Why can’t Remainers just accept ‘they lost’, that it was a ‘democratic vote’, and just get on with their lives? Why can’t they just get with the programme? I’ll tell you.
I’d consider myself a kind person. I’ve had some highs in my life, but it’s definitely slapped me about a fair bit too. As a result, I continually try to empathise, to be polite, fair, and to do the right thing. They’re about the only traits I pride myself on. But these noble intentions have often led me into all kinds of trouble, and as a result, I tend to over analyse most things I say and do, and everyone/everything I encounter. One might call it ‘hyper-sensitivity’. (And it’s arguably my biggest Achille’s Heel.)
I felt something change in our country on June 23rd, 2016. I remember feeling bereft, truly full of despair for what my countrymen and women had done: that it was the start of a huge social and geopolitical shift in the world, and not for the better. (And that of course, was before the U.S handed nuclear codes to a giant orange and petulant toddler.) I just couldn’t ignore my deep resentment for the xenophobic-led idiocy that even now proposes to rob my daughter, and her whole generation and others of a whole continent of opportunity. And I certainly couldn’t ignore the economic impoverishment now looming over us all as a result, harking back to years when Britain was considered ‘the sick man of Europe’.
Stranger still, I was working at a German prestige car dealership at the time: an industry where you’d think the workers would sensibly know which side their bread was buttered. Alas, sadly not. On the contrary, I was surrounded by people who thought it bizarre anyone should even give a damn, who pretty much just ‘wanted foreigners out’. (In spite of the kindly and humble Portuguese family outside, washing all their cars.)
But to actively go as far as being genuinely upset by the result??
Well, I might as well have come to work dressed as giant rabbit with a toaster strapped to my head that morning, for all the difference it would have made to their apparent impression of me. And it hit me even then, ‘these people have no idea what they’ve just had taken away.’
Since that day – a day I shall remember forever – this country’s future has continued to spiral into catastrophe. Our society is irrevocably split, and falling into decline quite quickly. I see it, I feel it. Prices are going up up up. Attitudes and mentalities that once many thought consigned to history, are now rampant in our faces. Almost out of nowhere. Our politicians are shameless and incompetent. And the political stability Britain enjoyed my entire life, seems a thing of the past.
And gods, nothing has even technically happened yet.
I’ve tried to empathise with Brexit voters. I really have. Words can’t express how much I regret this issue that’s split our society, even families in two. And I do appreciate all too poignantly why so many in this country are angry and fed up. I constantly strive to fight for the ‘little guy’: the people who just get stepped on and ignored. But in this instance, the ‘little guys’ who voted for this are blaming the wrong people.
Yes, perhaps we should have reined in immigration sooner and somehow, if it was of such concern to so many in Britain. But tearing apart a political union that’s kept peace and relative prosperity in our time since the Second World War, still seems incomprehensibly ungracious to anyone with a true concept of how and why it came to be. A baby out with the bathwater scenario. Brexiters just don’t get that. On the contrary, some of their fantastical imaginations see this colossal act of self harm as a continuation of values the Allies held at their core opposing fascism in WWII. Of course, anyone with an iota of education beyond the contents of The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Daily Express knows positively nothing could be further from the truth, but nonetheless, now we’re all expected to ‘pretend’. Otherwise it’s ‘censorship’ and ‘bullying’.
Our country gradually became very vapid, superficial, and greed-orientated during the New Labour years: but at least most had a reasonable shot at the cake. Under the Tories since 2010, corruption and elitism are now at levels that every single one of us in the UK should be positively hopping mad about. And most of it hailing from one party and societal group (big business).
Yet bizarrely, almost to the point of being ridiculous, the very people actively seeking to enslave the populace of this island: the people who most benefit from grotesque inequality, are the very same fuck-nuggets half the country are listening to. Brexiters quote their inane bullshit like it’s actually sentient, rational, or even vaguely addressing the actual problems at hand. And it’s sending many of us listening into meltdown. You can’t reason with fanatics.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, I genuinely believe is as dangerous to this country as Hitler was to Germany. (Yep, I did just go there.) But unlike the average wealthy person and/or politician who’ll still survive an impoverished UK post-Brexit (the fallout will be felt by the masses), this guy is already a multi-millionaire, and will actually BENEFIT in a simply massive way: the worth and business prospects of his financial investment companies will literally soar. And he’ll probably get to pay his menial staff less to boot.
This is the guy the average Brexiter is trusting?!
