Alexander Betts: Why Brexit Happened - and What to Do Next

Alexander Betts: Why Brexit happened - and what to do next

On June 23, 2016 was the British people facing a big choice: remain or leave the European Union. The British people had spoken, and therefore should Britain now leave the European Union. Leave won by 52% to 48%. A lot of questions have now been asked: What is the EU? What about the economy? Why did this happen? How long does it take to leave the EU? And what do we do now? Some of these questions are difficult to answer, actually, most of them are. However, Alexander Betts provides an attempt in a speech, that he held at the TEDsummit event in June.

The speaker is Alexander Betts which is Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs. Alexander Betts begins his speech in medias res with the phrase "I am British.” (0:12) The audience begins to laugh, but then they think on the question and exclaims in a round of applause. One thing Alexander is good at is to include the audience. For example, by giving examples where he includes himself and then he asks a lot of rhetorical questions. “But my question is really, should we have the degree of shock that we've experienced since? Was it something that took place overnight? Or are there deeper structural factors that have led us to where we are today?” (2:04) Alexander Betts also uses humour to engage the audience. We can also sense that the humour helps to the audience's attention when Alexander Betts sometimes is being interrupted by laughter from the audience.

The audience to this speech in general is British people as the speech focal point is Brexit. However, it may catch other people's interest too. Many people worldwide are interested in Brexit because you do not know what is going to happen. Many countries in Europe are perhaps inspired by Britain and then are Britain just the first domino falling.

Alexander Betts mentions four ideas which he believes could ensure good globalization. But as he says, there are both positive and negative things about globalization. “But globalization also has redistributive effects. It creates winners and losers.” (7.47)

The first thing Alexander Betts is talking about is education. The gap between public perception of empirical reality is wrong and this is where the education must save the society.

The next idea Alexander Betts says is that we need to learn from each other and we have to interact positively in a society. Immigration has been a major topic of the conversation in Britain and across Europe. The vote on Brexit came quickly to act on immigration and the nationalist parties prospered.

The third idea Alexander Betts comes with is that you must focus on the country you live in. We must ensure that the country has the facilities that the citizens want. It should also benefit the immigration.