This morning I was asked by my friend Michael [@elnon66 on Instagram] what I felt the pros and cons were behind the major EU Referendum vote today. So, I answered as honestly, and humourlessly [not easy!], as I felt I could. But I couldn’t entirely forget Cristiano Ronaldo …
That’s a potentially long answer, Michael. So, for me, I’ll keep it simplistically nutshelled.
The Ponderers
The Leave campaign have offered absolutely nothing beyond vague jingoism, goblets of fear and scattergun facts. The Remain campaign have offered very little beyond vague stronger together platitudes, goblets of fear and scattergun facts. The facts, such as they are, have been all but lost, blurred and twisted to have become largely meaningless.
However, I will say this, I have a strong sense that if the climate of the irrational fear of immigration – and in extremis, pure xenophobia leeching into racism – were to be taken out of the equation, I honestly believe the vote wouldn’t be even remotely close. And this is one of the reasons I’ve grown cynical of the politics; the fear. Fundamentally, it makes for poor reasoning and therefore equally poor decisions.
I will be voting Remain for the simple reason that I refuse to be kowtowed by those irrational politics of fear; and because I genuinely feel that the future for all of us – not just Europe – will ultimately be best served by collaboration, compromise and a shared sense of unified purpose.
And on a lighter note, I can’t resist but leave you with the petulant man-child that is Cristiano Ronaldo’s dance following Hungary’s third goal against Portugal yesterday:
Uh, Cristiano … {Wags finger then points to scattered things } … now pick up your toys and put them back in your box, there’s a good lad.
The shit storm approacheth. No, not the Glastonbury Festival – although that’s shaping up to be equally and traditionally messy; they can’t even get the cars in the car parks because of the mud this morning [I blame immigration]! – but the EU Referendum.
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage yesterday
Frankly, I’ll be glad when it’s all over, but I still subjected myself to some of the last vast televised EU Debate in the cavernous Wembley Arena last night. Which, from the increasingly tiresome Leave campaign, appeared to largely consist of repeating the phrase Take back control, Take back control, Take backcontrol…like some wearying, incontinent Dalek.
Well, here’s a sobering thought. Give control to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage and if their absurdist rationale subsequently slips through the cracks we’ll all be left yelling Control Alt Delete! CTRL/ALT/DEL!! Too late, we’ve already crashed. And when we look to them, they’ll probably be squabbling over a mallet [dutifully inscribed: Independence Day], flailing around and whacking the keyboard.
I rarely inflict politics onto the regular readers of my blog – because I doubt either of you would appreciate it! But I have occasionally been leaking my thoughts into my Instagram feed during the past few weeks. If you think you can stomach any more of my thoughts, here’s a couple of things I wrote there a while ago:
The EU Referendum gets more and more absurd each day. With each dawning one or other will reveal some hysterical prediction and the other will immediately counter with absurd. It never ceases to amaze me, in politics, how the entirely opposite view is invariably taken and no one appears to agree on anything … aside from self-interest.
It’s become abundantly clear David Cameron didn’t call for a parliamentary debate on the EU as the divisions in his own party would’ve torn it apart and made him unelectable. It’s equally clear Boris Johnson is taking the entirely opposite view in order to give him an opportunity to be Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Alex Salmond, after proclaiming the recent Scottish Independence Referendum as a ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity’, is now hedging his bets on the Remain vote while crossing his fingers behind his back and readying himself for a Brexit to ask for another Independence vote.
Meanwhile, those that equally absurdly have to make such a big decision … us … are left mostly beyond confused but will leave a vast swathe of the ignorant voting on essentially one issue: How racist and/or fearful of immigration are you?
What a feckin’ absurd way to run a country!
And the inspiration behind my title:
Who put the dumb in referendum? Don’t let the facts get in the way of your prejudices; spit bile and piffle and watch them collide. Then arrange the firing squad into a circle; so-called experts, politicians and business leaders divide; ready, Remain, fire. But we’ll have 52 new hospitals by the end of the year if we Leave. What do you believe? We wouldn’t have one. So who put the dumb in referendum?
At the end of May, David Mitchell rather summed up my feelings perfectly in his excellent piece in The Observer. Essentially saying, I periodically elect my local representative to get their heads around the big decisions; not for them to simply sit back and say You Decide when it all gets a bit complicated or difficult to understand.
So, what are weleft with? Some kind of hapless game of Pin the tail on the donkey. [And if you don’t know what that is, I feel for your empty childhood. But it’s essentially a British, considerably less violent form of, piñata.] But given the complete lack of agreement and joined-up thinking by our politicians, it’s probably no wonder they would rather eventually blame us for any future ills – whatever we decide. And it’s just so difficult deciding whether or not you want to wholly embrace racism, World War III, have less or more money, jobs and rights, financial stability or instability, all the while maintaining our position at the bottom of the Eurovision Song Contest. Where’s my mallet?
Nige' Ollis 