The Brexit Diaries

It seems that the talking is almost over. For the past four years, I and countless others have been appalled, enraged, aghast, grief-stricken – and every other expression of discontent you could name – at the lies, delusions and self-interest that have led us into Brexit.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve written about it, talked about it and not talked about it for fear of getting into unpleasant conversations with people who tell me to get over it.

Whether or not the negotiations in Brussels end up with no deal or some form of cobbled compromise, we’re moving into a new phase: the impact.

This has become obvious since the media started talking about blockages in ports and lorry parks in Kent. Now, it seems, the government wants the supermarkets to start stockpiling food. The supermarkets themselves, according to the Sunday Times, are worried that the public will start stockpiling on a scale that will dwarf the panic-buying that took place as the first COVID lockdown loomed.

The wilder shores of the media are talking about gunboats repelling French fishermen who invade our waters, with the possibility that the first trawler to be fired upon will be greeted with blockades of the Channel Tunnel and the French ports. Who would have thought that our declaration of independence might lead to armed conflict with citizens of our closest neighbour, alongside whom we fought two world wars, and where hundreds of thousands of our citizens reside?

Up until now, most of what I’ve written on Brexit centres on the political decisions and theoretical consequences. Now that the actual consequences are becoming reality, I plan to talk on a regular basis about them and their impact both on me and on the country in general. Not so much a journalistic record – more, I hope, a series of personal reflections.

During the first lockdown, I started a series of posts which I called Corona Diaries. I posted an article every day for over a hundred days while the first wave was at its peak. You’ll be relieved to know that I don’t plan to be quite so prolific as Brexit turns from prospect to reality, but I do intend to take a similar approach, which involves writing directly and tangentially about the coming of Brexit.

I appreciate that some of my readers outside Britain might find a series of reflections about Brexit less than enchanting. But I hope you bear with me and keep visiting, because Brexit is not just about Britain, but a future case study in how in the disinformation age a nation was persuaded to take a momentous decision by people with no clear and balanced view of the likely consequences. A leap in the dark if you like. Or, at worst, the blind leading the blind.

If you think that in the big scheme of things this is a minor event involving a small country that doesn’t matter much anymore, you may be right. On the other hand, I respectfully suggest you pay attention, because one day something similar might happen to you. It’s possible to argue that across the Atlantic something similar actually did happen in November 2016.

However things turn out in the long term, the next few months will be a rough and interesting ride.

Hence the Brexit Diaries.