When all is said and done

I’m not going to spend much time on this because there is no point, but anyway…

We’re leaving the EU tonight, pulling up the drawbridge to Europe, into an unclear, uncertain future. 47 years of membership, during which time Britain became a far bigger player on the international stage because of the influence the EU gave us, gone just like that. Today we were at the very heart of Europe. Tomorrow, we will be European in only but name.

There were plenty of reasons as to why Britons voted to leave Europe. Immigration, extra money for the NHS, the perception that Europe was responsible for all the ills of our society and probably many more. But vote to leave we did and now it’s all over bar the shouting and there won’t be much of that come 11.00 pm tonight, at least from the Europhiles.

Half of me is Dutch so I feel deeply rooted in European union as a concept and as an economic social model. A quarter of me is Norwegian, a country that sits outside the EU but follows all its rules and is closely aligned to it. Now, we will sit outside of Europe, in all likelihood for the rest of my life and it makes me terribly sad.

A European union was the dream of, among others, Winston Churchill, as good people sought to ensure the traumas of World War 2 were never repeated again. So far so good. Throughout the world, we once again see the rise of nationalism, especially here at home, with the rightward drift of the Conservative party and the arrival on the scene of one issue parties like UKIP and the Brexit Party, and we live in an era where hatred and bigotry is fast becoming the norm. For the foreseeable, and indeed unforeseeable, future Churchill’s dream is dead and now we face a future alone as an island nation.

If Brexit turns out to be a wonderful success, I will hold my hands up and admit I was wrong. But if it is the disaster I believe it will be, with the UK unravelling and as a long, slow, painful decline of our country begins, I hope that those who took us out of Europe will own the results and consequences and not blame those of us who fought long and hard for, in my case, a soft Brexit or no Brexit at all.

More than anything, I am terribly sad at our departure from Europe and apologise sincerely to the young who will lose so many of the rights and freedoms my generation enjoyed.

Good luck to the EU going forward. They will need it less than we will.