March 30, 2017 at 08:49PM
29 March is supposed to feel like a momentous occasion, as though the UK has hauled up its anchor and is sailing over the horizon towards the Atlantic, bunting flapping and with those aboard waving cheerily to those left on land in Europe, as they stand at the dockside, teary-eyed and regretful. It doesn’t feel momentous in that way to me. It feels as though the UK is perched on the edge of a precipice, with feelings of vertigo, knowing that the pull over the edge is too strong to resist, but also not sure whether plunging over is entirely advisable.
I can’t speak for the whole of the country, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of the reasons why 70% of my local population voted leave. In no particular order: anger with the EU over fishing regulations, the country being run from London for the benefit of London, life-damaging inequality, deprivation, and a complete feeling of powerlessness and shouting yourself hoarse, only to be overlooked as just another post-industrial town. Apparently we’re supposed to all put up and shut up while the “managed decline” of areas like this carry on, watching everything drain south. It’s as though someone has tipped the north of the country on its head, sending everything – people, money, skills, opportunities in a great flood to the south-east.
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