An open letter to leavers

[LoveInTokyo]

Dear Leavers

I’m sorry that David Cameron offered us a referendum and promised to respect the outcome, whatever it was.

Unfortunately, he was fucking with you.

He promised that referendum when he didn’t think he stood a cat’s chance in hell of getting a majority, and never thought he’d actually have to deliver on it. When he got his surprise majority, he made a big show of going to Brussels and pretending to negotiate with the EU to get us a “better deal”. Unfortunately, he already knew perfectly well that the UK already had a better deal than any other country in the EU, and that they were not going to bend over backwards to get us to stay. So he made a big show of negotiating and then tried to pretend that he had done something meaningful. He then went through the motions of holding a referendum, half-heartedly campaigning to remain. He did absolutely no contingency planning, partly because he never believed that leave would actually win, and partly because he already knew that he had no intention of staying to deal with the fallout if they did. That’s why he resigned the day after the referendum and waltzed off, whistling a merry tune.

He played a high risk game of poker with our money, and lost.

I understand that many of you feel defensive about your decision and dislike being labelled “thick” by angry remainers. As a remainer myself, I feel saddened and frustrated that none of you seem able to articulate any benefits that will actually come out of Brexit. But at this stage, I would quite happily accept that there will be no benefits, and settle for damage limitation. Unfortunately none of you seem able to explain how we limit the damage either.

We cannot leave the single market and customs union without there being a hard border in Ireland, which will put people’s lives at risk. We cannot leave the single market and customs union without severely damaging most sectors of the economy, which would cause untold hardship for millions of people living in the UK. I realise that remaining in the single market and customs union would make leaving the EU pointless, but it is the only way to limit the damage.

The government has made almost no progress towards getting a workable deal in place, and time is running out. We don’t have the infrastructure in place to ensure that supply chains of essential food and medicine will not be disrupted after Brexit day. We don’t have a plan to ensure that planes will still be able to take off and land, or that satnav will still work. We do not have any trade deals lined up. We simply do not have time to do any of these things.

Dear leavers, you do not have solutions to any of these problems, and more importantly, neither do Theresa May, Boris Johnson, David Davis, Liam Fox, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Leadsom, Daniel Hannan, Jeremy Corbyn, Kate Hoey or any of the people who claim to think Brexit is the right choice for the UK.

A no-deal Brexit is unthinkable. It is not an option.

I realise that many of you will feel betrayed if we do not get the kind of Brexit you want. But to be honest, you’re going to feel betrayed even if you do get the kind of Brexit you want, because it will be unimaginably shit. This is not "project fear", it is "project reality".

The government has a duty to act in the best interests of the country as a whole. It’s not good enough to lay the blame at David Cameron’s door and say he held the referendum so we have to respect the vote. David Cameron has been out of office for two years. It is now plainer than ever that leaving the EU is a terrible idea, and there is still time to put the brakes on and not go through with it. If the government goes through with this when they could put a stop to it, they cannot continue to blame David Cameron and claim that their hands were tied. They are not.

It is time for Theresa May to do the decent thing and say, “I’m sorry, I know it’s what the people voted for, but it simply can’t be done without causing a totally unacceptable amount of harm to the country. And I have a duty of care towards everyone, not just the 51.8% who voted leave.”

Hear hear OP

Totally agree

Why will the irish border put lives at risk?
And there wont be forriners so all that is worth it no it wont

Duty of care towards everyone, not just the 37% of the population that voted leave.

If you want to go down that road, it's 37% of eligible voters and about 26% of the population.

Well said OP

Why will the irish border put lives at risk?

On both sides of the border there are communities that live and work and raise families as if there is no border. The more barriers that are put in the way of that the more that people will feel their communities and families are being attacked. Which will give rise to violence. People in these communities riot over parades. Imagine what a response to a hard boarder will be like.

And.

Smuggling. Remember the horses in hamburgers thing. That was with a cross-board food inspection regimes. It is not too difficult to foresee a situation that contaminated meat enters the food chain as it would need to be inspected anywhere (so meat for non-EU consumption not inspected by EU, travels through EU to UK via Ireland and no capacity for food inspections in the UK in Cairnryan or Holyhead so contaminate food enters the UK food chain. Icky.

