Referendum

Seventeen million people across the UK said this week that they wanted to leave the European Union. What this means was very well described by other people like this unknown and widely quoted commenter on the Financial Times website who talked about “three tragedies” of the EU referendum result:

“Firstly, it was the working classes who voted or us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite or another one.

Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent o the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.

Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When Michael Gove said ‘the British people are sick of experts’ he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?”

Me, I was surprised, shocked, disappointed. I’m sad for Europe, sad about the failure of the European Union, sad for the British people.
Many of the 17 million who voted to leave will have done so because of “the migrants” in some way or other. I am an immigrant in this country.

So what really moved me was the response of the people here: Two major Scottish politicians, Kezia Dugdale and Nicola Sturgeon, in their first responses both specifically addressed the European workers in the UK and stressed how welcome they were here and how their contribution was valued.

My boss’s boss Paul who is English apologised to me for his countrymen and made sure I was doing ok.

And my bus into town got stuck in a demonstration against the referendum results, with people shouting “Migrants are welcome here”.

So how could I take this personally? I definitely don’t feel unwelcome in Scotland.

PS. One of my favourite bloggers has expressed his own Brexit sadness in his Make Wealth History blog (click).