Yesterday
was a bleak day. I won't hide the fact that it started and ended in
tears for me. I felt lost, betrayed and hopeless, on behalf of myself
and an entire generation who desperately didn't want this. I felt
future opportunities to work abroad, to work on international
projects, to welcome the rest of the world and say 'look what we can
do' had been snatched away from me. Worse, I felt something that I
imagine I still would have done if we'd voted to stay by a small
margin. A deep grief for the tolerance, love and unification of this
country. Through the tears, I was desperately scrabbling in my mind
to think of what I could do to change things and just couldn't. All I
felt was despair and uselessness.
That
was yesterday. Today is a new day. A gloomier one maybe, but a
fresh one. Yes, I woke up shattered from the sheer emotion of it all.
Groggy, heavy eyed and almost – almost– submissive. I didn't want
to get up. I just wanted to sleep and pretend none of this was real.
The problem is though that it is, and it's our job to build from the
ashes. A good (and long, in my case) night's sleep didn't make
anything seem any better, but it added a small sense of distance.
Distance allows you to see the bigger picture and start to think
about how we can fix it - and the reality is, that our problems
didn't start with the referendum. Yesterday's result was the
repercussion of us failing to address some deep, long term problems
in this country.
I
know I keep harping on about this, but we desperately need to do
something about the press in the UK, and it's going to take more than
a few well worded tweets. This is the monster that survived an entire
hacking scandal and a public enquiry - largely unscathed. It survived
and it survives because it throws buckets and buckets of hate in
other directions. Yesterday, and throughout the campaign, lots of
very nasty words were lobbed carelessly to and from supporters of
both camps. We could condemn this until the soon to be unregulated,
dubious quality cows come home, but it won't work unless we aim our
fire at the source.
It
might seem easy, in the sheer frustration of it all to call people
who voted to leave horrible things such as racist or stupid, but as
well as hurtful and counter-productive, it's not true and it's
playing straight into the 'divide and conquer' tactics for those who
want our happiness to be the price for their power and fortunes. You
lie well enough, intensely enough and for long enough, and the
kindest, most integral, intelligent person will start to believe you.
They may not be shouting in the streets or on the internet, but that
'X' might move from one box to another at the polling station. In
order to get that 'X' back in the box that is right for the country,
not the powerful few, we need to work with people, not call them
names. I remain incredulous that Nigel Farage can paint himself as
anti-establishment, but he's been playing this (dangerous) game for
many years, he's never stopped in his aims to stoke division, and
he's very good at it. Defeating him is going to prove very difficult
(and may well feel too little, too late), but 'difficult' becomes
'impossible' if we're aiming our fire at people who listen to him,
rather than the man himself. The way forward is education, not
insults.
We
must not fall into the trap of blaming all politicians, and all of
our press. There are MPs and journalists out there who a genuinely
fighting to make the world a better place, and we'd shooting
ourselves in the foot with Murdoch-shaped bullets if we failed to
acknowledge that. If we were ever to be successful in removing the
cancer that is the Murdoch press from this country, we'd want decent,
honest people in the wings, ready to take over before we let someone
else just as bad take the reins. Some people will always have
different views to us, some papers will always be right-wing, but if
they're fighting for the interests of making the world a better
place, and not themselves, then that's ok.
If
we can somehow claw any chance of staying in the EU back, then great,
let's do it, but we need to be prepared for the worst. Either way,
we've got a lot to do. We must keep engaging, keep voting, keep
calling out the lies of certain political elites and certain
newspapers, but the age where that's enough has gone. It's on our
backs now. We've got two mountains to climb. We need to address the
stinking hate and disillusionment coming from people who would sell
this country for a tenner if they could, but we also need to build
relations with people here and across the world. One by one, person
by person. Our generation needs some mighty great cheerleaders. Maybe
not loud in volume, but deafening in love, resolve and a true
workman's ethic in designing, engineering, building and growing a
better place to live, a better ethos and a better environment for all
of us. It's far from fair but it's the job in hand. We've been denied
a chance to be a part of the EU. Free movement, trade, unified
efforts against climate change, economic instability and assaults on
our workers and humans rights, all gone. From the grassroots to
Westminster, to Europe, to the rest of the world, we need to somehow
create something even better.
This
isn't the post I wanted to write. I don't want to be facing an exit
from the EU. I'm angry and I do want to sit and shout at the world,
to blame anyone and everyone I can, but the reality is that a few
nasty, selfish people led to an entire nation burning worldwide
bridges. We've got to be the bigger people now and rebuild them with
our love, blood, sweat and tears.
