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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

... for those who are devastated about Brexit, how are you dealing with the fear and depression and anxiety?

775 replies

testytesting · 29/03/2017 09:58

Has anyone got any strategies? I am genuinely not one for melodrama, but I am devastated, angry, terrified, depressed, and I feel so utterly helpless. Nothing in my lifetime has made me feel like this, and I just can't imagine feeling like this for the next two years and beyond. I can hardly bear to listen to the news, but I feel compelled to anyway. How are other remainers dealing with this, what are your coping strategies? And what, if anything, can we DO?

OP posts:
remoaniac · 03/04/2017 09:28

I have over the past couple of days heard some quite nasty views such as no one over 50 should vote (yes really)

My mother said this immediately after the result was known. She is in her late 70s. My uncle, who is in his early 80s, said the same. Both said that the old should not have voted to leave.

The fact is, we don't actually know who voted what way. Yes there have been polls and surveys saying the young voted to stay and the old voted to leave but people don't necessarily tell the truth - and clearly some older people did vote to stay - like my mum and her brother.

What I would like to know, and we'll never know because their votes were bundled in with their constituencies - is how people living in the likes of Australia etc voted. I wonder how much of the million majority they made up. I am assuming that most of them will have voted to leave the EU, but I may be very wrong.

BertrandRussell · 03/04/2017 09:28

The age thing is interesting. Somebody 83 now was born in 1934. So was 21 in 1955. They wouldn't have fought in the war. The people who did fight in the war voted overwhelmingly for Attlee, the welfare state and to no more European wars.

That's why all this "it's what we fought for" stuff is inaccurate as well as distasteful.

skerrywind · 03/04/2017 09:28

We should all be pulling together now whatever you voted.

No thanks.
My country didn't vote for brexit.

Hopefully we will be off and rejoin Europe.

Imjustapoorboy · 03/04/2017 09:30

I will never support the removal of my rights as a UK EU citizen. Never

BromptonOratory · 03/04/2017 09:34

property If you response to a democratic decision not going your way is to try to disenfranchise a group of people who voted the "wrong" way, do have a think about where that particular route would take us. I don't know, perhaps read some George Orwell. 1984 might be a good place to start.

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 03/04/2017 09:38

The age thing is interesting. Somebody 83 now was born in 1934. So was 21 in 1955. They wouldn't have fought in the war.

No they would however have lived through it and had to do if male, National Service

BromptonOratory · 03/04/2017 09:39

What I would like to know, and we'll never know because their votes were bundled in with their constituencies - is how people living in the likes of Australia etc voted

Do you mean British citizens who emigrated in the last 15 years, living in Australia?

WoodPigeonInFlight · 03/04/2017 09:43

My mother said this immediately after the result was known. She is in her late 70s. My uncle, who is in his early 80s, said the same. Both said that the old should not have voted to leave

So you are saying that your remain voting mum said that older people shouldn't have voted leave? So she felt she was entitled to vote as she thought fit and did so, but other older people shouldn't have been able to do so, unless they did what she wanted Hmm

I think a good majority of remain voters think that people (old, young, educated, less educated etc, etc) should not have voted leave.

fakenamefornow · 03/04/2017 09:44

Now we should all be united in making sure we hold the Government to account

I never understand this though, how exactly are we going to hold people to account? If it's all a massive failure what to we then do? We can't go back and the culprits will just walk away scott free and carry on with their lovely comfortable lives. Farage has ever said he'll move to America (so I've heard) if it all goes tits up.

I've heard 'hold them to account' a lot, even from prominent politicians, nobody has ever said how though. If it's just not vote for them, well that's not what I would describe as holding to account.

WoodPigeonInFlight · 03/04/2017 09:45

That is not how democracy works - one group of people do not get to dictate how another group of people must vote. And do not get, if they don't like the way those people vote, to decide that they shouldn't have a vote at all.

fakenamefornow · 03/04/2017 09:47

I will never support the removal of my rights as a UK EU citizen. Never

Completely agree. And more importantly the removal of my children's rights.

GraceGrape · 03/04/2017 09:50

I have heard some older people say that they asked their children /grandchildren to say which way they were voting and they then voted according to what they said. I think that seemed quite reasonable in that this was a vote with long-term consequences, not a general election which is re-run every few years.

