a nation of shopkeepers — a manufacturing powerhouse with widespread job security. And there’s little hope of resolving the mythical issue of migrants taking our council homes, school places, NHS resources and jobs.

Because of course, these challenges, incorrectly posed as EU-membership threats, are actually the consequences of globalisation.

Capitalism and globalisation are built on the myth that you can have it all: ever-increasing opportunity, living standards and life expectancy, along with ever-cheaper products. Globalisation may offer people cheap TVs, but it also strips their communities of power, hope and job security.

Undemocratic and distant, the EU has too often been globalisation’s cheerleader, advocate and agent. However wrong, it is somewhat understandable that some people blame the EU for such issues as economic instability and unemployment.

Either way, where do we go from here? One thing is certain: Brexit is shrouded in uncertainties. Who knows how it will play out. Political leaders are only just beginning talks and the extraction will likely move at a snail’s pace.

Seeking new beginnings 

But amid the speculation of what the future holds, it is crucial that social enterprises are first out of the blocks to make the most of the opportunities Brexit may present.

Social enterprises, or businesses that equally prioritise profit and social benefit, can help address the range of challenges facing Britain. They are inherently equipped to solve wicked problems and fill the gaps in business and society; social enterprises are perfectly placed to offer solutions to Brexit problems we are only just beginning to comprehend.

In one creative example, the social enterprise Street League tackles youth unemployment through football. Working with 16-25 year olds who are not in employment, education and training, it provides a structured football and education ‘academy’ programme, that develops vital employability skills such as communication, teamwork and goal-setting. Bevan Healthcare CIC runs a much-needed NHS service for people who are homeless or in unstable accommodation, including asylum seekers, while social enterprises like Bounce Back, provide education and training to people in prison, helping them reintegrate into society. These are forward-looking, long-term solutions to building stronger communities.

While some funding streams will close as a result of Brexit, others could well open. There may well be new rules — and opportunities — for procurement and government grants. This could mean chances for established, emerging and brand new social enterprises to build their businesses and help more Brits.

Of course, there will be fierce competition for available funds. Social enterprises will need to build relationships with funders and funding bodies, and be clear about how they can help people and communities prosper. They will, as ever, need to provide social impact proof through measuring and reporting.

While one in seven UK-based social enterprises currently exports their goods and services, the majority trade within the UK. Brexit presents a golden chance to encourage more people to get behind British social enterprises’ products and services.

Have your say

Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), the national body and, full disclosure here, my employer too, hopes that policymakers will help the social enterprise sector successfully navigate Brexit’s turbulence as well as leverage its possibilities. To facilitate this, SEUK is conducting a survey to identify social enterprises’ Brexit views. The results will be used to help plan social enterprises’ next steps. If you work in the sector, we would appreciate your input.

While the survey results are being collated, Westminster might wish to take its lead from the Scottish government, which in its latest economic strategy committed to pursuing inclusive growth to achieve “the two mutually supportive goals of increasing competitiveness and tackling inequality”.

While Brexit holds much potential for social enterprises, initial signs show it also presents plenty of hurdles. For example, the Office for Civil Society (OCS), which was once in the Cabinet Office, has been somewhat oddly plonked in the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) in the post-referendum reshuffle. It goes without saying that, without social enterprises proactively developing relationships and a high profile within this portfolio, this positioning carries risk for the social enterprise sector’s future.

Social enterprises are businesses and need to be recognised as such, especially as the government is exploring how it can support the traditional small-to-medium enterprises in the face of Brexit. This is not a time for social enterprises and investors to be sidelined. Nor is it a time for social enterprises to be meek. Brexit presents challenges and turmoil, but it also represents an unrivalled opportunity for innovative, agile, solutions-focused social enterprises to lead the way.

Peter Holbrook is the chief executive of Social Enterprise UK, the UK’s national social enterprise membership and campaigning body

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Like many people, I was shocked and dismayed by both the Brexit referendum result and the absence of any plan for how an EU exit might actually happen. In the shell-shocked days that followed the result, I soaked up as many of the legions of doom-and-gloom articles as I could. But then I came across something that helped me look at things differently. The Guardian’s Paul Mason was calling for a ‘ProgrExit’:

“We can and must fight to place social justice and democracy at the heart of the Brexit negotiations,” he wrote.

I promptly adopted this post-Brexit portmanteau — both the ProgrExit word and the thinking behind it — and began considering ways we could master this progressive, positive EU exit. Mason’s article reminded me that all the UK had voted for was an exit; it hasn’t voted for any particular kind of exit, or for the values and principles on which it would be based.

