OK, you want to know something? I am a sore loser. I mean, not generally: mostly I accept defeat when it occurs (this is not often as I'm just not a confrontational person, so generally I'm never in a position to lose, but anyway). On this specific occasion though, I did lose and I am incredibly sore; like, "I was already prone to a case of the chafey thighs and I just did the Tour de France. Twice." sore. But is it any wonder? Because what have I lost and who did I lose it to, really? I didn't lose to you, person who just called me and my fellows sore losers. Oh no, you didn't beat me, you lost too, you just think that what you lost was worth it. No I - we, you and I, all of us - lost to Nigel Farage, a man whose politics and rhetoric are so vile and divisive that he was ostracised from the official campaign in the political event that he pretty much single-handedly brought about and had to form a splitter movement. Which is fitting, I think we can all agree, given his ultimate aim in life.
Anyway, what did we lose? The full extent won't become clear for some time but in the short term we all lost some money (which I fully accept we may make back), some of us lost our heads and I genuinely believe we lost the right to say we are proud to be British, which is ironic given that that right is more important to the people that have revoked it than to pretty much anyone. I've never understood patriotism at the best of times anyway. What, I'm supposed to feel good about being born on a particular side of an arbitrary border drawn by long dead war-mongers? Or on one particular side of some river or other natural boundary? Get away with you; the people on the other side of those lines are as good as you or I, their country is as good as ours, their lives as blighted and lighted by the finger of fate as ours is. We have so much in common but we set up these ridiculous systems of differentiation. At any rate, the events surrounding our recent referendum have stripped any vestige of justifiable pride from our lives. If you'd allow me to elucidate, I'll give you the reasons why I think that is so.
I know a lot has been said about the racial tensions which have become heightened in the wake of the result but this is the main reason why we can't be proud to be British. Say what you like about this not being what leavers voted for (you're wrong, by the way - it might not be what you wanted or what you thought was on offer but it sure as shit is what you voted for) but you can't deny that the result of the referendum has had an emboldening effect on xenophobes. That should be shaming enough for anyone. We did this. As a nation we signed a racists' charter, some willingly, some not, some knowingly, some not, some even gleefully, though most not.
Apparently, anyone that points this out is “just as bad” as the racists on our streets. Yeah, OK then, I drew a link between cause and effect and that's like telling people they're vermin. Now, I know what you're saying. I can hear it now, the cries of "but not all leave voters..." Yeah, absolutely, not all leave voters are racists, no-one has said that they are - at least as far as I know. The most I have read or heard anyone say is that a leave vote has emboldened racists. I think at this point this is established fact yet still I have been accused of “discrimination” against leave voters based on the actions of a few for trying to highlight this point. I tried to point out that what the person was trying to accuse me of was actually called stereotyping rather than discrimination and that I hadn't even done that but my application of logic just got my comment deleted.
Even if you don't think that the current troubles are the fault of the vote (they are), or that they are but it's nothing to do with you (it is) then you must agree that a nation so divided that half the country won't even listen to rational argument from the other half is not one to be proud of. You can take that any way you want, by the way, you can imagine the "la-la-la, I'm not listening" barrier between leavers and remainers, blaming whichever side you see fit, but the truth is it doesn't split that way. There are probably remainers who won't listen to the "not all leavers" argument just as there are leavers who won't own that their preferred result has caused trouble.
Now I'd like to go further. I'd like to explain that not only has the vote had massive negative impact, but why it's not been worth it. Please bear with me. Even if you don't agree, hear me out as I have heard out every leave supporter I have crossed paths with. I welcome debate. If you don't agree with what I'm writing here I will gladly listen to your arguments. It is the least we owe each other now. Listening to each other's points of view is the only way to start to heal the divisions that this vote has caused.
In my opinion, the result of the referendum was wrong. It has categorically been shown that both sides of this debate have made claims that they did not believe or want to stick to. It's very easy to find a picture of Boris Johnson stood next to a sign saying "let's give the NHS £350m a week" (not the vague battle-bus pledge, no, a sign that says what I just quoted, verbatim) but this was never going to happen. Everyone remembers the chancellor's warnings of an emergency budget, but let's face it, that was always an extreme worst-case scenario. The list goes on - on both sides. From my point of view, Leave participated in "project fear" and Remain took "project infinitely-unlikely-but-very-concerning-worst-case-scenario".
