Britain votes for its next government tomorrow. It is definitely the end of an era. The polls (haha) tell us the present Conservative government is heading for a crushing defeat – maybe the worst in its nearly two hundred year history. If so, a depressing era in British politics will come to its well-deserved end. After the feeble premiership of Rishi Sunak and, before him, the failures that were David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, please let us find deliverance from that terrible day when we learnt that all the lies of the BREXIT referendum had led us, almost literally, to walk off a cliff, like The New Yorker’s brilliant cover from 4th July 2016.

I had always been a bit of a politics addict, but I got depressed in 2010, when David Cameron redefined what we understand to be leadership – it’s not leading, it’s cynically and weakly following populist headlines – and my political mood got worse with BREXIT and has stayed low ever since.

Today, the day before tomorrow, I am feeling optimistic, but still a bit worried. Yes, Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, and probable next Prime Minister, is a good man, a clever man, outstanding in almost every way apart from his self-marketing skills. I want to believe that he can and will succeed in bringing Britain back from the edge and help make the country a modern, fair and tolerant nation. I was going to say “a fair and tolerant nation again”, but I’m not sure, like the USA, it has ever been the great modern liberal nation that it should be. All the seeds are there, if only our politicians could lead the way.

Things can only get better as the slogan went, not fully aware of the hidden irony. They can and will, I am sure, I want us to return to the EU, but, I want more than that. We all deserve much more than that. I want us to start along that path of being a tolerant, egalitarian, nation of grown-ups. We need put away childish things, like The House of Lords, the aristocracy of elites, the fear of not being like our grandparents’ parents, they weren’t always right and they certainly weren’t free. We should give up those dreams of fictitious golden eras, and then maybe we could see the pride that can be won by citizenship in a community of equals, not subjects of our masters, equal citizens, no matter what race, class or nationality. You know, the stuff we could have got right a very long time ago but didn’t. Can we start tomorrow with the new government, I hope so.

But, no matter who becomes the British Prime Minister tomorrow, there’s still the problem of this man……but at least the era of Britain’s terrible prime ministers seems likely to end.

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Most people regard me as a typical Englishman, but, in reality I am, like many people born in the British Isles, a mixture of English, Scottish and Irish. It just happens that I grew up in Sussex in Southern England, with my father, Andy, who was a proud Scot and my mother, Irene, who is an equally proud English woman. I never knew my grandfathers, George, an Englishman and Archibald, a Scot from the Hebrides. The only grandmother I knew was my mother’s mother, Alice. She too was a proud English woman who told me many stories about her and my ancestors .

That, of course, wasn’t the whole story – I had another grandmother, Isabella, but she died in 1932, many years before I was born. This blog is about her and her role in my life.

My father, Andrew Bell (1896 – 1977), didn’t talk about the past very much. I was a child of his second marriage and was born after he had retired from his career as an army officer, serving mostly in India when it was still a part of the British Empire.

He had joined the army as a young Scotsman at the start of the First World War and was wounded in action at the Dardanelles. He was posted to India in 1919 where he married and had his first family. He never lived in Scotland again. His father, Archibald, had died in 1899, when he was a child, and his mother, Isabella, remarried. They only met again twice, but my father talked of her when he was in rare moments of emotion and he always carried her photograph in the small prayerbook that he’d taken with him into war. If he hadn’t, I would never have known what my paternal grandmother looked like.

Isabella Cherry was born in County Tyrone in 1869 and grew up on the family farm that she left as a young woman to make a new life in Glasgow, Scotland where she met my grandfather, a young man who had left his family farm on Islay in the Hebrides, to make his life too in Glasgow – which is where my father was born. She and my grandfather had a difficult life, I suspect, and my father, too, had seen bad things fighting through two world wars.

I, on the other hand, had the kind of war-free childhood that was a gift to me and millions of other ‘babv-boomers’ lucky enough to grow up in Western Europe. I loved to hear tales of the Hebrides, of Scotland and of Ireland from my father, mostly over a few drinks in my early adulthood, when he had mellowed into his anecdotal retirement. I felt at that time that I owed it to him, that I didn’t see myself as entirely English. He was a man who had travelled the world throughout his life, and, my brothers and I had inherited, he told us, a certain ‘Irish spirit’ – maybe it was the restlessness and a love of adventure that had sent him across the globe. I don’t know if that is true, but he encouraged me to look to the larger world.

As a rebellious young man I thought of myself as not just a child of England, Scotland and Ireland, but, in Thomas Paine’s great phrase, a ‘citizen of the world’. In my idealism, I saw the future as a slow journey towards equality and the abolition of state boundaries. Beethoven’s great Ode to Freedom made me cry and I was proud that it was adopted as the European anthem. Yes, we were all going to be citizens of the world.

