Smell that?

Well, all hell’s been let loose as Theresa May does the job she is signed up to do and every bedwetting Remainer demonstrates why they aren’t fit to either hold office or seek it. The malign intransigents of the EU-phile ranks poured scorn on our Prime Minister for acting exactly like the leader of a country negotiating its independence. We British are not disposed to take shit from Johnny Foreigner and we’re not best persuaded by those who do. It’s become an out and out fist fight as the very same people who applauded the underhand Juncker leak are now berating Theresa May for openly acknowledging and standing up to the threats emanating from Brussels.

Having failed to shift the opinions of the millions of adults who voted for Brexit they are forever invoking the plight of the young who will ‘have to live with the decisions we make now, for the rest of their lives’. So what? When I was young we had the three day week, wildcat strikes, work-to-rule, go-slows, the brain drain and the constant, if overstated, threat of nuclear Armageddon. You’re telling us Brexit will not only be worse, but that the fallout from it - its own nuclear winter - will last forever?

Nobody knows what anybody else is thinking or even what will happen tomorrow, yet the bleating, garment-rending ranks of quisling remainers are privy to the inner thoughts of Theresa May, and the likes of tiny Tim Farron know for certain that your children will grow up in a weaker, poorer country with no job, fewer opportunities, etc. Listening to them preach their social insecurity, they sound like agents of unfriendly foreign lands; as Mrs May stresses a desire for civilised talks and mutually beneficial outcomes they are openly demanding that we be punished.

But it’s a simple truth that decisions made by the country now are merely a fork in the road. How you progress down that road is up to you and the younger generations will play – or will be able to play, without EU interference – a full part in shaping that progress. In fact, removing the stifling blanket of supra-governance should let in the fresh air of full participation in democracy. If young voters are unhappy with the way future UK parliaments govern they will have far more power now they have seen how the status quo can be upset.

The EU assembles its troops in the Battle for Britain

Far from disenfranchising young people, British independence actually places their future firmly in their hands... once they are old enough to take part. Far from threatening failure, Brexit promises to take us down a road to a better democracy; if detractors don’t want a part in that they are welcome to fork off elsewhere. As for Tim Farron, he might want to consider his own uncertain future as the rest of the country watches him lose his seat to a man dressed as a fish finger.

Two-minute Hate

After a week in which a long fought-for dream was reduced to rubble in just eighty minutes you would imagine England rugby followers would hate the Irish team for their outstanding performance. But that’s not how rugby fans roll. The Irish were roundly applauded and the losing side – for so long seemingly unbeatable, despite some very beatable starts – picked up their Calcutta Cup, their second Six Nations trophy in a row, their world-record-equalling eighteen straight wins – and went off for their bollocking from Eddie Jones. It may be more than a game, but in the end it really is just a game; no place for hate.

Hatred is such an extreme reaction to events, don’t you think? It’s an immature, teenage lashing-out, often against those who have only their best interests at heart. ‘Oh, I hate that!’ they say, when they really mean ‘that’s inconvenient’. True hate is a slow-cooked build-up of repressed animus, marinated for years and slowly brought to the simmer by repeated slights and prolonged ill-treatment. Hate is also personal, visceral. Countries don’t hate each other; one may fear the other nation, or even despise it, but hate is a tricky thing to control and has no place in civilised discourse.

Also, if your first recourse to show your disaffection is to use the word hate, where do you go after that? Don’t you hate exaggeration? Just as with all the ‘literally shaking right now’ tweets following the most insignificant of slights, it’s akin to putting all your cards on the table immediately following the deal. I ‘literally’ hate you, so there is literally no point in trying to discuss things with me; I am so far beyond reason and I hate you for putting me in that position. Hate is like slamming the door and stomping out... you look so much more foolish when you then have to go back and ask nicely for your car keys.

But I suppose hate does allow you to quickly segue into accusations of Nazism and thereby identify with the legions of brainwashed adolescents who believe anybody in a position of authority over them is, literally, Hitler. I find the best way to deal with being called a fascist is to smile sweetly and suggest I have to rush off to barbecue some babies, or gas some Jews. What’s sauce for the goose; at least it saves me getting into complex arguments where you have to find some bizarre middle ground before ‘agreeing to disagree’, which is, of course, mealy-mouthed code for ‘you are still wrong and I will go on believing I have won’.

A ready cleaving to the notion of hate also opens the door to the acceptance of more hyped-up hyperbole to further your incisive discourse. Instead of accepting that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen and Wilders are natural reactions to years and years of concerted left-wing attempts to browbeat people into behaving against their conservative instincts, idiots like Tim Farron have to leap to wild conspiracy theories about some New World Order to explain to themselves how they lost.

Bad losers, whose ‘progressive’ world view has been shown to fail, instead of accepting this and getting on with it are fomenting unrest. People like Farron, possibly in the sincere belief that they are right – which makes them dumb as well as dangerous – are going about, stirring up antipathy, encouraging others to believe themselves victims and take up cudgels against those who genuinely want a world for the many, not for the few. Don’t you just hate that?