Talk

Flip

1 2 3 4

Brexit

The post-Brexit family tragedy playing out across the UK

95 replies

WalesTilly2016 · 28/06/2016 10:53

I am writing this as it is happening within my family and I need to share my heartbreak...

Grandparents are special. To children and young people they are a life-long constant, offering kindness, love, tenderness and an ever-open ear when parents often have to be the opposite out of necessity. They are fun and they are generous. They are quite simply immaculate in the eyes of their grandchildren.

The EU referendum is unfortunately fracturing that traditional relationship.

Young people across the UK have been dismayed at the outcome of the EU referendum, and have wasted no time in voicing their disappointment across the social media platforms they inhabit. The statistics clearly show that younger people are naturally Remainers. They have been born into a modern multicultural world that they see as their oyster, and where the idea of being able to travel and work anywhere with few limitations seems natural. They happily and comfortably school and hang out with people from other cultures, and the idea that they should be outraged because of Germans claim the sunbeds simply doesn’t occur.

The same statistics show the older generation to be firmly in the Leave camp, and the overwhelming driver for them wanting to leave is immigration and a wider dislike of foreigners in general, even if they live in areas where immigrants are few and far between. They have read and bought into the countless scare stories on the pages of the Daily Mail which have successfully built on a heritage of good old-fashioned British xenophobia; where Germans grabbing sunbeds is indicative of how you can’t trust any of them.

This dissonance between young Remainers and old Leavers is resulting in an uncomfortable sea-change in the grandparent-grandchild relationship, and it is currently being played out in countless families across the UK.

The debate as to why older people voted the way they did, and why they think inexperienced younger people are clueless is undoubtedly taking place in households up and down the country as we speak. Young people are voicing their opinions and asking ‘why’, and older people are not holding back on answering them, often in brutal tones. Sadly, for many young people it will be a profound and emotional culture shock when they see and hear their dearly-loved grandparents revealing themselves as xenophobes and foaming-at-the-mouth racists.

It is a tragedy of the deepest order, and one which truly strikes at the heart of our society. Countless grandparents will be revealing to their grandchildren a disturbingly ugly side never previously shown, or even suspected. And for what? All because the morons at the tabloids have been manipulating their readers for their own benefits.

One of the most biting post-Brexit opinions shared on social media is that ‘Old people hate immigrants more than they love their grandchildren’. It is very hard to argue with, and it is truly depressing that a perfectly legitimate political debate about membership of the EU has been polluted and poisoned by rhetoric from the media and politicians that, while successful in achieving a result at the ballot boxes, has come at the cost of fractured family relationships.

OP posts:

Report

Rufusthebewilderedreindeer · 09/12/2018 10:00

Both dhs parents voted remain as did dh and i

Ds1 would have voted remain if he had been old enough

My dad voted leave, i am careful about how i talk around my dad and i have told the children to do the same