Last word on Brexit (enough already)

(Image, courtesy of The Guardian)

This post as posted first as a comment on Woebegone but Hopeful with whom I’ve engaged in regular correspondence on a variety of topics, but most recently, on Brexit.

As with all these things, my friend and fellow blogger, a level will be found and the waters will settle. In the meantime, people who had the money, made hay on the chaos by buying short and selling long, quickly, for the purpose of quick, opportunistic profit taking.

Meanwhile, of those who’ve voted ‘leave’, some have woken to find themselves treading unknown waters, afraid of drowning; others are saying, hurrah, now we have our country back again but find those who have led them there, curiously absent, in ideas and in person.

But there are others who believe they’ve done the right thing, that now someone will sit up and pay notice, that the institution they’ve rejected was not what it was sold to be, but a corporate convenience store; full of cheap, pliant labour, a ready market for their shoddy goods, in debt and scared, needing rules, regulations and restrictions and grateful for their patronage, for the right to survive. And then some just didn’t know what they were doing, like the Brexit leaders, who thought, if the EU wouldn’t let them play, they’d take their ball home and say, ‘fuck it’, without any consideration of the implications of their actions on others.

All these markets need each other, it is their raison d’etre and if there’s one thing capitalism will not deny itself, it’s a market. The worst fear is the Brexiters have created a scenario that further weakens their position. The UK always sat in the EU, with one foot in, the other out. Now they’re out, outside and excluded in the corridors of that power centre.

The analogy of the English football team is now, curiously, apt. Not to detract from Iceland’s achievement, skill and determination but England was defeated as much by its own overbearing arrogance, as much as the strength of the Iceland team. Now, the arrogance of the UK, as a political entity, is seen, with regret, for what it is, the Emperor’s New Clothes.

I write this with regret, since the swagger of John Bull has never been a pleasing sight to anyone on its receiving end but there is a British/UK quality that is admirable and that is visible and palpable in the spirit of the Magna Carta, for example that spirit that recognised the value of people as equal and democratic and in need of our mutual care. (Damn, you’ve started me on this crap, again)

But perhaps the single most hateful thing about all the lying and deception is it has handed an air of entitlement to the worst of the Little Britoners who feel they now have a mandate for open abuse of minorities and immigrants. Those are not the British people I have known and worked with all my life but the sad thing is, it is those Britons who have unleashed this wave of hate.

Or, at least, that’s what we’re being told. By who? Well, the media, newspapers, radio, television, social networks and…whoah, there. Are you serious? You’ve got to step back and ask yourself a question? Over 17 million people voted to leave, so what were they saying with that vote?

Y’see, I think many of them were simply saying ‘Enough Already, stop. There’s something wrong and we need to change it. So forget the fear and embrace the reality. Things must change and let’s hope that change might be a ‘Magna Carta’ for the new millennium, a charter of human rights and public obligations to cherish everyone as equal, to work together to make our world a better place, with cleaner air and water, proper living conditions and health services, the right to a job and a home and not a debt serf life with despair and deprivation as the only things to look forward to. When did we decide not to respect and cherish old people? Why are people hungry and homeless, when there is so much wealth?