As of today the 21^st January 2020, there are exactly ten days until Britain officially leaves the EU. Of course, the date of leaving will not be an immediate and final divorce from the EU as there is much to do with regards Britain’s exit from what was once a trading bloc but which has now become an arrogant and authoritarian empire. We have to go through trade negotiations with both the EU and with other nations and the beginning and the end of the transition arrangements but technically we are no more beholden to the EU after 11pm on the 31^st January.

It’s been a long and very hard slog to get to where Britain is at the moment. It has been a protest that saw the losing side in a democratic debate and vote, try to overturn the result of that vote. Whilst most who voted Remain may have grumbled about Brexit, the vast majority of Remainers whom I have encountered and whose conduct has been reported to me, did not like the result of the Brexit Referendum, they abided by the result. This is as it should be. Unfortuantely there were other, very well resourced and connected, Remainers who, by their attempts to overthrow the 2016 vote, caused enormous political divisions. These divisions are probably the worse I’ve seen in recent decades. They reminded me of the societal and political divisions of the Thatcher and Heath years even though today’s divisions are not between Trade Unions and management.

Today’s divisions are instead now between the average British subject and a wealthy, technocratic elite for whom the nation state and its borders are not something to be proud of but something to erase. This elite, for want of a better word, has during the Brexit process, shown itself to be totally lacking in any sort of nobless oblige or any attempt to consider the views of working class leavers, they have treated us like worthless scum who should shut up and bow to our overlords. There have always been high powered individuals that have thought and felt and spoken like this, power whether political or economic, can kill empathy and reasonableness. However the Remainers too often spoke this way loudly and often with the assistance of broadcasting and media organisations that have behaved with less than the appropriate levels of honesty since 2016. For the first time we saw the naked contempt that these political and economically powerful pro-EU types were thinking in their heads but not disclosing to the public. Some of these EU obsessives who treated the working class Briton as know nothing scum who were ‘tricked’ into voting Leave, such as the Liberal Democrats, have been rightly punished for their choice of path in the Brexit story.

As I said earlier, most Remain voters respected the vote and like the rest of us will get on with making the best of the new situation, but those who did not and screamed from the rooftops about ‘muh EU’ and who insulted Britons by calling them ‘racist’ for voting to Leave, may be facing a more difficult future. There’s many things that a man or woman can come back from and retrieve their reputation. Reputations can survive affairs, or poor decision making or slips with words, sometimes a reputation can even survive a scandal involving partying with coke and hookers, it depends on the person and the circumstances. But how does anyone come back from what many people are seeing as treason? That’s a difficult one and it is a question that is going to eventually have to be faced by many of those who have gained a high profile or who have used an existing high profile to push the pro-EU line after the Referendum or act to annul the vote?

Treason or percieved treason is not something that is easily forgiven or forgotten, it’s a visceral thing where patriots feel disgust at a person who has chosen a foreign power, in this case the EU, over the UK. How the Remainers, mostly the media and high profile ones that is have behaved has smacked distinctly of choosing the foreign power over Britain and its people. It’s going to be very difficult for parties like the Lib Dems and broadcasting organisations like the BBC to regain trust and in the case of the BBC the trust that many of us have in it is now so low that it is difficult to see how the BBC can survive in its present form. The 2010’s was the decade when the BBC finally flushed what was once a good reputation, down the toilet. As for the Lib Dems, they are faced with a stark choice. Their choice is whether to do something genuinely liberal and democratic for a change and respect the vote to leave the EU and work with other parties to make Brexit a success. Somehow sadly, I don’t believe that the Lib Dems have got what it takes to do this. Therefore we might be seeing and living through the dying years of a party that was at the turn of the 20^th century a big fish, now reduced to being the political equivalent to a sad lonely goldfish in a large but neglected fishtank. I believe a successful Brexit, which I view as one that has only short term and manageable hiccups, could be the death blow for the Lib Dems. After all if you have benefited from Brexit in some way would you really want to vote for a party that would have denied you all that you have gained?

In ten days time when the Brexit day arrives, much will change. Some things will not change radically or sharply, such disturbances cost money and those in power in both Britan and the EU may not want that. However I believe that in the medium to long term the divisions opened up mostly by the fanatical Remainer elte will result in profound change in Britain. I’m not sure that the mainstream media can carry on as it is now without major change in such areas as viewpoint diversity, funding, staff selection etc in order to break down what has become an echo chamber. If it is to retain anything like its previous influence the mainstream media needs to allow a greater variety of voices onto its platforms. It’s not real diversity if you have reporters or commentators who are black, brown, gay and female but who all have a PPE from Oxford and who share the same views.

I believe that Brexit will bring with it a call for more transparency in how we are governed and these calls will not necessarily only be aimed at national government but also to local government as well. People seem unhappy with the unwanted secrecy and potential shenanigans that go on behind closed doors in Whitehall but also and maybe more so, such conduct when it goes on in their Town Hall. If this wind of transparency occurs, then I can see a lot of local authority malfeasance and stupdity exposed to the public gaze. This exposure will in its turn hopefully bring positive changes to how we are governed locally. It would be good to see the desire for a democratic independence for Brtitain, something that has politically engaged a lot of previously politically apathetic Britons, also reflected in a greater involvement by British subjects in their local government. Because Britons too often take too little interest in what goes on in local government, we get shafted as bad ideas put forward by councils get no real challenge from the public.

It’s hard to believe isn’t it. For most of my life Britain has been a member of the European Union but now we are on the cusp of leaving. I saw Britain decline as a nation and decline in confidence during the EU years. In a way Britons forgot how to govern themselves as governmental power ultimately lay in Brussels and was far out of reach from the voters at the polling stations. Hopefully this will change and we can govern ourselves again but hopefully govern wisely. I think we are in for some interesting and stimulating political times following what will finally be our Independence Day on the 1^st February 2020.