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.
- A great number of people are conned daily into believing they are being ruled by Brussels.
- Too many people found themselves excluded from the benefits of economic development
- Apathy and ignorance
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...
