A fellow-writer friend wrote in the social media earlier this year that she worried that if she made controversial statements about what she believed, that at least one side of the unforgiving and, let’s be honest, the often-bigoted armies in our now divided society, would vilify her, reject her and, consequently, risk undermining her burgeoning writing career. Really, I thought, there is only one answer to that dilemma. Just say what you believe and be damned.

Being damned is a reality these days of hate mail, poisonous Twitter posts and vicious Facebook comments from angry people from the other side of the growing divide:  left or right, liberal or conservative, fluid or static, young or old. What seems to unite these groups is their anger and, maybe, their intolerance for the other side. I’m reminded of the dark days of Inquisition and Totalitarianism. What I see, increasingly, is hatred and sneering and not a little ignorance.

Anyway, back to my political depression.

I’m an optimist at heart. I like human beings, honestly. I know puppies, kittens and baby elephants are often cuter than people, but, dammit, I like people. I wish them well, mostly. I just wish they would loosen up. I used to like politics too – but, God, these days it’s all become so painful. I had a look search before I could find a photograph of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn sharing a joke together.

Gone are the days when people could sit in nice middle-class restaurants discussing the pros and cons of the mixed economy, taxation and prison reform and only get angry after the third glass of Burgundy. When they were young, they lay in the dark in boarding school dormitories debating capital punishment and waking in the middle of the night after nightmares about hangmen. For nice middle-class people in those days, politics was fairly interesting, but its dirty waters didn’t often wash over your beautifully polished shoes.

OK, some people got angry about famine, war, genocide, murder and inhumanity between fellow (wo)men. Real things, serious things. They were roused to the cause of minority groups and even oppressed majorities, but, then as now, we too often ignored the feelings of those who held different views from ours. If you voted Conservative, we didn’t hate you, we just thought you were wrong.  If you thought we were naïve optimists who didn’t understand the real world, we just smiled at what seemed like your old-fashioned values.

Politics then was often guilty of smugness rather than hatred. In those days most of our politicians were also elitist – on the left and the right and in the middle. The rest of us had to go along with either one of them or the other.

Now we are all angry. The result, yes, I know, but I can’t avoid it, the result was the Brexit Referendum of 2016 and the chaos that has followed in a nation almost equally divided over Europe and, most shocking of all, incompetently led by its politicians.

I voted Remain – no secret there. I would do so tomorrow as well, if I could.  I’m a passionate believer even though I know that the European Union is in dire need of reform.

I know that I’m seen as a re-moaner, a dreamer, just another naïve optimist, but it doesn’t make me a bad guy. I know that many of you disagree and a large number of you feel betrayed, over-looked by the political elite, and threatened by forces that I don’t see as threats, but I don’t hate you either, we are all the good guys, let’s try to accept that.

I don’t want a second BREXIT Referendum.

I want a referendum on whether our government, or any government, can deliver a BREXIT which does not destroy the United Kingdom. A general election would’ve done it if the main political parties had given us a viable set of alternatives – but they haven’t.

What is everyone so worried about? Democracy? If we can stop being angry with each other; if we can learn to respect the other side’s opinions, now that we know the complexities of the BREXIT negotiations, and now that we can see that Parliament itself is in chaos over all the possible outcomes, why are we so frightened of putting it to the popular vote?

Come on everyone – let’s vote. Then, as they say, let’s chill.

The post What A Mess: BREXIT, Britain and its Politicians appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I see that we in the UK are going to allow our Parliament to vote on the BREXIT ‘agreement’ if there is going to be one. This is an enormous relief that, after much hedging and dodging, our government really is going to allow our elected representatives to have a say in the final deal over this country’s future.

I have been relatively silent over the last year, fearing that anything I hope for is doomed to failure – I would be very alone here in England if nearly half the population didn’t actually share my opinions over the future of the nation.

Look on the bright side people tell me when I sink into depression over what the future holds for us here in this my homeland. So, that’s what I’m trying to do.

I was born and brought up in England, in the well-heeled and well-rounded  rump of the nation, in the South-East – but I lived for a substantial part of my life in the North west of the country where I had my home for twenty years. I was happy in both regions of this tiny island. Most folk have seen me as a rather typical Englishman even though my father was a Scot and his mother was from Northern Ireland. The mingling of blood that I inherited from my Scottish-Irish father and my English mother, was a grand thing, I’ve always thought. I have always seen that as being the reason why I feel British rather than simply English. This sense of being a part of a union of nations seemed perfectly normal to me just as I feel a sense of belonging within the European Union.

My Scottish and Irish blood makes me feel that at least half of my ancestry would have agreed with modern Scotland and Northern Ireland during the European Referendum but, in fact, my English mother agrees with my position of wanting to remain within the European Union and the United Kingdom. Being an obstinate kind of person, I know that nothing is going to change my mind – it can’t because BREXIT goes against my deepest feelings about my identity.

I’m not an economist but I’m either too stupid or not stupid enough to be  persuaded that it’s not just my gut-feelings are against BREXIT,  so too is my common sense.

But, yes, I’m trying to look on the bright side here.

