Abuse, and the Remain voters who enable it

There are numerous examples of European projects from which, we’ve been told, mainly by the EU, we’ll get nothing should we have the conceit to (Br)exit, never mind the much-anticipated problems with our food and medical supplies. Were we to use the marriage/divorce analogy these threats should strike us as the kind of relationship where one partner says to their disenchanted other “if you leave, you’ll get nothing, not even that for which you’ve so clearly contributed; life will be (made) difficult.”

I voted Remain (I’m a little tired at feeling the need to say that), I was upset at the result, yet what to think of those whose anger at an impending separation is such that they blame the victim of the abuse, rather than the actions of the abuser? This is clearly an abusive relationship, and you know what they say about those. At least I thought I did.

Distracted boyfriend

Kinder, gentler politics

Sound and fury

If it takes you two years to specifically address anti-Semitism without hiding behind “all forms of racism”, and then only when you’re cornered…

If your deputy one day promises to “eradicate” anti-Semitism, and the next claims to be unable to address the issue of a prominent member of the NEC questioning the suspension of an alleged holocaust denier...

If after promising to act, you have local Constituency Labour Parties threatening an MP with deselection or, in the case of Bristol West, being called in to explain their actions in supporting the Jewish community by attending an anti-racist demo…

I’d say that counts as enabling the behaviour that you claim isn’t in your name. The rest is just noise, signifying nothing.

You can have any representation you want

Democracy, the great leveller. It cares not for education, nor wealth; no one vote is more important than the other. In this, if only this, we are all equal.

The poor, the uneducated, are - we are told - more likely to have voted Leave. Conversely this means the educated and the wealthy are more likely to have voted Remain. Despite my somewhat questionable academic achievement, and my even more questionable finances, I voted Remain too. I think leaving the EU is a mistake.

Yet were the referendum result somehow overturned what does this say? That some people don't count, that - despite what you've been told - some people don't matter. If the result is overturned, I hope we’ll all have the good grace to stop asking why some feel disenfranchised, when the cause should be obvious. It simply doesn’t cut it to say you can have any representation you want, so long as it’s the EU.

Sovereignty

Fellow remain voters tempted to snark at ‘Leavers’ complaints that sovereignty won is now being (mis)used by parliament – along the lines of “isn’t this what they asked for?”, and presumably followed by much self-congratulatory guffawing at their own cleverness – are rather missing the point. That is that sovereignty lies somewhere along the line of existing only within the people, to something granted to parliament through the express wishes of the people. Either way it suggests to me that whether by accident or otherwise, your Leave voter’s position on this particular detail is more nuanced; or, in other words, correct.

This is just to say

This is just to say

I have wrapped
the presents
that were in
the cupboard

and which
you were probably
thinking were
for you

Forgive me
yours were not
so important
and so forgotten.