Britain could, after all, be reshaped as a more sustainable, equitable and resilient nation, modelling a completely renewable energy grid. It could become a home to thriving and diverse food economies. It could meet its housing needs through affordable, appealing homes owned by the community. And it could support its citizens by creating a range of sustainable job opportunities that benefit people, the economy and the environment. With ambition it is all possible.

Britain could be reshaped as a more sustainable, equitable and resilient nation

Romania, for example, recently passed a law to require all supermarkets to stock a minimum of 51 per cent locally sourced produce, a move that will foster new infrastructure, a new culture of enterprise and possibly even a public health revolution for Romania. I can’t help but think: how could we create similarly innovative solutions?

With this in mind, I was very taken with Robin McAlpine’s Brexit analysis. You may not like the result, he wrote, and you may be scared of what comes next, “But on the other hand, can’t you feel a bit of the ‘thrill of possibility’?” Flagging the inevitable sameness and absence of any real social or political change had David Cameron and co. been returned, McAlpine asked: “And isn’t there something energising about having real, achievable tasks to hand?”

To answer these questions, we need to ask: what is it that the people we share this island with, live with, work with and are related to actually long for? It’s a big word, longing. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a yearning desire”. For despite claims that xenophobia influenced people’s leave votes, very few people, in their deepest of hearts, truly long for a country that abuses migrants, that concentrates wealth in the pockets of the elites, or is inward-looking, closed and suspicious. That’s not who they are. Not really.

I know people who voted to leave. They’re not the monsters the post-Brexit slanging matches would have us believe. They’re good people. They are respectful and kind. They work for the wellbeing of the places in which they live. Whether voting to stay or go, people long for many of the same things: for beauty, for companionship, for feeling part of something, for their children to have more opportunities than they had, for a sense of things being fair.

By pursuing a ProgrExit that addresses real longing rather than getting bogged down in numbers and economic forecasts that obscure our basic motivations and desires, we can steer this outcome towards something uniting, something wholesome. For example, when we consider our real longings, why would we vote for the mass rollout of unaffordable, bland, identical housing that channels money into a few hands when we could have community-owned developments that benefit both occupants and the environment?

I know people who voted to leave. They’re not the monsters the post-Brexit slanging matches would have us believe. They’re good people.

Why would we support the vast, environmentally questionable money pits of nuclear power or fracking when we could provide clean energy and savings to communities? Why would we allow what remains of our independently owned economies, with their long history and connections to local families and culture, to be swept away by superstores and Starbucks when a more vibrant, diverse local economy is so much more enriching?

Yes, people need jobs, houses, energy, security. But it seems increasingly obvious that a transition-type approach — a community-led shift to sustainable local economies — scaled up and with political support, would meet those needs better. Far better.

A transition approach could bring people together and help build common ground, especially when it comes to issues that transcend borders. Climate change, for instance, is accelerating at a terrifying pace. Worldwide, the temperature for the first half of 2016 was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880, and June marked the 14^th consecutive month the temperature record had been broken. Building common ground to address such a complex and wide-reaching issue is crucial and urgent. A ProgrExit could provide an effective and timely means of doing so.

Of course, there are some unpleasant truths about the Brexit result that need to be acknowledged. One side effect is that some people have been emboldened to be speak and behave in openly discriminatory ways. We need to feel similarly emboldened. We need to talk about the kind of world we want to see and to challenge racism and xenophobia wherever and whenever we encounter it.

People are doing this. A Huntingdon man responded to the ‘go home’ letters that had been posted through many Polish residents’ doors with ones that simply read “You are welcome here”.

There are many people across the country working to build common ground, along with community and jobs. They are initiatives from which a ProgrExit approach could learn. These include Brixton Energy, a not-for-profit co-operative renewable energy project that provides training and employment; Billinge & Orrell’s Greenslate Farm, which has reinvigorated a disused farm and brought it into community ownership and Transition Fishguard, which uses food that would otherwise go to waste to provide healthy meals to low-income families. Transition Homes in Totnes is building affordable, environmentally friendly homes by and for its members. And so on. And so on. And so on.

So while it’s easy to dwell on the Brexit negatives — and believe me, I initially did — it’s more useful to concentrate on its positives and possibilities. Writer Anne Lamott once wrote: “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” So shine on, you crazy transitioners and changemakers of all hues and persuasions. Shine harder than you have ever shone before and let’s ensure the Brexit is a ProgrExit.

Photo: Transition Bro Gwaun

This article has been adapted from a blog on the Transition Network.
Rob Hopkins is the founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_html]JTNDaDMlM0VFbmpveWluZyUyMG91ciUyMGNvbnRlbnQlM0YlM0MlMkZoMyUzRQ==[/vc_raw_html][vc_column_text][contact-form-7 id=”19770″ title=”Mailchimp Homepage Form”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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