Brexit

I  don’t write political polemic; I don’t get into political arguments. Because?  Because I don’t cope well with confrontation, because I can’t think quickly enough for the kind of ‘political debate’ we have in the world today – the kind of debate that can be conducted in no more than 140 characters.

However, the fallout from Thursday’s referendum is making me so angry that I have to express myself somehow, somewhere.

The media, and especially social media, suggests - nay, assumes, that votes were cast on one of two platforms: immigration and economics; and that people (note people – not Fascists/the elderly/Christians/working class …) who voted to leave the EU have done so because they’re unable to think for themselves/to learn from history/selfish.

People have voted as they have,  because they’ve had to think for themselves – nothing informative, no reasoned argument was available. The debate was - and continues to be - conducted at a disgracefully puerile level.  Some of the worst: ‘Vote leave and brie/your summer holiday/the price of petrol will become more expensive’; ‘Vote remain and the country will be inundated with immigrants’; ‘Vote leave and open the door to war’.

How dare people suggest that the elderly who voted leave open the door to war!  This is the generation who either lived through the second world war or lived with the aftermath – loss of family and friends; rationing; whole streets destroyed; the generation who lived through the anxiety of the Cold War; whose children have fought in the Falklands, Iraq,  Afghanistan. This is a generation who have experienced wars fought on humanitarian grounds and later experienced the effects of wars conjured by political spin for purely economic reasons.