Sorry

I’d like to make an apology. Yesterday I retweeted a short, doctored video of Nigel Farage. He was doing his ‘dehumanising migrants crossing the Channel’ and the clip was dubbed satirically. To all intents and purposes, in the dubbed clip Farage was making himself out to be a racist. It was sharp, deep and funny. My apology is because I commented on my retweet: Brexit in a nutshell.

A number of my friends voted for Brexit … and I guess they may read this. If that’s the case then, sorry. You are not racist and any implication is regretted. Sorry, again.

On and after the vote me and my pals had a number of discussions. My Brexit friends were all about the poor management of the EU, the financial benefit of leaving the EU and … taking back control. I guess there was something in there about overcrowding and over-use of our services, such as the NHS. Their arguments were plausible. And I heard them all.

But I couldn’t budge. I was all the coined, ‘Project Fear’, and stability in Europe as part of a really together multi-national block, and that we should fix the system from within, and the ability of my kids and their kids to travel, live and work in Europe, and that we were living somewhere which was very multinational/multicultural and it worked fine [I often recounted that our little cul-de-sac in north Bristol has Iranians, multiple Eastern Europeans, a Portuguese lady and a black immigrant family at the end of the road. The only household I have little time for would identify themselves as White English.].

So there was some ‘immigration’ issues in our arguments, but it was about overcrowding more than the slow chip away at our the UK’s residual ethnicity.

So why did I retweet the video and make the comment? And why don’t I take it down?

Good question. I almost did. But I haven’t and I won’t.

I guess it’s because Farage’s Brexit is racist. And that, whilst my educated and kind friends are right to have their own views, anyone who stands shoulder to shoulder with Farage – they don’t but I reckon a large swathe of the original Brexit cohort are shoulder to shoulder with him – then they need to be called out for what they are: racists. Brexit was, for the majority, about immigrants. It was.

And that, for me, is such a heart-wrenching position. Although Johnson’s government is doing its best to undermine our way of life and our economy (I would argue), we have so much going for us in comparison to almost everyone else. Our NHS and welfare system is at the top of the pile and whilst we could do better, that safety net is strong and large. We are not at war, nor are we likely to be. There are no drones flying overhead – there is no secret police. Our climate, which I know is changing, is temperate. We have roads and shops and shelves full of stuff. And coffee shops and cinemas. We have a good, honest police force and a decent, stable army, not intent on a coup. Our schools are doing their best and, and I know this to be so, our teachers want the best from the children they teach. We are lucky …

… and we’re not trying to cross the busiest stretch of water in the world in a shitty little dinghy, having pawned everything we own and left everything, including our family, behind, because just over the water that wonderful, inclusive country looks like Nirvana.

We were once. Not long ago. I really believe that. Brexit has got close to destroying much of it in four years. It has lit our small-minded, nationalistic fervour and turned us into shadows of ourselves. Brexit has and will continue to make us poorer, both financially and in international standing, than Project Fear ever got close to suggesting.

And it is going to take a generation of nation builders to put it right. I really hope they are up for it.

Keep safe everyone.

[For the record, four more days on the cliff edge, writing, running, walking and cycling. All is good …]