Then, yes, sorry to remind you all, we had the BREXIT referendum in the now precariously disunited United Kingdom, and the country voted narrowly to leave the European Union. Theresa May became prime minister and the country descended into chaos. If this wasn’t depressing enough, she managed to push me even further into despondency when she scoffed at Thomas Paine and told a delighted Conservative Party conference that a citizen of the world was ‘a citizen of nowhere.’ It pushed me into action and in September 2018, I decided to look back to Isabella Cherry, my Irish grandmother, claim my Irish inheritance, and apply for joint Irish citizenship.

The certificate arrived last week and, sorry Mrs May, I am now a citizen of Britain, Ireland and Europe – still, I like to think, a citizen of the world and definitely not a citizen of nowhere. I am glad not to be deprived of my European citizenship if the dreaded BREXIT actually goes through. I am looking forward to my next visit to Ireland, celebrating a sense of belonging not just to my ancestry, but to my shared humanity, and hoping that I will not be seen as an interloper….I certainly don’t feel like one, and I know that my father, and hopefully my grandmother, would be proud of this decision.

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She did it – signed the letter that triggered the United Kingdom’s ‘Brexit’ from the European Union. I had hoped, ever since the depressing referendum result, that, somehow, we might avoid the consequences of what I consider to be the greatest political error in this country during my lifetime. I kept hoping that this wouldn’t happen – even now, I retain a small grain of optimism that this might still be averted. Let’s not give up, us the so-nearly half of the United Kingdom who voted to remain in the EU. Let’s keep saying it, shouting it, even, until the United Kingdom realises that this is a great mistake made because of an ill thought-through referendum, because of a cowardly and shallow prime minister, David Cameron, and an evasive and increasingly arrogant prime minister, Theresa May.

Let’s not give up until all hope is lost – there is still time to revoke the trigger, to vote again on the biggest constitutional change this country has seen since the Second World War. Let’s not give up – it’s too great a mistake for us to just shrug and say there’s nothing more we can do.

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This week, British prime minister, Theresa May looked rattled. She was doing a Trump by walking away from hints that she might have triggered the infamous Article 50 this week to, yes, trigger (ominous word) the United Kingdom’s intention to leave the European Union. This didn’t happen (but it will by the end of March, they say) because the Scottish Nationalist Party leader Nicola Sturgeon threw a well-aimed ball into Mrs May’s court.

Nicola Sturgeon confirmed what everyone was waiting for that, because of Brexit, she would do a bit of triggering herself. She called for a second referendum on Scottish independence and Mrs May, who is also the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, began to see just how messy this triggering can be. What was triggered this week was the virtual beginning of the end of the United Kingdom.

As if Nicola Sturgeon’s speech wasn’t bad news enough for Mrs May, Jerry Adams, the Leader of the Irish Republican Party, Sinn Fein, issued a statement saying that BREXIT was a great opportunity for the eventual reunification of Ireland.

So, if one day, Scotland and Northern Ireland, neither country having voted to leave the EU, vote to leave the United Kingdom instead,  will it be just England and Wales that will actually BREXIT. That, of course, assumes that Wales will think being in the UK but out of the EU is a good enough deal.

What a mess. No wonder Theresa May has stepped away from that trigger this week.

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I’m mostly quite a cheerful optimistic type of person but, really, looking at the world as we move towards Christmas, what is there to be cheerful and optimistic about? Well, I just planted my spring bulbs; my family is coming together again for the Christmas festivities and my home town of Lewes UK, is pleasant enough even though I have felt under siege here since April due to  a train strike  which has cut us Lewes types off from the rest of the world thanks to the incompetent negotiating skills of Southern Rail, the railway unions and the hopelessness of the Ministry of Transport. As much as I’ve missed going up to London and further, there has been good reason to keep one’s head down in a world where the news only seems to get worse.

I know I should have faith in our great political leaders – I’m sure that they know a whole lot more about politics than I do but, really,  how can you stay cheerful if,  like me, you’re a depressed EU Remainer, a so-called wooly Liberal, a disappointed admirer of the USA and a tearful mourner for the people of Syria?

I’m not talking about President Assad, shudder though we should at the sound of his name. I don’t mean Fascists like Marine Le Pen of France or Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, either, or the appalling Kim Jong-un of North Korea.  The world has always had its share of monsters. No, I’m talking about three powerful leaders in whom we should’ve been able to put our trust.

There will be, I fear,  very little good to come from the three political leaders shown below – they appear to be blinkered by their own arrogance, blinded by their own prejudices and, as far as I can see, invulnerable in the three countries that should be helping the world out of its nightmare. My only hope, bizarrely, lies with the not exactly disaster-free, Angela Merkel.

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First we are told that Parliament doesn’t need to decide Britain’s future over leaving the European Union and now we are informed that our High Court judges are the ‘enemies of the people’ for issuing their judgement on the legality of the prime minister apparently attempting to bypass parliament in her BREXIT negotiations. So much for returning sovereignty to Britain. So much for our much envied parliamentary democracy and the independence of our judiciary. Britain in 2016 sounds angry, vindictive, intolerant and, yes, possibly even dangerous – hardly an attractive potential trading partner for our post-EU allies.

