Friday 6 July 2018

Brexit - Stand by or Stand up?

It's been 2 years and I have still yet to hear a cogent and considered case for leaving the EU. I hear all the possibilities of potential opportunities formed of hope based on ideas of national sovereignty and disgust that we aren't treated in an even more special way by the EU than we are , but nothing that makes me think that there is any good to come of leaving the EU or maybe I missed something somewhere.
This is not about facts or cheating, lies or manipulation. This is ideological.
Have we paid a lot into the EU? Yes.
Have we got a lot out of that economic and political membership, from dispensation to special treatment to trade opportunities and the pick of expertise and employees? Yes.
Do we, as a nation, consider ourselves different and superior to the rest of Europe? Apparently yes.
Were we dictated to by the EU? Yes, but based on different agreements because of our status within the EU, along with every other member state. That's what happens in a club.
Were we lorded over by unelected European politicians? Nope. The MEPs were all elected to their various departments and parliaments, making them elected officials. Not by us, but then I didn't vote for the Tories and look where we are now. It doesn't make them unelected. They are many other things, but they are elected. 
The government is failing abysmally to negotiate with one entity and claiming the other side is being mean! How, in the name of all that is holy or damned, can we possibly imagine they'll be able to negotiate single treaties with multiple economic, political, cultural and ideologically different entities at the same time? 
At a time when we should be pulling together globally, not just nationally, the media that apparently is promoting liberalism and a hatred of democracy to fight (oh god, "the will of the people") Brexit is also fanning the fires of fascism and right wing nationalism, along with everything that entails. Thus dividing all the good that we can do in the most destructive way. 
This is an ideological war couched in political rhetoric presented by agenda-led media, no matter what side you are on, whether by design, belief, background, education or coin toss.
Changing my mind will not happen by berating me for refusing to accept something I believe to be utterly wrong or insulting me because I don't think what you want me to think. 
Insulting me is not going to work. Pleading won't work. Providing me with a plan for the future, workable opportunities that enable us to work beneficially with others in a way that will not see us manipulated and abused because of need or expediency, greed or panic is the way to go. But I see none of that.
I have been and always will remain open to the possibility that, regardless of how I voted, we will not simply survive this but thrive. However, nothing about the decision, the negotiating team and government or the current economic and political environment lead me to believe leaving the EU is anything other than utterly wrong.
I look forward to being proved mistaken, but until I am, I will fight this decision with the exact same determination that those who voted for it have to pursue closure. Not because I am undemocratic but precisely because I am truly democratic.
The decision is one that has highlighted massive ideological differences around the United Kingdom and whether we leave with a soft, hard or non existant deal isn't going to make any kind of difference to the divisions that are starker and potentially more damaging than they have ever been.
Leaving Europe won't give us the government we need, political change will. And not simply another party in charge but a shift in the manner in which politics is structured and the way in which we engage with it. Social media has given people voice without responsibility, information without substance, opinion without fact. And, as with this "essay", an easy way to speak our minds. 
Change is inevitable. We need to find a way to ensure that change benefits everyone, not just the few currently manipulating things to their own ends. 
Leaving the EU will be very good for some and increasingly hard on everyone else. But it will be as nothing if we cannot resolve the ideological fracturing of this great nation.
I haven't written this without hope or to ridicule what I think is wrong, rather with determination to stand for what I believe and the hope that we will thrive.
There's giving someone a chance and there's not standing by when it looks like it's all going to pot.
Where do you stand? Chance or pot?

MY - July 2018