Imagine if Leave lost and we imposed a hard Remain - there would be anarchy

Let me take you back two years and three months to the time immediately before the Brexit referendum. The Leave campaign promised we would remain in the Single Market and Customs Union for the sake of business. Things would more or less remain the same. The Brexit deal would be signed and sealed in one afternoon. There would be more money for schools and hospitals, and the mainland would still be there to carry on visiting and trading with.

Fast-forward those twenty-six months, and now those same people are putting severe pressure on the PM to leave everything, which will most probably cause us to become more of a vassal state to the US than we ever were to the EU. They harp on about the "will of the people" and "they've had their say, there should be no more Brexit referenda," conveniently forgetting that the reason we have elections every couple of years or so is precisely to reflect the mood of the people at that time.

So let's see what life would be like if the tables were turned and the British government implemented a hard Remain...

It's the twenty-fourth of June in the Year of Our Lord, two thousand and sixteen. The people have spoken and it's a resounding victory for Remain. 52% of the electorate, a sizeable and clear majority [not, obviously!], have voted to remain in the EU.

David Cameron is delighted, and begins immediate negotiations to take the UK into Schengen and the Eurozone. By 2020, the British Pound will be obsolete, and the only monarchy in the Commonwealth where the Queen's head doesn't appear on the currency will be her own.

The gutter press, though, protests. "DON'T TAKE US INTO THE EURO", clamours the Daily Mail. The Guardian shoots back with images of Leavers including Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg under the headline "ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE" for pleading with the PM not to join the Euro.

Remainers take to the readers' comments sections to have a good old-fashioned pitchfork and fire-on-a-stick fight over the direction of the country. They want Boris ostracised and EU flags to replace the Union Jack everywhere except on government buildings.

People like that Wetherspoon's guy and that Dyson fellow are routinely attacked on social media by hordes of Remainers, branding them all kinds of nasty names. Audiences on the BBC's political panel shows like Question Time constantly heckle the few famous guests who still dare to say they are Leavers. Katie Hopkins leaves the country to go and live in Alabama [in the end, there are pros to everything] and receives a slap on the face by several Remainers who showed up to the airport to make sure she left.

Those on the Leave side continue to campaign, saying the vote was close and there should be some compromise, rather than this total sell-out to the EU. Remainers heckle them, especially on social media saying "we won, you lost, get over it", and other cheap slogans to that effect. Leavers say "but we were told if Remain won, we would just carry on as normal, not join the euro and Schengen. We've been lied to!" Remainers say, "we knew what we were voting for", as if that was their original intention. Despite all the archived articles in newspapers and on TV, Remainers insist that was the plan all along.

Of course, this is never going to happen. Why not? Because those on the Remain side are far less vitriolic, caustic, venomous, spiteful, malicious, whatever your description, than a lot of those on the Leave side. Why so? Because, having been a member of a very large social media group actively trying to counter Brexit, I have noticed one thing: all 60,000 members are civil, decent and friendly. And being too "nice" may actually be their weakness.

It is absurd to think that the Remain half of the country would act in this way. Which is why I question a lot of the vitriol on the Leave side. It is astounding how much hate has built up when reading readers' replies in the Daily Mail and the Express. Where does all that aggression come from?

I think it stems from many different places:

• Many people don't know why the UK gives money to the EU and think it's a waste. 

What they don't realise is that that money is 1% of every country's national spending, and a lot of it is spent doing local projects. The UK, having nine of the most deprived areas in the EU, the money gets re-invested in areas which the UK government would not consider touching.

• A great number of people are conned daily into believing they are being ruled by Brussels. 

This is an absurd notion, but one that has a lot of support from the newspapers. Many newspaper owners, living overseas or in tax havens, have alternative agendas and don't like the idea that the EU is interfering in their tax affairs, so they cook up all types of stories and twist reality to make it seem like the EU is a left-wing dictatorship. They have been doing this for years. The link to the left here highlights the abominable abuse levelled at Brussels for the last 30-odd years.

