My loyal reader – yes, I’m talking to you again – knows my position on Brexit. I wanted to remain in Europe. My point of view was defeated in the referendum, a referendum which was soiled, corrupted even, by dirty money and dirty liars. I found it almost impossible to accept the result and yet a big part of me did accept it.
My heart said we should leave with the best possible soft Brexit, a Norway + with membership of the single market, staying in the customs union and enforcing the powers we already had to control immigration, something successive governments, including Cameron and May’s, never did. I can’t remember calling enthusiastically for a second referendum, although in one or two of my 3600 blogs since 2014, I might have called for one. I didn’t mean it.
I was badgered to support the second referendum policy, whereby we would put to the vote the negotiated deal against remaining in the EU. I hated those who argued for Norway +, yet I always knew they were right. Now we leave Europe in a hard Brexit and I feel slightly guilty for not saying what I believed louder than I actually did.
For me, as it always is when I vote, it was about my family, my friends and the country as a whole. I wanted to stay in Europe because I wanted my family and friends to continue to enjoy the benefits of EU membership. I wanted to protect those who work in the manufacturing, service and financial sectors. I did not want a deregulated small state, low tax little England, begging for handouts from Donald Trump. There was a compromise. Hardly anyone wanted to compromise. It was only when Boris Johnson won last week’s election that I realised my silence was misplaced. Instead of quietly calling for Norway +, I should have been out hollering on the street for it.
I rather hoped, I suppose, that the second referendum would settle my nerves. If we got a second vote – which I dreaded actually and suspect we might have lost – things could have been even worse, hard though that is to imagine.
One of my friends, who I shall refer to as ‘John’ in order to protect his anonymity, also felt the same as me. And because John is someone I respect a great deal, it vindicated my view. We had to leave the EU, but only in the political sense, not the economic. It just felt wrong to tell the people they had got it wrong in the referendum. I think they were sold a bogus prospectus, based on lies and distortion, and they were never told the down side of Brexit, but more people felt it worth cutting ourselves off from Europe than those on my side of the debate.
So, my side lost the referendum and now my side, pitifully led, it must be admitted, has now lost any prospect of obtaining a soft Brexit. As soon as Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson helped fired the starting gun for last week’s election, the game was up.
I wish I had followed my instinct instead of trying to follow the crowd that called for me to support a second referendum I never really believed in. Weak, weak, weak. Will I ever learn?
