Sauce for the Geese

Caroline Lucas is involved with something called ‘Dear Leavers’ (@DearLeavers) an attempt, they claim, to open up an ‘honest conversation’ about Brexit. But is it? Is it really? This conversation appears to begin with a presumption that it is the supremely benevolent and intellectually superior Remainers who are big enough to offer an olive branch to the lesser mortals who were duped by ‘rich elites’ into voting against their own interests. There-there, they coo; it’s not your fault, they soothe; while all the time we know their teeth are tightly clenched.

Julia Hartley-Brewer asked Dominic Raab the other day, “Can you guarantee to me right now that on the 1st of November when I wake up we're going to be out of the EU?”. Well , how dare the strumpet be so presumptuous? One of her thousands of more politically correct Twitterlocutors posed his own question:  “Dear Julia, with respect, do you not think it is time to stop referring to people as 'Remoaners'? Whatever happens on October 31st, we have to get the country back together - Leavers and Remainers - and the constant use of derogatory terms will never achieve re-unification.”

While he may have resigned himself to departure from the EU bloc he seemed to believe it was the Leave side which had to surrender ground. Yet, in the same conversation one enlightened remainer soul felt the need to helpfully add “We are getting our country back one funeral at a time” in reference to the popular Remain trope that the leave vote came almost exclusively from ancient Little Englanders; the belief that a second referendum would go in favour of the vibrant, multicultural, woke New Europeans; the belief that his country was obviously now called Europe, Northwestern Region, Sector 23, B.

Now, while there is undoubtedly a fair clutch of knuckle-dragging, socially-challenged, gammon-faced morons in favour of sticking it to the Germans – why, I occasionally include my pig-ignorant self among them – these people really don’t have much of a voice. They are equally despised by everybody, regardless of whatever they think their politics are. Their insults are illiterate, unfocused and have no impact because they are not echoed by anybody with any authority, moral or otherwise. And where they have engaged in any form of action it has been as much fuelled by thuggish urges and base stupidity than by any coherent ideology.

But look at the other side, those who think that national sovereignty is a medieval throwback. For over three years, those in the Brussels camp – Julia’s remoaners – who have massive backing in the media, schools, the establishment, parliament itself, have been calling Leave voters racists and xenophobes, too stupid to know what they were voting for. The onslaught has been relentless and shows no signs of letting up. If anything it has recently shifted up a gear since the Remainer Anti-Christ has become Prime Minister.

Respect. It has to be earned...

If anybody needs to dial down the rhetoric it is surely those who have been most engaged in it. So, Ms Lucas and your disingenuous ‘Dear Leavers’ malarkey, how about we leave the EU as the government promised we would and afterwards you lot show us that you can meet your own lofty standards of civility?  Who knows; once you demonstrate that you have some respect for us, maybe our respect for you might grudgingly return.