Reflections on Brexit
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
The smug élites squirm still but I have no doubt the deed will be done. Their talk of buyer's remorse irritates. It is as untrue as everything else these congenital liars have said in the course of the campaign and has the same taint of condescension. Yet nothing can quash my delight. I have not smiled so much for so long in decades.
Even as I earnestly reassure my confused friends from the other side of the Channel that (a) this doesn't mean we hate them, (b) my fellow-citizens are not the near-Nazis the BBC and Guardian would have them believe and (c) the markets will soon confirm my confidence that Britain will be better off without the strangulation of the burgeoning bureaucratic superstate, my cheesy grin says more than my words.
I am coming to realise that Brexit has a special meaning for me. It's natural for a long term expat to have trouble reassimilating when returning home. In 20 years Britain had changed. I returned to a land far stranger to me than the exotic places I had lived and worked. This was compounded by my moving to London, where I had worked and socialised before but never lived full time. And by my socialising, inevitably, with a particularly prosperous portion of the capital's population. These were the people who had done well in the UK I had lived away from. Whatever it had become was fine and dandy with them.
Much as I have loved studying and practising my photography since I gave up full-time work, the tutors and fellow students incline to an arty-farty, lefty Luvvie-ness that excludes me. At times, I have felt like a member of a defeated tribe living politely amongst his conquerors.
So a very literal alienation then; feeling like an alien in my own nation. An alienation I made worse by giving up my blog and its supportive community of like-minded people. I had begun to hold my tongue in company on the assumption that I was so far away from the zeitgeist, so out of touch with modern Britain, that my views would amuse more than persuade. One friend delighted in assembling Guardianisti around his table and then winding me up to shock them; like some imperialist grandee amusing his guests by seating a savage amongst them.
I could only really be myself with my provincial family and visiting friends from the countries I had worked in. This made me feel older than I am and sadder than my optimistic nature inclines me to be. I had begun to think of myself as heading towards life's exit. I was not taking care of my health or diet because I was not thinking of my future.
The referendum campaign raised hopes that I was not alone. Until the very last moment however I believed Remain would win. Dining out on the night of the poll, I told my companion I was distraught at the prospect of defeat and didn't know how I would cope without the hope the campaign had brought.
And then came the result. It turns out my smug, metropolitan friends are the ones out of touch with the zeitgeist. It turns out the greatest number of voters in British history agreed with me on a key issue. It turns out this country is, after all my doubts, where I belong.
I don't know how the result touched you, gentle reader, but for me it was a welcome home.
I agree as to the need for less government with more humility but devolution has not really helped that cause. It has added more pointless and expensive layers of government with no benefit to the Union. It has formed perforations along which nationalists can and will tear. If I hear one more time that "Scotland voted X or Y" I will lose it. England has only once in my lifetime voted for a Labour government. All of that waste, regulation and debt was inflicted on us by Scotland and we never complained once because we saw the Union as real, regarded every citizen as equal and accepted the results in the proper spirit of a cricketing nation. I don't want Scotland to go. I love the place. My favourite bits of these islands are all there as are some of my favourite people. But if they can't accept the ref's decision when for once they are on the losing side, they are clearly not playing the same game and need to **** the **** off to their Auld Allies.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 10:47 AM
I am. Particularly as the bigotry, hate and nastiness is emanating from frustrated Remainers. Even as they try to overturn the peoples verdict they have not learned that a sneer or an insult is not a persuasive argument. I could wish all my opponents in life so inept.
Posted by: Tom | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 07:11 PM
Simple elation when my wife told me we had won! Frabjous day!
Posted by: Dr Evil | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 03:41 PM
I believe instead we will see the dawning of another golden age for this country and all it's inhabitants now that we have decided to throw off the EU federalistic shackles.
Yes there are going to be hardships and setbacks along the way but this is to be expected. As anything really worth having always comes with a price attached to it.
So it is with hope in my heart we begin our first steps along this tortuous track towards a better United Kingdom. I hope you'll join us too jackart?
Posted by: barnacle bill | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 01:18 PM
You appear to be the weak, broken, bigoted, hate-filled, insular and nasty one to me.
Posted by: Antisthenes | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 09:52 AM
It ruined everything, and represents the dawn of a smaller, weaker, broken, divided union, a little, bigoted, hate-filled, insular and nasty England. We are all poorer for it. I hope you're proud.
Posted by: Jackart | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 09:03 AM
I thought I was a pessimist. God forbid we get Theresa May. We need Andrea Leadsom. If not we could win the referendum battle only to lose the referendum war.
Posted by: Antisthenes | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 08:34 AM
I believe the tide is turning people are turning away from hard left and softer left progressives nonsense. It is the consequence of embracing statism and progressive thinking. People are fed up with the corrupt, authoritarian, incompetent and rotten establishment and it's institutions; the courts, the quangos, cartel politics, incoherent immigration policies, crony capitalism the list goes on and on. Labour no longer represents the common man. Now it is minorities, idealists, revolutionaries and vested interests that believe in legalised theft of the peoples money to further their dubious causes and ideologies.
Devolution is a pointer to what people really want even if they do not understand the real reasons why. Big government has brought big problems and democracy has become next to meaningless. Localism addresses this; easier to have say and reach a consensus and easier to control. The EU epitomised all that was going wrong and was magnifying the problems statism was and is causing. At least we can now be free of that so next we start on dismantling the grossly inflated UK government local as well as national.
Posted by: Antisthenes | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 08:28 AM
Like you, I was convinced the Leave campaign had lost and delighted on finding they'd won. I immensely enjoyed the discomfiture of politicians and lefty wannabe philosophers here and in Brussels - the stunned silence from Europe until later in the day was utterly delightful. The result has buoyed me since, between irritations caused principally by the BBC's unremitting campaign to tell us it's all a disaster, and the visceral anger of some others of the MSM at the result.
However, I fear for the result. Anonymous businesses (?) briefing Mishcon de Reya to make a case to Government about the result and Parliament's duties under "the Constitution"? Where do businesses get a vote? Theresa May taking over the Conservative leadership with her track record of not delivering things, but seeming to be coated in finest Blairish Teflon. Her anti-libertarian and repressive views. Her support for Bremain: The idea that if she wins she'd call a snap General Election and re-run the referendum as part of it - guaranteeing her millions of votes from the Bremainers - is starting to gain some traction inside what passes for my brain these days.
Ho hum. It's a funny old world. I hope Andrea Leadsom is elected; a successful businesswoman with a can-do attitude (and committed to Leaving) is just what we need. Worked before, when there were holes in the hull of HMS Great Britain!
Posted by: formertory | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 08:25 AM