Bit late to the party but I have a couple of things to say about Brexit. This post is a bit introspective, because I voted to leave and would do so again, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I can't pin down exactly why that is my decision. I voted with my gut. I'd appreciate if someone could begin some kind of dialectic on this, I'm not explicitly trying to defend myself.
Also well done to Wales who voted to leave but still want all the EU flood relief money they get!
The Wales vote still surprises me. In spite of the amount of EU funding the Valleys have received - entire town centres being transformed with EU money - and all of these areas voted to leave. I can only think it must be ignorance of where the money has come from.
I'm most worried for all the people I know who come from various countries in Europe and live in Britain. This referendum has been a giant "screw you!" to them.
Sadly this is very true. It's strange actually, I arrived in Luxembourg on the evening of the 23rd June, one major seat of the Union, and woke up to my Austrian girlfriend crying about the result on the morning of the 24th. It was a strange feeling.
People may call me selfish or stupid for voting to leave when I had something so personal at stake. I only told her how I voted a few days after the referendum. She lives in the UK with me and obviously we are not certain of her status once we eventually leave. But despite this, for some reason I still voted to leave. It was certainly not through lack of care, or a personal slight against Europeans. Although I completely understand how it seems like a personal attack, and for some leave voters it was, but it certainly wasn't for me.
Over the next few days in Luxembourg I went sightseeing to the ECJ, and went into an EU information centre to talk to the people there, which I will come back to.
The only way I can think of that this makes sense is if you think the EU is doomed anyway, and that it's better to get out now in a halfway orderly fashion than to be caught up in its collapse. Though if that comes true, it will be the very definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I feel that a 'preemptive' strike concerning the EU is at least in part behind my thinking. A long-term economic and monetary union is certainly possible; but I doubt an ever closer political union will ever be able to work in the long term. The problem with this thinking is that it is simply my gut feeling that it won't work, and that the end will be messy - the scale of the EU project has never been attempted before and so we have no yardstick of success or longevity for such a complex union. I could be completely wrong, but in the current state of affairs, I would be surprised if the EU lasts another 50 years, by which time I'll be 71.
As an aside, it has annoyed me that the elderly have been targeted for exercising their democratic rights and 'stealing' the future of the EU from the young voters. Young people tend to be stupid and naive. They don't know what they want and have not yet been disillusioned to how the world really works. Simply by virtue of time old people have more life experience and therefore can exercise greater foresight. Granted, a fair few are stuck-in-the muds!
But my granddad is over 80 and voted to remain with admirable caution for people's futures beyond his own life. I have heard first-hand people saying that old people should not be allowed to vote on such matters, and it upsets me that people would want to deny him his vote. Plainly it is the arrogance of youth.
I voted leave cos the EU made an irreversible decision in 2015 that negatively affected my business. It was a moment where I experienced a British law being surpassed by a European one, and it made me worse off. So fuck em. I consider most other reasons to be mainstream media influenced, borders, migration, gdp, and believe people should vote with respect to their actual lives and issues that personally affect them and "what the world wants" second.
I was always keeping remain in mind because as I say there are many strong reasons for it. But another turning point for me was an on the street interview with a woman giving her opinion on the EU. In the background was this homeless guy asking for change and of course londoners just strolling by ignoring. And it was that contrast between someone giving such a shit about the EU to a tv reporter and homeless people in the background not being given a shit about that made me realize we have so many of our own issues that need sorting first, whatever it takes.
I think these two things get to the heart of my views on the EU and Brexit. When I went to the EU information centre in Luxembourg, I had no idea of the strength of dedication and optimism towards the EU project on the mainland. I had a long conversation with the woman who worked there and she was genuinely sad about the result, she had been crying all morning. And I just couldn't picture myself ever getting emotional about the EU, or believing it was in any way an important feature of my life, in the sense that it was something tangible and visible to look up to as a unifying undertaking. It is a bold claim but I think it is fair to say, that even of the people who voted remain, in general they do not care half as much about the EU as the average Luxembourgian or Austrian. I'm certain that Brexit was
always going to happen, because there is a fundamental ideological principle of togetherness that underpins the entire EU, which has not permeated the culture or psyche of the average UK citizen.
I am genuinely hopeful for a new chapter of my country outside of a union that I do not identify with. I think that a vote to leave by the 51.9% of people reveals a sense of optimism: the short term will definitely not be easy, it will be hard, but the optimism is for the future, and that is what we need right now.
