O frabjous day!
Friday, June 24, 2016
A short and simple post on this wonderful day.
I am delighted with the outcome of the referendum. It's a remarkable achievement given that the game played by "Remain" was anything but cricket. From the misuse of taxpayers' money and the improper use of the Civil Service to campaign, through the recruitment of business leaders by means that will no doubt become apparent in the Prime Minister's Resignation Honours List to Project Fear itself, it has been a dirty business.
It's particularly satisfying to win when your opponent has cheated.
I am happy with the tone being struck the leadership of Vote Leave today. They grasped (as their opponents never would have done had it gone the other way) that almost half of our countrymen didn't want this and it's important not to gloat. They are already reaching out to citizens disappointed with the outcome and reassuring them that everything good about being European will continue. We are only leaving a set of incompetent, wasteful and corrupt institutions, not the continent itself.
The vote revealed Britain's divisions and the result gave us the opportunity – if we will only talk honestly to each other – to heal them. We were never going to be able to do so while bringing 27 countries with their own highly varied problems along with us. When we do stop paying our contributions to Brussels, we should divert most of the net savings to infrastructure investments with a particular eye on helping the depressed regions of Wales and the North and South-West of England. There has been massive mission creep on the state's part during my lifetime. It's time it stopped micromanaging our lives and got back to its basic job of supplying the public infrastructure we need to go about our business productively.
Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am almost as pleased by the "bad loser" tone being adopted by the elites given a good kicking yesterday. It's almost as if they have not learned their lesson yet. The fact is they are stuck with Britain outside the EU now. There is no going back. The path trodden so lucratively by Mandelson and the Kinnocks is closed to them now. Either they calm down, get over themselves and work to unite the country on its new course, or they drift off into irrelevance. Either of those choices on their part would suit me just fine.
Where's Osborne with his resignation? The man abused his position abominably, talking down markets to advance his own view on the referendum. He's unfit for public office of any kind in my view.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 09:59 PM
Thank you!
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 09:58 PM
You and me both.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 09:58 PM
I can still hardly believe it :-)
Posted by: Perry de Havilland | Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 09:21 PM
I retired to bed last evening in a miserable state of mind. I'd just seen Umunna and that odious piece of dampware Will Straw interviewed on Sky News and couldn't bear the smug "we know we've won but we're not going to say so" waves which were rolling off them.
My wife woke me at 0500 (I knew I shouldn't have got her that iPhone with data) to tell me Leave were ahead so it was up, cup of tea and walk the dog - accomplished with a huge smile in the 0530 sunshine!
It's been nothing but a pure pleasure listening to the huffing and puffing from Europe, from Merkel telling her country to carry on dealing with Britain as though nothing's happened. They so clearly had no idea at all.
Sometimes *any* change is a good thing, just for its' own sake. This is one such time. Perhaps we've started a ball rolling slowly which in 10 years or so will see the EU radically reformed; or perhaps even dead and buried.
Now, where's Osborne with that doom and gloom "you're all going to suffer" budget he promised if we voted to leave?
Posted by: formertory | Friday, June 24, 2016 at 03:38 PM
Lovely post. I re blogged on -
https://thelastfurlong.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/i-loved-this-post-on-last-ditch-o-frabjous-day/
Posted by: D | Friday, June 24, 2016 at 03:36 PM