• Too many people found themselves excluded from the benefits of economic development

Successive British governments have done little to improve the lives of a lot of people in poor areas, and more and more people have slipped below the poverty line without having been given the chance to improve and develop. Wages have declined, prices have risen, working conditions have stagnated or receded, property prices have become prohibitively expensive, and healthy food like fruit or meat is a luxury. A lot of these people voted to leave the EU to give the government a kick where it hurts, but in fact, they have hurt themselves the most.

• Apathy and ignorance

A great deal of the public have entered a kind of limbo world where they are happy with their lot in life (modest living, decent social life, car, a couple of holidays, maybe kids). Things like Brexit are at best a distraction, at worst an annoyance. They maybe voted in the referendum, but did so based on the last story they read and whether it was positive or negative. They don't really care either way because they only go abroad for a couple of weeks a year, don't need EU funding, and have routines that don't matter whether they care about the EU or not. When the Lambrusco price goes up a quarter, they might start wishing they had paid attention over the last 3 years.

What to do about this?
Recently, one member said he thought we should "start getting a bit French about the whole thing", which is not a bad description of where we are today: just half a year away from B-Day, and a whole raft of warnings concerning the UK's preparedness for the eventuality of no deal should be bringing the good people of Britain out on to the streets, but they are a sedate, passive kind of folk; that's why successive governments have been able to make them swallow all kinds of bad measures à la boiling frog.

Getting a bit more active in the streets, more frequently and more aggressively, would be quite a feat for the people of Britain to carry out. There are two reasons for this: firstly, most demonstrations take place on weekends unless they're strikes, because they are busy at work, and because of the British propensity to associate leave from work with bad performance, any time off is precious. Secondly, most British people don't really care enough to be out every day on the streets protesting, as they have jobs and livelihoods that are indispensable to them and they prize their private life more than they care about which people govern them.

In countries like Romania, where there have been great upheavals in recent times, whole swathes of people have been out on the streets for days, sometimes weeks, on end. The constitutional and democratic state of the country there is fragile and still in its infancy compared to that of the UK, whose institutions go back centuries. For that reason, British people still trust in the procedures and processes that flag up threats to democracy. But considering the fraudulent manner by which the Leave campaign won the 2016 referendum, all the evidence against them, and the reams of papers proving collusion with foreign hostile forces, the clamour to bring the perpetrators to justice, let alone annul the result, is unsettlingly quiet.

Why is nobody on the streets? Why are people not angry? Why does it seem that the press is more concerned with Jeremy Corbyn's views on Israel and Palestine than the crooks who are trying to take over the country by stealth? Smoke and mirrors, it seems. Keep the spotlight off the bad news of Brexit just until B-Day, then all hell can break loose if necessary. These gangsters, who have friends in Trump's White House and in Putin's Kremlin, as well as with Salvini in Rome, Orbán in Budapest and Kaczyński in Warsaw, not forgetting the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France, and Geert Wilders's PVV in the Netherlands, are without doubt trying to build a coalition of strong-in-the-arm factions to take on their enemies, the so-called liberal elite.

They hate the tolerance we have garnered over the last few decades. They despise the idea of legal same-sex marriage, multi-coloured neighbourhoods, high standards in areas like food hygiene, the environment and healthcare, and seek to deregulate it all in order to sell to the highest bidder for profit and to the detriment of the little guy. So they created a word for these people: every time someone defends liberal values in public, these people accuse them of being a snowflake.

And herein lies the most basic of all the paradoxes - it's the little guy that put these people in charge in the first place. It's always the little guy who holds all the cards, but no awareness of this superpower. That's why the ones at the top try so hard to garner their support. Look at the crowds cheering Trump at his rallies - with all due respect, they are generally out-of-town, poor, religious, uneducated, or all four. The rallies have taken place in locations like Youngstown Ohio, Huntsville Alabama, and Duluth Minnesota. Their lives have never taken off and they want someone to blame. Along comes the demagogue and sweeps up their votes, even though they'll never see an improvement in their own lives.

Look at the areas that voted for Brexit in large numbers: run-down seaside towns like Redcar, Blackpool and Clacton; post-industrial towns like Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton and Burnley. These are also places where the population has largely been forgotten. So these are prime places for the demagogue to ply his trade. This is where change is going to be instigated, but where nothing will ever be better for those people without firm action by the government of the day.