It might just be the Daily Mail, or the most fanatical of the BREXITERS but it might be more worrying than that. When the prime minister said nothing in response to the outrage caused by the Daily Mail’s incendiary headline, and when the Lord Chancellor, the responsible government minister, Liz Truss, had to be forced, days later, to defend the independence of the judiciary, I wondered if this government actually knows how the very fabric of Britain is being threatened by the deep divisions in the country still only too visible since last June’s EU referendum. I wonder too what people really want when they say they want BREXIT.

I’ve tried to be patient, tolerant and understanding since the BREXIT Referendum vote here in the UK. Our prime minister, Theresa May, repeats the phrase ‘Brexit means Brexit ‘ and our politicians mostly mouth how we must all respect the democratic decision of the country that Britain should leave the European Union. It all sounds so very sensible, mature and, yes, democratic. I was deeply disappointed by the result, along with the other, by now, famous 48% of the electorate who voted for the UK to stay within the EU.  We lost, no question, to the 52% who voted to leave. 48% to 52% meant in that Referendum that there was a small majority who said No in the all too simple Yes/No question that was issued to the electorate last June. I don’t think we should be governed by referendums – we are a parliamentary democracy, but I accept that I lost that argument too.  As we now all know, the campaign, on both sides was inadequate, inaccurate and deeply unpleasant. I don’t know the figures now about how the country would’ve voted if we held the EU Referendum today. We are told there is an increase in the number of ‘Regretexers’ but I simply don’t know if there is a majority now in the UK against remaining within the EU. I do know though that many people are worried about the consequences of BREXIT now that they are aware of the many complexities and dangers never discussed during the campaign.

Brexit means Brexit, the democratic voice of the people have called for it and we must go with that. I know that’s what I should believe but I will never celebrate the decision which was largely arrived at by people voting for something that, due to the confusions, lies and muddle-headedness of the campaigning politicians,  they often didn’t understand, didn’t mean or hadn’t thought through because they didn’t have all the facts. I have, as I said, tried to be understanding towards my fellow Brits about why they voted Leave. I was angry with them at first, ready to hurl the kind of intemperate remarks that had been fired around by both sides in that divisive and bad-tempered debate. No, the Leavers aren’t all racists, bigots or idiots. Some of them have sound if unconvincing political theories and, maybe, an over-optimistic belief in Britain’s ability to carve out new international trade deals. Many others have even sounder reasons for feeling unhappy about their part in British society. Many of them have been the losers over these last years of financial cuts and austerity measures. The Conservative government, in particular, with its policy of austerity cuts, has been responsible for many of the problems caused by under-investment in housing, education and social services that have resulted to real hardship and resentment about issues that had nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the European Union or to the often beneficial arrival of Eastern European workers, let alone, war-ravaged refugees, on these shores. Too many people have been allowed to fester  resentments at the unfairnesses that they have seen around them and to take them out on undeserving victims because their voices were  too often left heard by our politicians.  They are angry and, many of them, desperate.

I am not blaming these people, or their supporters, for looking for change. If the Referendum had asked are you happy with the way everyone is treated is the United Kingdom, yes or no? The answer should have been a resounding No. If the Referendum question had been do you think immigration is the main reason for the problems in the UK, I fear that the result would have been very near to the result announced last June. Near to it but not, I believe, a majority. Social problems in  the UK, have led to people looking for simple causes and simple answers. It has made people look for scapegoats.

It wasn’t just about immigration, people say, it was also about wanting to ‘reclaim Britain’s sovereignty’ and to give democracy back to parliament. A lot of people did think this, I know, but what did it mean? When we now hear these angry voices saying that a parliamentary vote over BREXIT is only a delaying tactic by us, the Re-moaners,  those who don’t want BREXIT at all. That majority, of Leavers, or certainly the most vocal of them, not only shout down Parliament’s right to debate the most important change in British history since the Second World War, but they have now turned on the judiciary for defending the nation’s constitutional laws. It is beginning to become clear that some BREXITERS will stop at nothing, and would destroy anything,  to ensure that they get what they believe to be their ‘democratic’ right.

Could it be, and this is a hesitant and pessimistic question, could it be that the Leave vote really was all about immigration after-all?  That’s why they want BREXIT, no matter what  economic, commercial, constitutional, political, social or ethical damage is caused in the pursuit of this single, and I would argue, unfounded obsession. What does BREXIT really mean, Mrs May?

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Brodie Clark, the senior civil servant formerly in charge of Britain’s passport control system has resigned accusing the British Home Secretary of casting him as the scape goat over the growing scandal of who ordered a lessening of Britain’s scrutiny of people coming into the country. Theresa May blames Clark Brodie, Clark Brodie blames Theresa May. For once, there will be a clear out-come in a political scandal – no room for subtetly here, one of them is lying.

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