‘It’s you lot,’ complain the increasingly rabid and marginalised voices of those that didn’t get the Brexit they thought they voted for. ‘Always talking the country down.’ As if by talking the country up the supermarket shelves would be magickly restocked with all manner of exotic fruit and vegetables, and the price of imports would dwindle; as if the queues at Dover would dissolve overnight and the casualties of Britain’s exporters would replace their lost revenues from deals with Japan and Australia.
Now those same patriots are telling us they’ll find somewhere else to ripen their sunburnt flesh. Like Turkey. No matter that Penny Mordaunt used the prospect of Turkey joining the EU as a threat, entirely lacking in truth or vision.
It was partly the lack of truth or vision that prevented me from voting for Brexit in 2016—and I don’t personally know anyone that now admits to doing so. I didn’t believe the red bus lies and the predictions of greatness restored. I had too much to lose. We all had too much to lose. We should feel swindled by a cabal of shadowy groups with their own interests at heart, like the ERG. Added to which I feel intrinsically European, culturally and geographically. I don’t want the sins of our barbarous empire to be revisited on me or my children, and I see no reason why a federated, inclusive and above all peaceful Europe should be viewed as a disturbing and dystopian future. You can keep your sovereignty, which anyway is presided over by an unelected distant monarch with German ancestry. You can leave the French to control our borders, which we pay them to continue to do.
We‘ll find new places to do business, like the US for example, where we’ve always done business and which reluctantly does business with us, still grateful for our colonial legacy. Or Japan, where it’s promised our dairy products will be lapped up by a predominantly lactose intolerant population. Under the freshly signed CPTPP we’ll ship everything we need from our new friends in Vietnam, Chile, Peru and Malaysia the other side of the globe, container-ship fresh and never mind the environment. Our citizens can spend their free time on Duolingo learning Vietnamese and Peruvian to translate our food labels.
But at least we still have the internal market of the United Kingdom.
Before Brexit I admit I was opposed to Scottish independence. ‘Better together’ I believed. I still believe that—but having seen that small nation dragged against its democratic will out of a union that profited them greatly, with regret I now wish them well in the greater European family. Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Let’s be honest, England was an abusive partner, greedy and manipulating. It’s been like that in all its relationships with other nations since the beginning, and it’s about time it got some counselling.
‘It’s us lot.’ We need to talk the country up more. Up and out of its petty intolerances and its xenophobia and into the wider world. Let’s go back to Brussels and say we’re awfully sorry, but we think we made a colossal mistake. Let’s rejoin the EU while they’ll still have us.
Hey! Not just Scotland. I hope we are not far behind in the queue for our UK exit visa. Possibly followed by the North of England. Liverpool describing itself as Scouse, not English, that’s a new thing.
Until the last ten years or so, I would have been reluctant to cut the UK away, and to some extent I still feel that way. But the current political climate is enabling some toxic attitudes between different sectors in UK society.
The recent Tory governments have a lot to answer for.
I completely agree. Exponents of UDI in England should now be widespread!