I am not sneering at these people, in fact I have a lot in common with them. I also spent years living from day to day without any sign of advancement in my life. I had little positiveness in my life and I was often two meals from starvation. I know what it is like down there. I grasped at anything I could that had a positive element to it, whether a potential job offer from a dodgy agency, or even a good write-up in the daily horoscope. Anything at all. So I can also understand when a person with good rhetorical skills can articulate the frustrations of the poor to the nation. The poor and downcast are so desperate that they will latch on to anything that promises to bring them out of their misery, even if it is obviously a lie. Those running the Leave campaign were very aware of that, the Remain campaign focused mainly on the negative implications of leaving without trying to demonstrate all the good that the EU does.

So if Brexit were cancelled: what would happen in the country?

I personally think the following:
10% of people would be very angry indeed, and would provoke protests and riots.
25% would be upset for a week before returning to normal.
65% would be very glad that this was no longer filling their news feeds every day

But 100% would be livid that the government put the country through such a waste of time and money, and for what? To settle an internal dispute in the Conservative Party. I would hope this débâcle would split the main two parties enough to cause them to break apart, so that we would have four or five main parties, and we can eliminate that stupid First Past The Post "system" for good.

We can live in hope...

The EU is the carrier of my identity now, and I will fight anyone who wants to take that away from me

Yesterday evening, as I settled down to watch TV (yes, it's a Saturday night, but I don't need thrills right now), I was lucky enough to behold that glorious end to the summer season of classical music on the BBC that we all know as the Proms. 

The Last Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall has a splendidly rousing finale which encompasses all that is good about being British: the spectators are not expected to be quiet, in fact they bring tooters and crackers with them; the lead violinist in the orchestra is, at times, allowed to go off-key during solos; the conductor gives a speech where he/she mercilessly mocks the audience; there are crowds gathered in four other concert locations in the UK which are also incorporated into the event, and everyone waves a flag.

It is the most patriotic outpouring of emotion you will ever see. It is like a cross between the Vienna New Year concert and a Six Nations Rugby match where everyone in the crowd is on the same side. The songs are fervently steeped in British history and culture and anyone who claims to be British should know the words to them: Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, known as Land of Hope and Glory; Hubert Parry's Jerusalem; Fantasia on British Sea Songs arranged by Sir Henry Wood (during which it is a custom for the audience to pass around packets of tissues during the section known as Tom Bowling), which contains the Sailor's Hornpipe, when the audience bobs up and down, and ends with Rule, Britannia!, which witnesses an extraordinary display by the soloist, who is expected to do something either amusing or spectacular with his/her outfit. It never fails to please each year. It finishes with God Save The Queen in an arrangement by Benjamin Britten, which I think is better than the original, and everyone sings Auld Lang Syne to finish the night off holding hands.

It is the night of the year when we can see everything good about Britain: the artistic talent of its musicians and singers; the rebellious yet good-natured demeanour of many of its denizens, and the depth of affection that people hold for the little wind-swept island off the coast of Europe that once really did rule the waves. The season has taken place 125 times, and is a direct link to the days of Empire, yet the people who attend the concert are open-minded and cultured internationalists who understand Britain's place in the world, which is the reason why for the last three years, there has been a steady increment in the number of EU flags that have appeared at the Last Night finale. In fact, last night, the blue and yellow more or less outdid the Union Jack. So much so, it made the Daily Express explode with rage:

A cut-out from my anti-Brexit group Facebook feed

Oh but it REALLY infuriated the Brextremists on the readers' replies section:

The Express reported that one very disgruntled Twit(ter user) wrote: (1) "Is there anything as weak, as petty or as demeaning to our nation as the waving of EU flags during Last Night of the Proms? Those flags should be burned, along with all other symbols of degeneracy and the power of finance."

A reader called Dave77 said, (2) "Waving a much detested FOREIGN FLAG is the 100% epitome of being a TRAITOR, when you are celebrating a genuine BRITISH FESTIVAL"

The same bozo said in a later post: (3) "I truly have never heard of one single person that was PROUD to be a member of the much detested EU --That could only happen if your ancestry is somewhat diluted in a European fashion maybe."

