The trouble with Brexiteers is that they won't say what they want. Like a small child at the seaside crying because they don't want an ice cream. Remainers like VNA and myself come up with solutions out of the current mess, but Brexiteers just go on and on with the 'we won' chorus, without saying what they want to happen now. They are very good at knocking things down, but useless at building things up.
So come on, what's your solutions for where we are now? Soft Brexit or hard Brexit? What should our future trading relationship be with the EU? What should happen about the land boundary in Ireland? Let's hear some positive suggestions for a change?
Sometimes I feel sorry for Theresa....
I could equally turn that around and ask what kind of Europe do Remainers want to be a part of? Were you, for example, happy with the deal Cameron came back with just before the referendum? Or did you think he didn't need to strike any new kind of deal? Do you think everything the EU does is just fine by you? VNA doesn't think it would ever move towards a Super State scenario. And yet to many people, that is exactly where it seems to be heading. Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe there should be no separate countries in the EU anymore? Wouldn't that erode the individual character of each one though? Or is that ok too?
And were Remainers happy with the way the immigrant 'crisis' was handled? Just shooing in all and sundry, economic as well as refugee status? With hardly any checks on background? Was that wise, given the kind of countries they were coming from and the current state of affairs with Islamic extremism? Or perhaps you think there were too many to realistically do background checks on, and anyway, what could we have found out about them all individually? So is that an excuse to just let them
all in? Sort it out afterwards? Do you think the member states of the EU prepared themselves sufficiently for it? Was there enough consultation on how it should be handled? Should the people of Europe have been asked what they thought? Does the EU give enough support to the countries on the 'front line'? Greece, Italy? Is it right to punish those countries who close their borders to the flood? By what right?
Tbh, I'm not fully in either camp. But that's another problem with the EU. In many ways, it is not flexible enough towards its members. And this is why some perceive that its future is as a Super State. With such attitudes, how could it be otherwise?
What do Brexiteers want? They want what anybody else wants, but they want the decisions about their future to be made closer to home than the shady dealings of Brussels, which they are told very little about. Maybe that would have been enough - to have been kept better informed. The EU says the British didn't understand what they are about. Perhaps they should have taken the time to explain it to us more clearly, or at all even, which they still haven't done. What is their end goal, in a project that is clearly still evolving? What is
their plan?
But they also want their government to listen to them, to help them. At least here in the UK they can have some influence on that at election times, but they can't influence EU decisions in that way. It's hard enough for UK regions to get themselves heard at home. Even remoter government can only make that harder still. Do you think all the tendencies towards nationalism are just whimsical, occurring out of boredom? To ignore them, to ignore the issues which give rise to them, to vilify them in a knee jerk reaction, is dangerous.
But Brexit can't be seen in isolation either. It's not just Europe that is changing, but the world. Technology and communication drive things on ever faster, but people don't evolve at the same rate -
can't.
They want a check on the corporate capitalism that is widening the gulf between rich and poor. The EU seems to them to exacerbate the problem, rather than address it. Oh, there have been some signs recently that they've been prepared to tinker around the edges of this. But too little, too late. Maybe they'll get to a point later where people will be happier. But if they'd listened to their people sooner, perhaps Brexit wouldn't have happened. If nothing else, it was intended as a wake-up call to the faceless politicians 'over there'. And still they show few signs of having listened. Politicians. Self-righteous, self-serving pricks. Don't blame me if I turn my back on them!
Oooh, I feel better for that