Yes… that’s right. Now Brexiters like JRM are gunning for foreign aid and charities like Oxfam, and all those pesky people in the world who have nothing. How dare they flee the bombs we drop on them, or need food, water, education, and clothing.
The same information and facts are there for Brexiters. They’re staring them in the face. They just refuse and/or don’t want to see them. That is why some Remainers think they’re “fucking stupid” (to coin less-than-pleasant vernacular). Or that they’re now so blindly committed to this idealistic nonsense, no amount of money trails and blood stained hand-prints will convince them their leaders are anything other than virtuous freedom-fighters. Then in the next breath, they complain Remainers are supposedly ‘prejudiced’, ‘bigoted’, ‘judgemental’, and always talking down to them like they’re ‘idiots’. I’m sorry, but it is laughable. You don’t prove you’re not an idiot, by blindly continuing to do something incalculably idiotic. Nor does taking on a bully somehow make you a bully too.
Most of us aren’t looking to be mean. We’re not looking to hurt or offend anybody, but nor are many of us prepared to tolerate utter gobbledegook, and tiptoe round it as if it’s sentient. Particularly not when it’s our entire economy and society on the line. Absolutely nobody and nothing is going to be helped long-term if we all now have to start pretending ‘yes, 2+2 does in fact equal 5’, just in case we upset a ‘real patriot’. And in fact, if this country continues to base its economic plans on that ethos, we truly are doomed.
I only wish more people were shouting. We should be bloody barricading parliament to stop it from happening! But whoops… oh yes. Would you look at that. The Tories are also now trying to outlaw demonstration too. They were OK with a female politician getting murdered by hard-right fanatics in the name of ideology in 2016, but Rees-Mogg getting some verbal flack at a niche university get-together?? No way José. That’s going too far in the face of decorum. That requires new laws.
Meanwhile, it’s apparently OK for Nigel Farage and groups like Leave.EU to make veiled threats against the British public who see this oppressive nonsense for what it is, planting seeds of proposed violence if their little coup doesn’t get its way:
What happened to a 52/48 vote being “unfinished business” Nigel? Well, now he’s rallying the mob, just in case he turns out to have been right.
I look around at what is happening, and cannot close my mind to the dire predictions and warnings deluged by people of pragmatism and experience. People NOT tied to financial markets and vested interest. Fears that GDP in parts of Britain could be hit as much as precipitated the Great Depression in America. I cannot fucking help but already see products I used to buy and consume without much care, that I now regretfully turn away from in the supermarket, genuinely troubled by the price. I’ve been all over the world, and know only too well that we in Britain are already ripped off blind for absolutely everything we buy, so where that could go from here is just terrifying.
At the same time, I cannot help but also notice Theresa May is indicating she might sell the NHS to American privatisation. The same NHS that brought my baby girl into this world, and cared for my Mum before she died in 2014. My local council in Surrey plan on putting council tax up by 15% this year, which will hit us badly. Meanwhile, the salaries of just seven Surrey County Council bosses cost Surrey tax payers £1m per year. Lower down the chain, jobs are going to robots. Small, mid, and even some big businesses (like Carillion) are folding and/or moving elsewhere. Thousands are already losing their jobs and pensions, living off food banks. If that number becomes millions, this country is in for one helluva rough ride. Certainly beyond anything I or my late Mum would probably have imagined we’d live to see.
I hope with every last bone in my body that we… the ‘Remoaners’… are somehow magically proved completely wrong. Even though we’ve pretty accurately forecast every single agonising stage of this debacle, I hope we are. That’s another thing Brexiters don’t get. See, it’s not a matter of pride for us: just a sense of responsibility to our families. We don’t want to argue with you, and quite frankly we’d rather have nothing to do with you. Most of us don’t revel in conflict the same way your nationalist fan-club does.
Mr Farage reckons his mob are angry?? Well if things do go south, we are right, and obstinate muppets who refused to listen have adversely affected the future prospects and happiness of OUR children?? The opportunities and luxuries we can afford them?? Well I for one genuinely fear I’ll never want to speak to a Brexit voter ever again, let alone make peace with them. I already can’t believe how much they’ve cost us. You don’t need a degree in economics from LSE to recognise Britain is on the verge of disaster, or that the whole thing is entirely unnecessary. That is what we cannot and will not forgive.
But worse still. If this fiasco is viewed in the future as a turning point, when military tensions and conflict in Europe again became likely or inevitable, history will judge them even harsher.
MORE:
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/cut-immigration-border-forces-wont-able-job-properly-shock-new-report-exposes-theresa-mays-brexit-chaos/14/02/