In any event, it's pretty obvious that not many people actually knew what they were voting on. A lot of people wanted to give the establishment a kicking and in so doing have paved the way for those ordinary working class blokes Boris and Gove to take control. Many people voted to curb immigration but even members of the government who were in the official leave campaign have said that it's unlikely to change. Quite a few people will have voted on so-called sovereignty or independence and here we may have a genuine issue, although to label it with sovereignty is dubious, in my opinion. Yes, some laws are made in Europe which affect Britain, but in the main these are laws like those which protect workers and consumers and the disabled and the LGBT+ community and minorities and your human rights and so on. Would you like these policy areas to be under the control of a conservative government? If so, I can only imagine you are an enemy of all of the people affected, for some reason.
Tied up in all this we have the lies over the figures. How important these were in deciding the result I'm not sure, but the numbers were everywhere you looked. For me money was never the issue. Only about 1% of the tax you pay goes to Europe and a lot of it comes back. Not all, of course, but we reap the benefits in other ways. With the slash-happy governance we've recently had, how do you think arts and sciences have managed to maintain their funding? Guess what, it's the EU. If you really believe that the money we've saved by leaving will now go to these things, or the NHS or the education system for that matter, you are dreaming. Michael Gove will have a big say in the next government and he wrote a book on how to dismantle the NHS. If he can think that is a good idea then is there anything that will be saved? If this destructive man is allowed in to any kind of power then we will have nothing left.
And why is it that you think the NHS or the education system need funding? Is it because of an explosion of immigration or a dearth of funding from the "democratically elected" UK government? The narrative of the leave camp was the former, but look me in the eye and tell me the latter wasn't at least ¾ of the problem, I dare you.
But at least the decision was democratic, right? I mean, sure there were lies by the campaigns and people voted based on little more than the flip of a coin, a lot of leavers regret voting leave and the country's being rent in two because a slim majority has made a no-going-back decision that totally ignores the will of the 48%. That's good and democratic, right? Right?
Democracy has been another interesting buzzword in the campaign and aftermath of the result. Apparently, those laws that are made in Europe are not made by democratically elected leaders. Bull. We elect the members of the European Parliament and on our behalf they elect members of the European Commission in a similar way to how we elect MPs who elect a PM on our behalf. The commission has a say in what happens but it is the directly elected MEPs which make the actual decisions, along with the council of ministers who are representatives of the democratically elected governments of the member nations. Allegedly, the difference between the EU and Westminster is that we can't vote out EU lawmakers, which is just not true because the main forces in law-making are our elected MEPs and our own government (through the council of ministers). But while we're on the subject of who we can't vote out, we can't vote out members of the House of Lords or the Monarchy but they have arguably as much influence over UK law as the commission and the council do over EU law (though, of course the Queen does not exercise her power).
And what's more, after all the dust has settled we will probably end up with an agreement which means we are still subject to many EU laws but we will no longer have a say in making them. Now there's democracy for you.
So amid all this there have been calls for a second referendum, which is also undemocratic, apparently. Except, is it? It would be the same process for the decision being made, except that people now might be better informed of what they are voting for and turnout might be even higher. More people making the decision on the basis of better information is less democratic, is it? OK, then.
Oh, and that petition that was supposedly riddled with non-British signatories? Only 77,000 signatures were removed for coming from “non-British residents or citizens” which is a staggeringly low number, given how this result concerns the fate of half a billion people.
The anger engendered by this result in the young has led to some pretty harsh things being said about old people. Let me take this opportunity to say that those views are as representative of remain voters as the racists are of leave voters. However, it can't be denied that, as with every vote, older voters swung this decision which, as with every vote, they are much less likely to have to live with the consequences of. It's perhaps cruel to say so but it is statistically accurate.
