In the very first BBC Question Time following the EU referendum result in 2016 there were leave backing members of the audience lashing out angrily in their moment of victory. Already alarmed and depressed by the result of the vote, I was shaken further; this kind of reaction, I judged, from the triumphant side of the call could only bode ill. For many of these people, I guess, they felt they'd won for the first time over a cause they were passionate about, whilst simultaneously expecting their victory to be snatched away from them at the very moment of their triumph. In that sentiment I'm sure was born the almost pathological adherence to the cause named Brexit by an alarmingly high number of their kind.
Step back a moment and consider this. The architects of Brexit are extremely wealthy people, plus a bunch of politically ambitious half-wits who were recruited as mouthpieces. These mediocre (at best) minds are now in charge of everything and driving the Brexit bus at full pelt, as directed by the architects, presumably. There was never anything in it for the ordinary Joe, the kind of person hoodwinked into voting for it. Even as it became apparent that it was going to be an economic disaster for just about everyone, and the architects and their mouthpieces finally gave up trying to pretend otherwise, many ordinary Joes could still be relied upon to support the impending catastrophe. Why? How?
Well our national papers have been filled with miles of columns in opinion pieces and analysis over the last few years, and there has been a never ending commentary on social networks and other media. There are many theories. My personal favourite is the psychological one, that we are innately reluctant to ever admit we've been taken in, and would rather suffer the horrors of our misjudgement than rectify the fault. Sounds about right.
My own theory is that very few actually voted for Brexit, the reality. How could they? Most folk, myself included, had very little idea what being a member of the EU meant, in detail. We all had a vague notion here and there. It's a good idea to be friendly and co-operative with our nearest neighbours, look at all the benefits like easy travel round Europe, the chance to retire there (to better weather), the chance to work and study all over the continent with ease. That's really, to be honest, about as far as I got until all the clusterfuckery hit us. To others it was an open door to pesky foreigners pinching their jobs, diluting British culture, taking advantage of our health service etc. Now we are a few short weeks before the reality hits properly, deal or no deal. And by and large there is still an unbridgeable gap between the in and out camps.
Forget the arguments, they're all done and dusted for the moment. Barring some incredible change of mind by Boris and chums, already politically out of the EU, the country is going to get the full-on out treatment, out of the SM and out of the CU, as out as out can be.
Now think back to that tenuous triumphalist braying at the end of June 2016. I can hear the screams of betrayal already. I can see the pointing fingers, the scowls of hatred, the rage and the menace. No one - literally no one, including Boris, Farage, Gove, Rees-Mogg, Raab, Redwood and the rest - thinks there will be any tangible benefit to Ordinary Joe Public whatsoever, ever. The only question is how long it will take for Joe to cotton on he's been had, and how violently he'll express his … disappointment. Where are the gold-plated unicorns? Why are streets still filled with foreigners? Why are the hospitals still crap? And remember, this is without one iota of the horrific damage predicted by so many pro-EU folk coming to pass. And remember, some of the damage, to ordinary Joe, is already generally accepted as going to happen: for example, long queues and delays for travelling Brits, to mention just one. (Unless the plan is to make us all so poor we can't afford to travel, and then we won't notice.)
Imagine if there's an avalanche. Well, my guess is we'll have plenty of people pointing fingers saying, I told you so. And we'll have plenty of others pointing back and saying it's all your fault. But, like a serially jilted lover, the latter bunch will turn on everyone within their clammy reach, without even pausing to think why they get fucked over so often. I feel sorry for them. I genuinely do. They didn't ask to be manipulated. They didn't ask to be denied the education that might equip them to spot self-serving, mendacious charlatans.
In my wilder dreams there's a reckoning for those characters, the leaders of Brexit. It's bad enough they're a lying, unprincipled lot, but they're also so obviously mean spirited, sly and hateful, so obviously have unbounded disdain for Joe and all the other Ordinaries in the country. Either I'm catastrophically wrong about that, or it will eventually dawn on the public they've been well and truly shafted.
Then where will all that whipped-up, laser-focused rage be vented?
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