Walk away me boys, walk away me boys,
and by morning we'll be free
Wipe that golden tear from your mother dear,
and raise what's left of the flag for me
The shock of it all still has many of us in a stupor, like the Blitzkrieg has rolled through and we're all wandering around in the ruins of Europe. One minute I was drinking a bottle of cheap French Merlot with the BBC on; the next I was staggering through the middle of the night, passing drunks talking about how Donald Trump is just misunderstood. Fuck me we're in some vile times, but one global catastrophe per column, I suppose.
The casualty reports of the BREXIT vote are still coming in and it will be years before the full extent of this calamity is known, if it can ever be so understood: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces a revolt from within his own party after yet another - and most appalling - example of his lame and dismal leadership, and the Pound Sterling was being beaten unconscious in back alley while the results were still coming in. Over the course of just a few hours the British economy tanked at a rate not seen since before the Great Depression. Billions, perhaps trillions, have been wiped out.
The damned thing even had a real body count: MP Jo Cox, a champion of diversity who pushed hard to help refugees, was murdered by a reactionary nutjob trying to Make Britain Great Again, and on the big night Nigel Farage still had the audacity to squeeze the words "without having to fire a bullet" through his gopping fish-faced mouth while announcing British independence. The whole European Experiment which has provided for the most peaceful and prosperous decades that continent has ever known, has been put at risk and fascist upstarts in France and the Netherlands are hungrily eyeing the bleeding and vulnerable EU. Christ, I can't wait to see the Charlie Hebdo issue about this.
At least I can take some comfort knowing that one of the casualties of the night was David Cameron, that Pigfucker. After appeasing the lunatic fringe of his party and fending off an encroaching UKIP in the previous election by recklessly tossing off a promise to hold the referendum, his hog is thoroughly skewered and roasted. Well deserved. Next time, David, remember that voters who can be convinced to vote for Nigel "doesn't everyone call them Chinkys?" Farage is probably best left alone and not worth chasing.
This is different than an election defeat, there's a sharper sting to it. With elections there's always the prospect of getting them back the next time around. The next two or three years may be rotten but at least we can think the next cycle is a fresh start. It's much harder after a referendum, which may never occur again and can't be taken back nearly so easily. Even if it could be, in time, so much of the damage is already done. It's unsettling to watch a country vote itself into near complete irrelevance.
Boris Johnson is my bet to be the next Prime Minister. He's one of the best educated dopes on the face of the Earth and his buffoonish persona is as worrying as it is hilarious, but if the ship is going down we might as well have a song and a laugh while we're at it.
And make no mistake mate, the ship does indeed appear to be going down. In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein is back to whispering about a vote to unite with the Republic and that may gain serious traction. Scottish nationalists, only recently defeated in no small part by the argument that only staying in the United Kingdom could guarantee their place in the EU, are already planning the next vote on independence and it's becoming harder to argue that they're better off where they are now...stuck sharing a country with a Middle England full of small minded bigots who really don't seem to like brown people unless they can cook a good curry, and don't understand why they (and of course, nobody else) bothered to win the war just to be ruled by Belgians and Germans anyway.
At least we can look forward to watching whoever leads the Conservative party struggle and twist through the politically dire consequences that await them no matter what they do. It's possible they or Cameron will go down in history as the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it will be almost entirely by accident - a reckless promise tossed off without much consideration to bring the whole temple down on your own head in order to placate a few malcontents on the right. Empowering racists, and dodging facts and evidence to further divide an already divided country. Swinefuckery: it's a new entry in my political lexicon and that is going to be the definition. Jesus, remember when these people owned 1/4 of the Earth's surface? Only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun back then, and the rest of us used to be able to tell one from the other.
The world is getting smaller and more integrated whether these people like it or not, and theirs virtually nothing they can actually do to stop it. Leave campaigners seemed to play on a portion of the British psyche that acts like the kid in high school who won a gold medal in track and field in Grade 11 and that's been their whole life ever since. So glorious was that victory that it has outshone anything else since, it's how they define themselves.
No progress is possible, no modernity enacted if it might challenge that mythos. Remember the good old days? They ask, repeating the mantra of the Jeremy Clarkson school of Political Theory, Why did it all have to change? Who needs a comprehensive and coherent set of trade, travel, and safety regulations dictated by some faceless paper pushing nerd in Brussels? Nevermind peace and prosperity, I bet he can't even finish a 500m dash!
Or is a 546 yard dash for those still operating in backwards nonsense? For the foreseeable future, I suppose it might be.
