The God Damned Brexit

art by Ralph STEADman

The whole Brexit thing has gone to shit. I don’t care which side you’re on, because it’s all going spectacularly wrong in ways that some had not foreseen. I’m English, in my mid 40’s and have been lucky enough to work in a fair few countries, both European and otherwise over the years. But no matter where I have been living and working there is always one constant… politicians are a bunch of lying bastards. All of them to a man (or indeed woman). I trust them about as much as I trust a crazy guy with bolt cutters near my cock.

When the votes started to come in on the early hours of Friday morning, I was drinking in a nightclub with my fiancee. Due to having a damn ulcer, finding a drink that didn’t flare it up had become like Russian Roulette. Ciders sent it into orbit, anything fizzy likewise and as for my old usual nightclub drink of Newcastle Brown Ale…well that wasn’t much better. So I was stuck on this horrible flat Fosters in tiny bottles obviously intended for midgets. My broken rib made me feel like I was being repeatedly stabbed with white hot screwdrivers. Mirroring the terrible sense of dread that was overcoming me.

At first it all looked like the status quo would be maintained and there would be no leaving Europe for the British Isles. But as more and more votes came in my terrible suspicions were shown to be true. The idiots had taken over the asylum. After decades of the populace being dumbed down by a combination of the Murdoch controlled media and successive political parties, those with the loudest voices and the lowest IQ’s had taken over. It was a coup by the idiot masses. I’m not referring of course to people who voted as their conscience told them after reading all available facts, but of course the fact it had now given carte blanche to the racists, bigots and xenophobes to use this as a big stick to bash anyone not considered English enough with.

There are many out there on the extreme right-wing who have been waiting patiently for decades for an unspoken permission to be their ‘real selves’ and revert back to 1970’s English stereotypical racists. As nearly everyone in England saw the when they woke up on Friday, it’d all gone pear-shaped. The pound had gone suicidal and taken a nosedive off the top of the stock exchange roof. Pension funds thought that was a great idea, and so joined it and followed suit. £150 million had been wiped off pension funds…the list goes on. Those who felt they had been abandoned by governments both Tory and Labour were crowing all over social media like they had just won a huge pile of money. The air was toxic with decades long friendships coming to an end over a matter of opinion, families in crisis after huge arguments because someone based their entire reason for voting on what was a proven lie… the stories go on and on. It wasn’t pretty.

But that now needs to be put to one side as what’s done is done and you cannot unwind a clock. A second referendum would only draw out an already hideous process and affect the markets worse than ever. The big questions that have to be faced now are the hard ones no politician wants to have to face. The Prime Minister (A pig fucking Eton educated toff who was a member of the appalling Bullingdon Club in university) played a political masterstroke in the aftermath. Even as a person who hates everything he stands for I am intelligent enough to see an amazing bit of political maneuvering when I see it! Instead of immediately putting into action Article 50, which would then set the whole process in motion…he resigned. This had a number of effects that may not be immediately obvious. Firstly the pretender to the Prime Ministerial crown Boris Johnson. If (or indeed when) he is elected as party leader would then have to ‘press the button’ that would nuke the United Kingdom as a group of countries. This would leave him as the last prime minister of the UK as we know it. The kilt wearers can’t wait to be shot of us (quite rightly as well); the Northern Irish are partly panicked as it put the peace they have had in danger (due to much of the Good Friday agreement being based on EU rules that would then no longer apply) and also partly thinking of finally reuniting Ireland. Then we have the Welsh, (who no bugger can work out) and which way they are going to bounce. No one wants to be the man to press that button to start all that. We’d need the mission impossible music playing very loudly in the background at least.

So the winning side appears in the last 24 hours to be backing off a fair bit. That nasty little bug eyed bastard that is the leader of the UK Independence Party Mr Nigel Farage. Farage couldn’t wait to pop onto the morning telly to say ‘actually guys you remember that promise to put the £350 million we give to the EU to the national health service? Nah never said it bruv! Ain’t gonna happen!’ When it was pointed out that this was in 4 feet tall letters on the side of his ‘battle bus’ he spelt out that that’s was a ‘mistake’ and he’d have never promised such a thing despite traveling around in a vehicle that had this promise in huge fucking letters on the side. So it appears despite being a bug eyed little bastard, he is indeed as blind as a bat.

