I have nothing to say (but i said it anyway)

[thisbluespirit]

We just left the EU. I didn't think it would really happen when it came to it. The thing is, regardless of what rational reasons there might be to vote Leave (because life and politics is always complex, regardless of where I stand in them), this campaign wasn't run on them; we didn't hear any of them - it was run from start to finish on pure hate for all 'foreigners'. And 72% of Britons came out and voted, 48% Remain, 52% Leave. And a good portion of the Remain vote was Scotland alone, so England (and sadly even Wales) is even more proportionally to blame.

My country is a xenophobic, racist country. It's official. We voted Leave because we have an island mentality and we hate the rest of Europe and all immigrants. It would be lovely to think it was at least for other reasons, but that's not what the Leave campaign was about, so I don't have the luxury of clinging to illusions . I'd really, really have liked to believe that the Leave people were a noisy unpleasant minority, but they're not. They're at least half of us and so we'd risk economic collapse, all for hate, misplaced blame and flag-waving. (But, Europe, nearly half of us don't hate you. What can we say?)

What the practical fall-out will be, who knows. It looks like we're set for more recession at least in the short term and possibly Boris Johnson as PM by October. I just hope, the political climate being what it is, none of the rest of these right-wingers in Europe feel inclined to follow our example. The world needs the other countries to at least try and be better than us. It shouldn't be too difficult right now.

Comments

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

As bad as it seems (and it seems pretty bad), I'm not sure it's as bad as all that. People seem to have voted more out of catastrophic ignorance than hate. Today's Google stats tell us that Britain basically woke up this morning, boggled, and then started frantically Googling to find out what it was it had just voted itself out of. The news has been filled with people saying that they voted out, but didn't really think it would happen, and were just trying to stick it to the government.

Yep, we've basically screwed the country, and potentially half the world, by accident. Sorry everyone. What's worse is that the majority of young people - ie, those who will really be affected by all this - voted to stay. So we've screwed them over too. Sorry kids.

At this rate, Cameron is going to be remembered as the bloke who did a Pontius Pilate on a whole country. "Don't look at me! All I did was ask a lot of unqualified people to make a complicated economic decision for me. Not my fault they didn't know what they were doing. Bye!"

*headdesk* doesn't begin to cover it.

[thisbluespirit]

People may have voted out of ignorance - and this was my first reaction in shock this morning - but still, the Leave campaign was run on hating immigrants and foreigners. Nobody can pretend racism and xenophobia didn't play a part, whether caused by a need to protest at how broken we already were, ignorance or whatever. We know what Nigel Farage is and we just validated him. And England did it. Scotland didn't, Northern Ireland didn't. England and Wales did it. And I don't know what to say. Because everyone non-English and non-white today is going to feel that much more scared here, and they're right to - and we need to do everything we can to change that. I don't think we can ignore it.

(Although I'd take that Googling thing with a pinch of salt - I mean, the easiest way to get at news this morning would be to Google "EU"!)

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

I think the point is they were typing in "What is the EU?", but yes, I am inclined be a little sceptical!

I guess the reason I'm a little more optimistic is that I'm aware of the reasons why people around here voted out, and it's not (predominately) xenophobic, but admittedly that's hardly a nationwide sample. But yeah, I'm seeing comments from good people today who are afraid now in a way that they haven't been before, just because they weren't born in this country, or because they aren't white. And I don't know what to say to them.

Mind you, within twelve hours of the result being announced, the Leave lot were saying "Whoops! Mistake!" about the £350M thing, and saying that immigration won't go down. So goodness knows what all the Leave voters are thinking right now.

PS: Saw this on Twitter, and it amused me. Good to have something to smile about: https://twitter.com/NicholasPegg/status/746061996089577472