From the people who brought you “Boaty McBoatface”…

…comes Brexit! Another prime example of why sometimes referenda are NOT a good idea. I am a big fan of the late great Sir Terry Pratchett, who wrote that the mind of a mob is equivalent to the IQ of its stupidest member, divided by the number of people in the mob. This is all fine – democracy in action no less! – when you are voting online to name an arctic explorer  boat. I LOVE Boaty McBoatface and I love that that was the name the good people of Britain chose. I mean, why not? It’s not like the fate of the whole country depends on it. Wait, what?

The Leave vote actually won. It’s a week later and I am STILL incredulous. And angry.  (in fact, I was asked to look angry and pose in front of the cafe for the local paper’s piece on Brexit here) I know I can sit here in Canada smugly watching it all crumble, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t really affect me here – we made our escape in time, but it DOES affect my friends and family and everyone I know over there. And it’s really scary!

So, in my opinion, the referendum should never have happened in the first place. Nothing this important with so many far-reaching and unpredictable consequences should be decided on without a very deep understanding of the issue, which, lets face it, very few people have. For all it’s benefits, the EU remains a faceless, impenetrable behemoth of bureaucracy and I’m sure not even the people who work there fully understand how it all works. The fate of Britain’s place in it definitely should not have been decided as a result of a popularity contest between old Etonians, or as a result of lowest-common-denominator scare tactics in the tabloids.

Let’s backtrack a bit. Buttock-headed posh boy David Cameron panicked about losing votes to the further-right wing UKIP party before the last general election. In order to appease the swivel-eyed loons of Nigel Farage’s party, he said if his Conservatives were reelected in 2015 then he would hold a referendum on whether or not Britain should leave the EU. To his credit, he campaigned to remain in the European Union, unfortunately, even members of his own party wanted to leave.    More significantly however, it shoudl have been clear even then that there was no actual plan to leave. Cameron promised to hold the referendum, he never promised to uphold the results of it. To make the referendum legally binding, he would have had to pass it through Parliament beforehand – the commons and the lords would have had to debate it and agree to implement the results of the referendum before it was held. He didn’t do this.

I genuinely believe no one in cabinet or in the higher eschelons of power actually expected the Leave vote to win. Sure, it would be close and there would be ample excuse for UKIPers to embarrass themselves with incoherent rants on Question Time in the run up.  But common sense would inevitably prevail, Remain would win but democracy would have been seen to be exercised and that should have been an end to it. Even better, there would still be a sizeable minority of people who still wanted to leave, and they could have been represented by Boris Johnson, who was quite obviously lining himself up for the PM’s job.

But BoJo, Gove and Farage actually won – and they seem as incredulous as I am about that. They’ve even admitted that most of their Leave campaign promises were blatant lies. And now it’s obvious that they don’t know what the hell to do next. Meanwhile, all the vile racist lice have come out of the proverbial woodwork at the call of frog-faced Farage, race-hate crimes are up all over the country, Sterling has nose-dived against the dollar (both the US and Canadian), whole regions like Wales, Cornwall and the North East suddenly realise that they quite liked getting all their development funding and subsidies, and now expect the government to reemburse them for those losses, oh and Nicola Sturgeon is (rightfully) calling for another Scottish independence vote that will no doubt actually break up the UK. Simple splendid news, eh Boris?

So, Cameron resigned – before invoking Article 50 which actually commits us to leaving the EU. *slow claps* Well  done you utter twonk, well played. This means, whoever takes over is faced with the concept of trying to negotiate their way through the total omnishambles that is the “exit strategy” AND getting Parliament to pass the invoking of Article 50, OR seemingly ignoring the democratic will of the people and not leaving the EU (which may be sensible but it is political suicide), OR, giving up and calling a general election – when neither party have any semblance of a plan nor any plausible platforms to run on. Did I mention the Labour opposition party have basically imploded? There is no functional opposition to the Etonian oiks…..

So, what should happen next? *Someone* needs to take charge – no idea who that should be though because they are all as bad as each other. How about Tim Farron for sake of argument? Let Parliament or the Lords quash the referendum in as dignified a manner as possible and lets pretend this whole sorry mess never happened! A lot of the Leave votes were protesting against the faceless, unaccountable and undemocratic forces that be in Brussels, so it’s fitting that the decision to remain should be made by our own faceless unaccountable and undemocratic house of Lords. Keep it British!