The most popular counter-argument I have heard to this is that the current older generation fought against the Nazis “for democracy” (there it is again, more on that later) and so we should be grateful to them for the chance to vote in democratic processes like these. Of course, no-one wishes to under-value the contribution of that generation to the world but is it those Nazi-fighters that are getting the blame from young people? I would argue it is not. Anyone fighting or contributing materially to WWII would have been at least 18 by 1945 at the latest, yes? So they were born no later than 1927 (give or take those who, like my Grandad, lied about their age to get in to the Army) so they'd be at least 89 now. How many 89+ year-olds do you think contributed to this vote? Life expectancy is well short of that age, and you are very lucky if you retain mental competency that far into your life. No, the "old people" who made this decision are the baby boomers; our grandparents, not our great-grandparents. In my opinion the current older generation spit on what our war heroes did with this vote. They fought the Nazis, and now we have emboldened our own Neo-Nazis.
Our great-grandparents didn't fight for democracy, by the way: Hitler had taken dictatorial control of Germany by early 1933 but war didn't start until late 1939. That wasn't a war for democracy, that was at best a war against fascism and the far right. At the most realistic it was a war against a rival empire in the making.
I like to think of it as the former, as a war against hate, against the very thing that brexit has unleashed on our streets. But that's overly optimistic. My grandad joined up at about 16 because his home life was shit and even the horror of war seemed preferable. He didn't join up to fight for democracy or the downfall of fascism or even really for the empire, he joined up because he didn't have a choice. There was a war on and everyone was going to have to fight eventually and it was better that than sleeping on the floor at the mercy of an abusive step-father. But my grandad made it back and, though I never knew him, I've always liked to think that he was proud of the peace that the body which became the EU brought upon the continent.
[Author's note: I know I said it was our great-grandparents rather than grand-parents who fought the war and then go on to tell my grandad's war story. He was quite old when my dad was born and was actually the same age as my great-grandparents on the other side of my family, just one of those family anomolies.]
On a personal note, I've been forced to look at a few friends differently recently. I still count them as friends but they are not the people I thought they were, just like I no longer live in the same country that I did on Thursday even though I haven't moved so much as a mile. I've never had a problem with people believing different things to me, that is the point of a free country. But when my views are shouted down because of “democracy”, I have to take a minute to wonder if I am being afforded the same respect. When my views are derided for being stupid I can't help but question if these people have ever counted me a friend.
Let me give an example. Among the absolute avalanche of memes doing the rounds on social media I saw one particular meme that derided the views of my personal favourite politician as “stupid.” It had been “liked” by a good friend of mine and probably her boyfriend too, who is also a friend. A few years ago, in just 2009, she and I were part of a three-man team of what seemed like really close friends, though we drifted slightly not long after. I couldn't respond to this slight by a mate because the original poster's privacy settings forbade it so you'll forgive me if I'm going to take my chance now.
There is nothing stupid about Scotland wanting independence from the United Kingdom and wanting membership of the EU. At the most basic level, even if membership of the EU was constitutionally the same as membership of the UK, the Scottish people have voted in favour of remaining in the EU by a far larger margin than the UK voted to leave but now they are forced against their will to accept leaving. This is undemocratic even if the European Union was an equivalent to the Union of the Crowns.
But it goes further. As I have hopefully shown, membership of the EU is not the equivalent to the Act of Union. The UK is definitely undemocratic for the Scottish people but the EU is in my opinion undemocratic for no-one if you understand it properly.
My final point (rejoice, the uber-rant has nearly ended!) is that we have made a grave error of moral judgement. However much you personally feel that leaving the EU benefits Britain politically or economically, it clearly has the potential to cause massive damage to the EU and its remaining members, either because of the rise of far-right political narratives or through the loss of a valued partner (i.e. us) causing economic troubles. Even if leaving the EU guaranteed us everything the leave campaign promised, how on Earth could it be right to destabilise a whole continent for our own selfish gain? I don't know about you but I was raised to be selfless, generous and co-operative, not to do what benefits me to the detriment of others. I can't be proud of a country that would make such a decision. Even if the money we will save does go into the NHS and science and arts funding, even if my fears over the far-right in this country are proved wrong, even if my fears for Europe are unfounded, we did not at the time of voting (and do not even now) know what we have done to our friends and allies on the continent and I can not be proud of a nation that carelessly risks the peace and prosperity of its closest neighbours for its own gain.
This is why I'm sore over our loss, because whatever we gain we have lost ourselves.