The result is clear in Shropshire. On a 77% turnout, 57% of the voters in this county said we should leave. That bigger than the UK trend, where leave has 52% with some areas still to declare as I publish this at 5.35am.
I don’t like the result. But it’s a democratic result and a result for democracy. People voted yesterday who had not voted before or very rarely voted. That’s a significant win.
The worst thing that can happen now is that we hurt ourselves. George Osborne promised an emergency austerity budget if we voted out. If that comes true, we will damage our economy and support for vulnerable people in our country.
I also fear with Scotland voting in, and England and Wales voting out, we are now a deeply divided country. I worry too that younger people voted in but older people voted out. It’s the young people that will have to live with this decision.
Scotland has voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38%. Voters there will not be happy having their future dominated by an England that wants out. Scotland is an internationalist country. I cannot see how a new vote on Scottish independence can be denied, certainly not by a government led by David Cameron.
London also voted in. Most of the cities and shires outside the capital voted out. That will reinforce the growing divide between London as an international economic powerhouse, while the rest of the country ticks along at a slower speed.
Cameron and Osbourne no longer have a mandate to run the country. Their credibility has been undermined not just by losing this vote and losing our place in the EU. George Osborne spat out inane nonsense about pensions diving and taxes going up. David Cameron issued threat after threat, even claiming that our pensioners’ bus passes will be withdrawn. At one point I expected these two scaremongers to threaten that Britain would be swallowed up by sea serpents if we left the EU.
During this campaign, Cameron and Osbourne brought further discredit to the troubled arts of politics. I cannot see they have right to continue, even if Tory MPs including Philip Dunne are rallying around them on Twitter.
The photo of Farage standing in front of a poster of suffering refugees sickened me. But he and his supporters gained strength yesterday, something they failed to do in the general election. Their anti-immigration rhetoric worries me. We are a tolerant country and we must remain so.
We must now get on with the business of leaving the EU and do that with as little fuss and turbulence as possible.
I spoke on BBC Radio Shropshire this morning, rather breathlessly while walking Mel the Collie.
We have a Country not seen to be so divided since the days of Oliver Cromwell. We can now look forward to the possibility of Boris for PM and Farage (when a safe Tory seat can be found for him) as chancellor. This brexit result has been fuelled largely by the racism of the right and the militant socialism of the far-left. When Jeremy Corbyn (whose heart was never in this campaign) is eventually persuaded to stand down as leader – a position he was never suited to – I look forward to a LibDem/ Labour/Green coalition which is the only hope of ever getting rid of a Tory Government which is moving ever to the right. During the campaign in Whitchurch I have heard sentiments expressed which are as shameful as those expressed in pre-Nazi Germany. Out and out hatred of foreigners which has been made been the scapegoat excuse for all our Country’s ills. Utterly sickened by the result this morning – and ashamed to be living amongst Shropshire brexiters. Pull up the drawbridge.
This was true democracy at work, for once I felt my vote actually counted. I’m sorry that Julia is ashamed to be living amongst Shropshire brexiters, but I am proud to live in a democracy.
A wake up call to all politicians of all parties.We the electorate have have enough.MR PATE YOU ARE NEXT!
The outpourings of hate on social media and elsewhere are sickening to read. Remainers snarling abuse at brexiters, and vice versa. Extreme right and extreme left leaping in to spew out their own particular brands of vitriol and heighten already dangerous levels of dear and intolerance. In most cases cynically attempting to manipulate to serve their own extreme ends. It has to stop! For G-d’s sake , most of us are , or hope we are, ordinary decent people who voted as we did from honestly held opinions, however misguided others may feel them. As Oliver Cromwell once said to some intolerant Scottish clergy. “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, to consider that you might be mistaken!” in other words, show a bit of tolerance and understanding. They didn’t, of course, but we can and must do better. its time to stop the raging, What’s done is done, and now we have to put the pieces of our country and its basic decency together again.And work together not against each other.
Democracy is about delivering the greatest good for the greatest number. I think more people are going to suffer as a result of leaving the EU than would suffer if we stayed in, and if so this democratic vote is just an example of how precarious the democratic principle can be.