My brother said the same thing to me because he knew I’d voted to leave, that he hoped I’d suffer and be destitute as a result of Brexit as I voted for it. It’s one of the last things he ever said to me before he unexpectedly dropped dead out of the blue in his 30s a month later, and it made me cry. It’s a horrible memory to keep coming back to you when your brother dies. Especially when we generally got on well. I don’t recommend holding onto these sort of grudges especially within families. It’s a really nasty sentiment and I think Brexit has been so horribly divisive for his country. I do wish we had never had the referendum.
I’d just like to say that not all people who voted leave are thick right wing boomer racists. I do deeply regret how I voted, and quite quickly, in fact I was quite shocked when I realised leave had won. I thought it hadn’t a hope in hell but I wanted to cast a protest vote which would wipe the smug grin off David Cameron’s face which I was so devastated to see after the Conservatives won the previous election (I voted for Milliband and Labour) and make him realise that the Westminster bubble doesn’t speak for the whole country, that people were suffering and struggling in the UK, and that the status quo was not something everyone was happy to settle for. The Leave messaging of “things are so great now, why would anyone in their right mind change it” was awful. Things weren’t great at all for me as a single mother trying to recover from domestic abuse back then or many people I knew personally and through my work. All the things we are seeing unmasked now during the pandemic, the inadequacies of the NHS, the proliferation of food banks, the people falling through the cracks of the welfare state, the lack of worker rights, the high costs of housing, all of that was clear to see even back then (clearly it’s got worse) and I couldn’t stand the thought that he would get a huge Remain victory, think everything is fine in the UK and that everyone agrees fully with how he is governing with austerity. My heart was breaking for what I could see happening to the country.
I thought it would shake things up (and obviously it did!) if the vote was closer than predicted but I still thought Remain would have it at the end of the day, it was predicted to win by a landslide. I also thought if Leave won that it would force the PM to resign (which it did) and that the Tories would have to rethink how they are governing and do it in a kinder more inclusive way, paying a bit more attention to the left wing this time. I thought it might force a general election which Labour or at least the Lib Dems might have a chance of winning this time. Got that wrong! But I was genuinely motivated to Vote Leave as a way of getting the Tories out and not entrenching their rule and shifting them to the right of their party. I may be naive but I personally hadn’t seen that coming.
I also thought that the vote was not going to be taken as written in stone but would simply be a message that people in the country aren’t happy and change is needed. And then they’d go away and analyse why people had voted as they did and look at what changes needed to be made. And whether people were unhappy domestically or if it was really about the EU. I definitely bought they’d go away and hammer out what was possible and then come back at least to Parliament if not the country for approval before making any rash moves like triggering Article 50. I remember being aghast when May did that and thinking why would she do that when we haven’t a clue about the details, why would you give yourself less time in a complicated negotiation...
Perhaps it was the wrong vote to try to use to make a change (ok it definitely was!) but living in a very safe Tory seat it was the only vote in which I could be heard in any way at all. I suspect there were also elements of personally reacting to being told what to do by the Remain messaging and wanting to show them that they can’t tell me how to vote. Particularly for someone who has been through domestic abuse, something in me just felt furious that the government were wasting taxpayers money on leaflets telling us that we had to vote Remian for the status quo or the sky would fall in, and as things were just so wonderful now, why would anyone rock the boat? I was tired of being a good girl and doing what I was told and living a pretty miserable life while everyone around said how wonderful the UK was currently so we should preserve the status quo. I felt as though I was living in a dictatorship where we were being told the right way to think by the government and the only way to make them understand that this is still a democracy was to vote Leave (might have accidentally been brainwashed by Farage et al on that one...) I freely admit I should have thought a bit harder about the actual issue we were voting on... I had no issue with the EU which is the tragic thing, in fact later on I recalled that EU worker legislation had had a directly positive impact on my personal working conditions in the past, and I had been a fool to vote as I did. But too late. I am definitely a Bregretter; we do exist and I wish I had voted differently, I know my parents do too (my younger siblings all voted remain). So perhaps when you read my story you might feel less like we all deserve to die in a ditch. Or perhaps you still feel that way. I’m just saying we are all human and there were multiple complex reasons for voting leave. I’m not defending it, I’m just saying it’s not as straightforward as it’s been boiled down to in the media. And people like me are frightened to admit we voted leave so keep schtum about it, most of my friends assume I voted remain and I haven’t corrected them as they would not understand.