I’m not a political person. I don’t trust (most) politicians from any party. Some local councillors are ok to be fair, but even then not all of them. Politicians say what they want you to hear. They can’t give a straight answer a straight question. They tell lies (remember the big red bus and the £350 million for the NHS?) And too many of them over the years have been shown to not have any grip on reality
I don’t profess to understand Brexit. After three years I’m still struggling to understand what a backstop is (we used to have them when I played cricket as a kid) or what ‘no deal’ really means (for the eejits out there I know at least that it isn’t not leaving the EU as some seem to think).
What I do know is this. David Cameron in his infinite wisdom (perhaps ‘wisdom’ is the wrong word here), decided to go to the country to ask whether we should leave the EU or not. Clearly no one thought for a moment that the country would vote Leave. But vote Leave they did - by a fine margin. Whoops. Didn’t see that coming. Clearly no one (we’ll Dave anyway) had really considered what leaving would mean apart from the chance to have a nice blue passport, and as a result we’ve spent the last three years trying to work it out.
Dave, having realised his faux pas promptly legged it, and no one has seen or heard from him since.
So the incumbent government under the leadership of Remainer Mrs May, has ploughed on regardless. “It’s what people voted for”. “It’s what they want” is what we hear. Erm, no it isn’t. It’s what just over half voted for with no understanding of what leaving would actually mean. Anyone who did know wasn’t admitting it. Maybe people though it was about getting bendy cucumbers or gnarly tomatoes back and not being told what to do by those nasty people in Brussels. Personally I suspect many of the people who voted Leave just did so to stick one up the Tories backside, a sort of general election by proxy if you will. Anyhow, here we are.
Brexit is less than a month away as I write this and we’re still none the clearer on what this actually means or the impact it will have. The doom mongers would have us believe there will be shortages of food, medicines, and no people to do the jobs that no British people want to do. Foreign nationals, some who have been in the UK a long tine are genuinely fearing for their future. The Brexiteers are jumping for joy that we’ll be rid of that nasty EU who tie us into legislation and stuff like that whilst hastily shifting their business and money overseas
Businesses meanwhile generally seem pretty worried by the prospect. A friend of mine in an important job in a massive organisation has said he’s had to buy shedloads of stuff (millions of pounds worth) just in case because he’s got no clue what the impact of Brexit will actually be but fears it will raise prices dramatically. And he’s a very clever chap (much cleverer than any politician I’d argue).
What really annoys me is that we’ve spent three years buggering about. As a country we must have spent millions if not billions on this. The time, effort and energy could have been spent on things of much greater importance. The NHS for one, but many other things besides. Roads, schools, etc. You get the idea.
It’s hard to see a resolution with any positive outcome at this point. Our leaders (and I say that with tongue firmly in cheek) keep saying it’s the will of the people (well it was about the will of half of them three years ago when we knew nothing of the mayhem to come) and that no deal is better than a bad deal -(remember eejits, that no deal doesn’t mean no Brexit).
Well for what it’s worth I think the politicians (on all sides) have well and truly put the country in a worse place now than we were three years ago, and who knows where we’ll be in another three years time.
I’m off for a pint before the country runs out of beer. At least I’ll have a new blue passport when the time comes to renew mine.