Then we have Boris Johnson himself, who was yet another member of the reprehensible Bullingdon club and has known the prime minister for many decades. The word from Westminster is that Boris and Davey boy do not get on these days and Boris picked his side purely as a bit of political maneuvering to enable him to eventually be prime minister. While appearing on the surface to be an amiable buffoon in the best British eccentric tradition, that is in fact all an act and just theater as beneath the surface is a quick witted intelligent political thinker with a heart of ice. In the last 24 hours at the time of writing he also has stated that there should be “no big hurry” to enact article 50 and set in motion the whole process.

The elephant in the room after all of this is the fact that the referendum is not legally binding. It’s basically a huge opinion poll. The vast majority of members of parliament do not want to vote to leave Europe. So by stepping down as prime minister David Cameron has put Boris in a position he now doesn’t really want to be in, has the vast majority of members of parliament mostly in favour of either ignoring the whole referendum thing and doing what they want anyway; or voting against their conscience. Either way nothing can become law in the UK without going through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

But what about the real life effects? As I mentioned at the start, all politicians are lying bastards who are chasing power and position and the very idea of the populous is secondary. The EU are running around like headless tits panicking at the reality of something happening that they really, really didn’t think the British would vote in favour of. Wanting us out as fast as possible before we infect the rest of Europe with our disease, all the while nothing is actually going to happen until a new leader of the country is found in October.

Many people voted in favour of leaving because they were scared the country was about to be taken over by immigrants and that we were not making our own decisions any more. Some of that was ramped into orbit and often downright lied about by Murdoch’s media empire. We’ve bred a populace that believe what they are told and accept whatever new bogeyman we have been told to hate. They’ve been dumbed down to the point where they don’t even question the facts any more. But more worrying than some people on social media having a good crow about being on the winning side for once is that this has opened up the extreme right wing in a way that’s fast being seen as acceptable. Those odious little toads are already holding up banners in large towns all over England saying that after closing the borders we should deport all the non white people. With the leadership of both main political parties currently up in the air, nothing being done until a new prime minister is in place…this opens up a fast track for the far right. It’s all very very worrying.

Part of me feels sorry for the normal people who voted to leave. Many of whom are now being called racists. Many are not, but alas they voted along with the people who are, therefore people are lumping them together in the same way the racists and right wing politicians lumped together all Muslims together as evil suicide bombing rapists. People who have been born in this country or have lived here paying taxes for decades have been subject to abuse simply for not being English or not being white enough, in the last few days more so than ever. They don’t feel safe any more, and to be quite honest I don’t blame them!

The right wing hubris is fast getting out of control although it’s all getting rather fuzzy telling who is a racist and who voted as their conscience told them to. Let me give you an example. I’ve seen many people in my hometown (99% of who.. although I ‘know them’ it’s not a case of being mates with them) declare that their vote wasn’t for racist reasons and they aren’t a racist. Now in a lot of cases this is probably true, however what worries me is when it’s said by someone who has stood in a bar and said on many occasions that all Muslim babies should be skinned alive and then burned. You know I could be wrong…but that does sound almost like that person is a wee bit racist! It’s going to get harder and harder to tell who is a goose stepping Nazi and who simply voted as they thought was right.

But people are allowed to vote as they wish although if we do not want a massive world wide Nazi resurgence then all politicians need to start thinking of the big picture and not just themselves and their own careers. My feeling is this has scared the political elite (who ironically will still be in charge after we leave Europe) enough for them to try and mend this fucked up situation as well as they can. The fact that it even seems that the Murdoch media is starting to wind back the rhetoric a wee bit today says a great deal. But just like me….the country needs an escape plan. I’ve got mine in place….let’s hope they have one as well. As once the people who voted to leave see that things have not gotten better as they were promised but have indeed gotten far worse…heads will roll. The option is to either use what little is in the coffers to buy off people with some extravagant spending or to admit…. It’s all gone pear shaped guv.

This is why it’s best not to discuss religions or politics with friends or relatives.