BromptonOratory · 03/04/2017 10:03

I have heard some older people say that they asked their children /grandchildren to say which way they were voting and they then voted according to what they said

Well, that seems quite reasonable if they wanted how their children and grandchildren were voting to inform their vote. I imagine people doing that probably didn't have strong opinions one way or the other.

What I find hard to understand is that we don't, in life generally, assume that young people have wisdom and foresight and knowledge greater than the older population do we?

And I also find it hard to follow how, if young people do have some superior ability to predict the future, greater insight into politics, greater ability to make decisions for the future benefit of the country and us all, why they didn't vote in the referendum in higher numbers? It just doesn't tally in my mind.

BertrandRussell · 03/04/2017 10:12

"No they would however have lived through it and had to do if male, National Service"

They would have been 10 at the end of the war and then played soldiers. Not quite the same thing.

Sostenueto · 03/04/2017 10:18

For goodness sake no one has a right to anything! Everyone seems to think they have a right to be European, a right to be first in the queue, a right to have their own way, a right for this and a right for that. Your children have no more right to be European as I have no more right to be African etc. Where does it say you have a right? You should be saying "I wish to be or would like to be". It certainly isn't your right.

BertrandRussell · 03/04/2017 10:21

This really struck me from yesterday's Observer.
"Please excuse the remoaning. I know it’s frowned upon. It wasn’t for this that all those elderly Leave supporters dragged themselves out to vote! This isn’t what they fought a war for! Though not many of them actually did that. Those guys are mainly dead. The Few are now the Fewer, soon to be the None. So I should say: this isn’t what they, in many cases, lived through a bit of the war for (but often as infants so they can’t really remember it)!
If they can’t remember it, perhaps that explains why they’re so sanguine about renouncing an institution that’s done more than any other in history to preserve peace between the major nations of Europe. I wonder if their parents would have been so hasty. The demobbed Tommies who voted for Attlee who over Churchill might not have been as easily convinced as their children have been that youngsters with foreign accents working in coffee shops is such a diabolical threat to Britain’s values and existence. They’d probably seen worse.
Anyway, this kind of remoaning isn’t what members of the luckiest generation ever born betrayed the sacrifices of their parents for

lucydogz · 03/04/2017 10:26

perhaps if younger people had got off their arses and voted, like older people bothered to do, the result might have been different. Older people are wise enough to realise the value of voting. Younger people often aren't

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 03/04/2017 10:26

They would have been 10 at the end of the war and then played soldiers. Not quite the same thing.

Best tell my family me member who has PTSD that they 'played soilders'

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 03/04/2017 10:26

Oh and they voted remain.

Fingalswave · 03/04/2017 10:35

propertypriceguide

"How would it happen though even if the leavers did see the light, how could we ever go back now to not leaving? "

Lord Kerr, who wrote Article 50, says UK leaving the UK is not irrevocable and the process can still be stopped by another referendum or a parliamentary vote, even when negotiations are far advanced.

And it certainly would not be anti-democratic to vote again, because the terms of the deals were not known the first time around. To use Blair's example; it was like buying a house without seeing it first.

So, agree with those on here who say it is still very much worth fighting on.

And disagree profoundly with those saying "we should all pull together now the decision has been made". (a) 48% is nearly half of the country (b) no way would Farage and co be "pulling together" if the boot were on the other foot (c) if you see your child running towards a cliff edge, you act, you don't stand there and cheer them on.

The age divide point is very, very sad: over the next 10 years, our civil servants will be negotiating a future that our young don't want.

GraceGrape · 03/04/2017 10:35

lucy, contrary to initial reports, it has been shown that the majority (probably 2/3) of young people did vote in the referendum. Can't link on my phone but if you look up "Young voters and the EU referendum" on the Full Fact (fact-checking) website it has info on there. The low-turnout figure that was initially reported is likely to have been based on figures from the 2015 general election. It is sad and unfair on young voters that people still have the impression they didn't vote.

Fingalswave · 03/04/2017 10:36

sorry - meant UK leaving the EU obviously!

GraceGrape · 03/04/2017 10:37

That reply also for you Brompton as I notice you also mentioned young voters.

NotCarylChurchill · 03/04/2017 10:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

lucydogz · 03/04/2017 10:47

gracegrape I've checked out Fullfacts, and can't find the information. I do know that many people have said that more young people voted than was previously voted, but this was based on a survey by the LSE on the voting behaviour of young people who had registered to vote, which is a very partial sample and leaves out those (like my nephew) who didn't even register in the first place. If there are figures from another source I would be pleased to hear of it.