Brexit

I've been doing a course on Futurelearn about the EU. I signed up for it before the EU referendum was announced in the UK and now I find the course has been hijacked by Brexiters trying to explain why they voted to leave the EU. They haven't actually managed to explain why they voted the way they did. Nor have they said what they think the UK will gain by leaving - so not a hope of a plan A or B from these people - but they are quite vociferous in their hatred of the EU, its bureaucracy and - how awful is this? - Angela Merkel.

I gave up the course at week 4 but then thought soddit! if I skipped week 5 (about the Bretton Wood agreement - yawn!) I could learn a bit from the presenter (he's a Catalan) in week 6 about what he thought the role of Germany and the future of the EU might be.

So it's the middle of the cacking night and here I am raging at a post by a fellow participant I reckon is probably mid- to late-80s:

He has taken issue with a post from another participant:

"Who do you identify as Britains ruling class Lynne-Marie? On 01.09.1939 I was evacuated to a village where the local Lord was the paternal and feudal lord of all he surveyed. They no longer exist apart from the one or two who open for visitors. Our leaders post war have been virtually all ex-grammar school and trade union apart from the socialist millionairs like Tony Benn".

I have replied to him several times on other issues, as I have to other Brexiters on the course, but tonight I've lost it:

"I'll tell you who Britain's ruling class are, James: they have inherited wealth; they are educated at private (I think you would call them public) schools and attend Oxford and Cambridge; they flood the house of commons and the lords bringing with them the attitudes of millionaires (which a lot of them are), a sense of entitlement and a lack of connection with the people they are apparently elected to serve. Some of the politicians who fit exactly this profile include Alec Douglas Home, Anthony Eden, Winston Churchill, David Cameron, Harold MacMillan. With the exception of Tony Benn, they are not in the Labour party. The mismatch between the voters and their elected representatives is growing and is a main reason for the disillusionment of the electorate. Nye Bevan got it right: <No amount of cajolery can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party … So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.> And they haven't changed in a century.

I'm glad you got evacuated to a place of safety in WW2. My family didn't. My grandmother, mother and her sister lived 200 yards from the docks in Glasgow and worked in the food industry. They weren't evacuated till 1942 when things got really dangerous and then only for about 7 weeks".

So let's get this right: while some of us who voted to remain in the EU are so worried about what the future holds for us, our kids and their kids that we're sitting with our heads in our hands asking the Brexiters 'What have you done? What have you done?' the Brexiters are fannying around, deluded and delusional, unable to tell us what happens next, clinging to the fantasy that is the idyllic England of lords of the manor and no doubt old maids bicycling to church (to quote John Major), where you don't need to lock your door, blah blah - an ideal that never existed - and they expect the Remain camp to sort this out?

Almost as annoying is the fact that some of the Brexiters on this course credit the EU referendum with bringing the Labour Party to a crisis. I haven't commented on the Labour Party so far. It's not my party any more, but I am alarmed that these Brexiters are so thrilled that, in their view, the threat from UK Labour has been neutralised.

Seriously, folks, we can't afford to be without an opposition. Sky news now refers to the SNP in Westminster as the only 'organised' opposition.

So what do we do now? Well, me, I'm going to finish the course, respond to the 17 online comments that now await me(!) and go to bed!