Do you want to see the future?

The world is still reporting on, analysing and trying to fathom why the unexpectedly successful Leave machine is throwing away their referendum victory and backsliding into the arms of the EU. I was among many saying that an out vote might not be honoured and now we see a sort of sick stalemate while, instead of the elected government getting on with the job, the country is rudderless. No leadership, no opposition and meanwhile the noisy children are once more indulged by the media who love the idea that a few thousand pretty young airheads can overturn a decision voted for by more people than ever in the UK’s history.

Similarly there has been a plethora of articles questioning whether a plebiscite is ever an appropriate way to decide how to deal with complex issues. This ignores the fact that when issues get complex decisions are rarely made for fear of offending one party or other. The country has spoken, but it is now up to the government to implement it. Every day of delay fuels the supposition that there is a chance to overturn the hateful wishes of ‘old people’ and return to the sunlit uplands of happy, smiling Euroland. But something the youngsters might want to consider is just how many European countries are looking to Britain to the lead the way out of the matrix.

You can’t blame young people for being young, but who filled them with such hatred for the society in which they have grown up? Obviously, that isn’t how they see it, as they ask for anybody over 65 to be disenfranchised, or for a majority verdict to be overturned because it doesn’t suit them even though most of them declined to cast their own vote. But one thing young people forget, or simply cannot fathom, is that every one of those hated ‘old people’ (ageism being an entirely acceptable form of bigotry today) was once young. And there is a reason why the vote went the way it did, despite the massed ranks of the establishment lined up to browbeat them into staying.

If the young were a little older, or had been paying more attention, or hadn’t swallowed the drip, drip, drip of unerringly pro-EU soft propaganda that has surrounded them and their parents their whole lives, they may have noticed that our relations with the EU have been less than amicable. They may also have spotted that despite almost every single media prognostication to the contrary Europe and the European Union are quite different things. They may be surprised to learn that their grandparents went grape picking in France or skied in Switzerland, or ran the bulls in Pamplona long before the EU even existed.

But, of course old people know nothing. The children are the future, after all and tomorrow belongs to them just as assuredly as it did former generations of smiling, healthy young people who would never grow old. The referendum outcome should be a source of joy to the kids demonstrating in the streets of the capital. This is the gift to them from an older generation that understands, as they don’t yet, that they know nothing. The EU is the facilitator of the very globalisation that the same young people also protest about. Far from offering them freedom and prosperity the EU seeks to burden them with ever more obligation to the will of an unelected and autocratic bureaucracy which treats them as resources rather than as people.

The yoof have spoken!

Lest you think I am being harsh – they are, after all getting off their arses and letting their views be known – it is worth sharing a little insight into the wisdom that pours from the mouths of babes and sucklings. Allow me to leave you with this short YouTube clip of Holly, whose three favourite things about the EU are, the NHS, “everyone all being like uni’ed all togever and like having the same opinion” and ... well it’s not at all clear what the third thing is. Not to cheapen the debate but she could at least have said chips because who doesn't like chips, right?