Why will the irish border put lives at risk?

Because a hard border on the island won't be accepted (border infrastructure likely to be removed) and a hard border around the island of Britain won't be accepted either by Unionists, who currently hold the Tory party up in parliament, which leaves the one on the island, which leaves a mess. One that could easily lead to increased division and from there to violence.

There isn’t a single leaver that’s interested in your letter. There’s nothing some random woman on mumsnet could change our opinions about in regards to Brexit .

Anyone who publishes an “open letter” about anything is a total attention seeker that is just looking for congratulations and or sympathy.
An open letter was devised as something to get your feelings down when they are overwhelming you, look at it, realise you’ve gone stark raving mad and then bin it or burn it.

However in these days of social media/ forum madness they’re just another way for the self absorbed to believe they’re so important that strangers care what they think.

If you want to go down that road, it's 37% of eligible voters and about 26% of the population.

I think it's important. I didn't know the exact figures so thank you. It's even more terrible to push 74% of the population into chaos.

Any ideas for damage limitation, Fenwick?

If not, I don't care about your opinion or your vote or your feelings any more than you care about my post.

I just cannot get my head round someone who on a sunny Wednesday afternoon decides that top priority for today is to write an open letter about Brexit to put in Mumsnet.

What exactly do you want the leave voters to do at this point in time? The average Joe public who was duped in to believing many things and voted accordingly?

Fine. Try getting your head round some solutions to the problem instead.

Can you explain about the single market and why it’s bad?

Being in the single market means accepting free movement of people (as well as goods, services and capital). If we're in the single market but not in the EU it makes us into a rule taker rather than a rule maker, but to be honest I think that ship has sailed. Even if we remained in the EU now our influence would be permanently diminished.

What we are heading for is NOT what the huge majority of leavers voted for. Before the referendum no-one said that we would get a no deal Brexit. A no deal Brexit will only benefit a tiny minority of the super rich. They are behind this.

@FenwickDream I just cannot get my head round someone who on a sunny Wednesday afternoon decides that top priority for today is to write an open letter about Brexit to put in Mumsnet I completely agree with you

"The government has a duty to act in the best interests of the country as a whole."

You would fucking think so wouldn't you? Unfortunately once they're installed, the only consideration for a Tory PM is pleasing the Parliamentary Conservative Party, and more specifically the hardline Eurosceptics.

The rest of us can go fuck ourselves. They know Corbyn is unelectable, so they've nothing to fear. Only them delivering Brexit that tears the country apart, delivers Scottish independence, and makes the next voting generation even more rampantly pro-EU than they are now.

But those are long term concerns, and they know it won't be them who has to deal with it.

I can't discuss Brexit without getting utterly fucking furious. Clearly.

ReevaDiva

Actually, they shouldn't be long-term concerns.

We are leaving the EU in March 2019. If they don't get a sensible deal done (which is going to have to involve remaining in the single market and customs union because that is the only sensible deal on offer), the country is going to be in utter chaos by 2022, which is the latest possible date of the next general election.

Not that any of them will need to rely on unemployment benefits, I suppose, but I can see quite a few political careers being cut short. I think it's going to be a bloodbath.

In fact, I'm calling it now.

The Tories won't get another majority before the 2050s.

Yes, I know they shouldn't be, but they can push these issues just far enough of out reach not to worry about staying on top of Brexit this week. It's the hunkered down defensive position they've taken that means they're under siege from day to day, having fucked everything up so far. So they don't have the capacity for the long-range strategic thinking that's required. By the time much of these issues need resolving the current cabinet will be working 6 days a year on quangos and boards for £500k a year. They don't give a shit how this plays out over the years and decades. They just want to be right, right now.

We are all leavers, we don't have a choice.

The way I see it is that the government has spent the last two years fiddling while Rome burns.

The whole thing is an utter shambles and if nothing is done, will plunge the country into disaster.

And the reason for this deliberate approach, I believe, is that they are hoping that everybody who voted leave will suddenly rise up and say that they didn't vote for the shambles they and everyone else will get, so perhaps we shouldn't be leaving after all.

So let's have another referendum sharpish, and hope it's the right result next time.