Do we need the EU? Do we need to be a prosperous nation? Do we need to have a role in the international community? Isn’t there something charmingly persuasive about allowing this country to become a quiet backwater? Do we need an army? Do we need a nuclear deterrent? We could save the money, if we retreated from everywhere, turned all our politicians into local councillors . Do we need a modern economy?  Successive governments have already destroyed the country’s industrial base. Do we need to be rich? Do we need to have the next generations of  modern technologies? Do we need a modern National Health Service? Well, I guess not, some people would get along ok and, anyway, lots of third world countries have to survive that way .There are  some things on that list that I  wouldn’t miss. I’ve campaigned against some of them, in fact.

Certainly I’ve been embarrassed by the words in Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and the British  National Anthem. I don’t want to rule the waves or confound other nations’ politics. I don’t want there to be another world war either and if there is to be one, maybe we would all be better off staying home. I could live without posh modern buildings in the City of London, and I’m not really sad about China becoming the richest nation in the World. I have no interest in going into space and I would, I guess (if I had to), be happy enough in a quiet, medieval village in a closed-borders nation that rubs along pleasantly enough with not very much. I like potatoes and warm beer and dusty churches where evensong is held every afternoon and where all our meals are homemade and wholesome.

I could get along in a country like that, I suppose. If I got bored, I could always join the revolution. We could topple the landlords, the aristocracy, the monarchy and try to make a new democracy like, say, in Iceland but with better weather, – or I could just go and live somewhere else..

I could do that, no doubt, but I tell you what. I really don’t want to. So, please, everyone, my friends (and all those of you who can’t stick me), please talk to your member of parliament and encourage him or her to ensure that we really do vote this thing down before it’s all much too late. It’s not easy, to quote Donald Trump, actually it’s complicated, but, Britain, it is also deadly serious.

The post Can the British parliament really show us that it deserves the Sovereignty that so many British people seem to want? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

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.

The post Let’s not give up on the EU – it’s still not too late. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

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.

The post After BREXIT, what now for the United Kingdom? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I may be a bit tired after hanging around during the night wondering about the Scottish Independence Referendum results but I feel good today – all of me except the tired bits – all my Scottish, Northern Irish and English DNA (my British-European DNA) is dancing around inside of me. Phew!

If you missed the results, Scotland has decided – 55% of the population said No Thank You and 45% said Yes Please. The turnout was an extraordinary 84.6%.

I’m the son of a Scot who lives in England and who had no vote but opinions enough to be delighted that the No’s have it.

My common sense feels happy too. Well, common sense is that bit of you that just feels what is right so I am delighted that the tiny land mass known as the United Kingdom, the united countries that raised me and my ancestors, has been allowed to stay, yes, united.

I feel good too after hearing that splendid speech by the much missed and much misunderstood former British prime minister, Gordon Brown. I couldn’t help thinking that if, in 2010, more of the British electorate had kept the faith with him, we might not have been  struggling from one constitutional bungle to another as has been the case since Mr David, d’oh, Cameron became Gordon Brown’s successor and, annoyingly, since Ed, where’s-he-when-you-need-him,  Milliband became Leader of the Opposition. It’s a sobering thought that those 84.6% of Scottish voters could turn out to get a solution and yet the whole of the UK couldn’t find a political party that it wanted to elect. In case you’d forgotten, Cameron didn’t get a majority and the Conservatives haven’t had a majority for over twenty years.

If I’m worried about the calibre of our politicians, I’m happy about the inevitable and much needed changes that have now be forced upon them. I, here in Lewes, Sussex, England, UK, would like to be independent of Westminster as much as any Northern Scot, Welshman, Devonshire maid or Yorkshire cricketer. What the Yeses and Nos have achieved for all of us Brits, is the chance to have more say in our own affairs and to be less patronised by that gang of career politicians who still too often think they know what is best for us. There’s now a chance that we might actually feel more represented in what is still a democracy worth defending but also worth improving. We’d get  better local politicians too if the jobs are seen to be worth doing. It’s difficult to get enthusiastic about many of the men and women  elected to councils and devolved parliaments over recent years. Maybe giving the regions more power, would give us a few more brain cells in our representatives.

I’m talking about being happy so, carrying on, I’m also happy to get an itchy feeling in my heart, or wherever these things are felt, telling me that, just maybe, one day, we might really be respected enough by our elected representatives, to look after our own patch but also to feel that we are all, sorry to repeat this, Citizens Of The World.

So thanks for saying No you guys – it’s much appreciated. Thanks too to the Yes voters – your enthusiasm and idealism could be a new electoral lesson for the whole UK.

Just a couple of things:

Please Mr Cameron, if you’re going to inflict another referendum on us can it be less simplistic in future? No more Yes/No or In/Out, OK. We not only want to have more of a say about life as it is where we live but we’d like to be treated with the respect that allows that we can also see the subtleties – there is more to a united country and, for that matter, a united Europe, than you allow in your two simple questions.

The other thing? Oh yes. It’s already bad enough that we as a nation still witness anti-Semitism, racism, Islamaphobia and anti-European zenophobia, let’s not start (or continue) all this anti-Scottish, anti-English aggression. The United Kingdom, for all its faults, is a wonderful mix of nationalities, cultures and skills. Let’s put this debate behind us, learning from it that we, as a united community, have much to share and, I’m dreaming again,  we could even be at the beginning of a brave new era: a country looking for the common cause, learning from our fellow citizens and respecting our differences, looking after our own turf without greedily or suspiciously eyeing up our neighbours, in fact, learning to be grown-up democrats. Other nations could learn from us if we get it right – now that’s a dream worth dreaming.

I feel like listening to some bagpipes to celebrate:

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