And finally, this splendid self-own by someone who goes by the name Henpecked: (4) "The remoaners and all this EU flag waving reminds me of 1930s Germany where a certain party rode rough shod over democracy by sheer force of obsession and numbers.
We must not let democracy be defeated by this shabby lot, democracy must always win."

Well I would like to reply personally to all of these "points" raised (if one can call them that):

(1) Firstly, the Twit - actually, my friend, the very reason people feel they should wave them is because they don't like petty parochials like you who can't see the difference between patriotism and nationalism. The ability to wave EU flags at a British event is in fact a sign of open-mindedness and openness to the world, which is what your idol, Liam Fox, is constantly seeking. He, though, makes you think you need to leave an international organisation in order to be more global, and you lot fall for it.

You know, you can go ahead and burn the EU flag if you like - you think it will trigger us in the same way setting fire to a Union Jack would trigger you. Well it won't, because we're not actually the ones who are highly-strung. The EU flag is not a symbol of degeneracy and the power of finance. To me, it is a very personal symbol of belonging.

Churchill himself said, "We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and... wherever they go in this wide domain... will truly feel, ‘Here I am at home.'" And that's how I feel. Just because your only foray into mainland Europe is to go and do British things on the Costa Del Sol for a fortnight a year, things you wouldn't do at home, like eat a Full English breakfast every day or sing insulting songs to non-British passers-by (although maybe you would), it doesn't mean you have to spoil it for the rest of us - those millions who have made their home in another EU country and are happily settled and integrated there.

(2) and (3) Well Dave, I have news for you: I see Europe totally differently to you. You have never met one person who is proud to be a member of the EU because of the small-town circles you go around in. From the very little information I have gained from your "effort" on the Express thread, it is easy to suppose that you haven't spent too long in the company of more internationally-minded people.

The EU flag is not a foreign flag; it is the flag that represents 28 countries in Europe living side-by-side in peace, and that includes the UK (still). In fact, to me, nobody and nothing is foreign unless he/she/it makes a great effort to denigrate anyone not like them. For me, when I talk about "the north", I mean areas on the Baltic or North Sea, and when I talk about "the south", I mean those on the Mediterranean. I don't get infuriated if someone comes to my town and carries on with their own way of life, because it's perfectly normal. 

I doubt you go to Torremolinos and speak Spanish and eat pinchitos at a chiringuito, so why should a Pole speak English, drink Tetley's and go for a ride to the garden centre on Sundays? In fact, at home, I have BBC as standard TV channel (I have watched German TV for about 5 hours of the ten years I have been here) and drink Marks & Spencer tea. Integration is not what you think - it is the ability to see others as human beings, speak the local language, and not enforce your customs on them.

As for calling the attendees at the Proms traitors, that is really very weak. The fact is, the vast majority of reasonably-minded, balanced people find Brexit to be a betrayal in itself. It is seen by them as a regression of the United Kingdom into a much diminished shadow of its former self. The problems causing people to vote to leave the EU are mainly inflicted on the people by the British government, and it will only get worse when the EU is not there to act as a conscience.

(4) How wrong you are, Henpecked: it is the other way round. We see Brexit as a landgrab by dark and anti-democratic forces. Have you ever wondered why Brexit is being bankrolled by extremely rich businessmen? Because they care not one bit about the ordinary man or woman in the street. They will earn vast amounts of money by pulling the country out of the EU, and to make it happen, they will go to any length. But the best way to make it happen is to recruit the working man. Every revolution has been won by gaining the support of the working man, and every time the working man falls for the trick of the ringleader, which is to curtail his freedoms and get rich off the worker's back. You know the film The Producers, where the writers of a Broadway musical want to make a flop because they'll earn a lot of money out of it? That's really what Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ilk are up to. And you can't see it. 

I am sure you are one of those people that if the EU eradicated plastic pollution from our seas, you'd be moaning about how "Brussels" is taking away your right to drink tea in a plastic cup, even if you don't. In fact, you complain about everything the EU does, even if it is for the common good. 

No, it is not a panacea or an answer to every problem, but it is the best we have, and we should help it to grow, not attack it for everything it does to help.

So finally, I would like to let you know that there is someone here who is proud to call himself a European, and I know a great deal more people like me. Maybe, Dave, it's the circles I go around in...