Why I became a leaver

I was 36 years old when the EU referendum took place and had lived in London for 12 years after migrating there from Torquay in Devon where I had been born. I had for that entire time worked for various digital technology companies, married my beautiful French wife and bought a house. I was and am the epitome of middle class anywhere-ism (Goodhart).

I found as the referendum got closer a weird disconnect seemed to have taken place. When I sat in the office in London and spoke to my lovely, multinational but liberal middle-class colleagues how little they engaged with the details of the debate. They mostly just ignored it as something that was happening but, in some way, either wasn’t important or simply didn’t affect them.

This contrasted sharply when I saw my friends in Torquay whom all were talking about it and explaining why they were going to vote the way they were (Mostly leave). This disconnect seemed to get worse as the vote approached.

My own position on the EU was extremely torn. I loved freedom of movement (FOM) and used it all the time. I had met Marie (My wife) because of FOM and so I wouldn’t have wanted to see it go. Yet I had studied both politics and more importantly economics. I had seen what the EU had done to Greece but also much of the Eurozone and I could not forgive it.

It had in some way broken my trust and smashed my innocent image of it as a union of solidarity, a way for countries to work and help each other and as someone who does try and do the right thing could support. I had raged for years about the zealot’s willingness to sacrifice millions on the altar of a currency and political project.

I remember discussing the likely outcome with my colleague at the office who is British / Australian. He was convinced that the UK would vote to stay in by a landslide.

“Everyone I know is voting remain these is no chance we will vote out”

“Yeah but mate how often do you speak to people outside of London?”

Silence

At that point I was rapidly recalculating the odds of a leave win or at least it being much closer than many people thought.

On the day of the referendum I remember going into the voting booth and thinking about what made sense versus what I really wanted to do and sadly I made the wrong choice. I put my convenience and my tidy little life before my principles, and I voted remain. I left and did my work for the day and tried not to think about it anymore.

In the evening being a political junky I sat down late after dinner to watch at least the first few hours of results. The first ones came in and they were close and then we hit Sunderland (car plants) and it was a leave majority. At that point the light went on and I realized that it was going to be leave win.

In the morning I remember waking up and wandering downstairs in my dressing gown and watching the news. I was so angry though I couldn’t work out why. It wasn’t a big thing for me, I had even been torn about which way to vote. Yet it felt like an attack, it felt like someone had taken something from me that was not theirs to take. Sure, if I wanted to vote to leave the EU that was my choice, but it shouldn’t have been someone else’s. Irrationality cut in at some basic level.

About 20 minutes later I was rung and informed that one my best friends had died in a cycling accident whilst in the US visiting his father. He had come off a path, been knocked unconscious and drowned in an inch of water.

For most people there is before and after 24^th June 2016 for me its far more personal.

The next few days were a blur of booking flights, cars and hotels. I remember driving to Heathrow with friends including one leave voter and screaming at him how he didn’t know what he had done. Adams death or Brexit I am not sure which, but irrationality was the order of the day. Events and grief took me away from politics and Brexit and even really caring about much to be honest.

Months went by and life moves on as it had to, the grief was still there and yet it wasn’t threatening to capsize me hourly. I had even begun to pay attention to politics again and I was confused. Why was the UK government in court over its right to trigger Article 50? The choice was made by a democratic referendum and the UK government had the right and an obligation when ready to exercise our treaty rights. The more I looked into it the more I began to see a rearguard action by people who just didn’t like the result.

At the same time, I watched as politicians, media, the EU, academia and others all started laying the grounds for overturning it. The clearly well-rehearsed tropes began to play on loop on every channel of our media about level of knowledge, racism, what is Brexit, not being a large majority etc.  

It was blatant effort to delegitimize people’s choice.

Agreeing with it was and is secondary to accepting that people have a right to choose. Democracy isn’t a take or leave it system depending upon whether you like the result or not. Its about saying to people you choose, and you can expect the result to be implemented.

It staggered me that the UK a so-called democracy was going down this route. People in the ruling class had decided that they weren’t going to accept having their world changed and they were going to put two fingers up to the people who had voted leave, many who had never voted before. They had decided that democracy was something disposable which could be discarded at will because they didn't like the result. 

They were effectively telling people "We like the status quo and so you can stick it"

And that was it – I was a converted leaver.  

Since then nothing has changed my mind.

Nothing has made me feel that leaving on purely democratic grounds isn’t the right choice to make. As the establishment has dug in so have I and I will continue to. This is now political trench warfare but with an enemy at the front and sadly an enemy behind. These people are not traitors as some would call them, they obviously think that remaining is the best choice for the country, but they are a danger to democracy.

You see democracy is belief that when you go to the ballot box and vote that can change something. When you tear that away from people you simply show them that democracy is pointless. Once that happens violence becomes sadly the most likely outcome because people have no other reasonable way to exercise power and that should terrify the country.