This morning I don’t know what is more on my mind. Five months to find a new job, or eleven to find a new home, if I can find any way to do it.
I’m not sure if I’m more depressed or angry. For my entire lifetime I have been an EU citizen as much as I have Scottish or British and I’ve been proud to be all three. Today, a minority has succeeded in taking away rights, freedoms, and protections I have had since birth in the name of “taking back control” and a campaign largely built on division, intolerance, selfishness, and misunderstanding.
I watched our "Brexit Party" MEPs with embarrassment, shame, and disappointment at what we've become and how the rest of the world now views us. Whilst, in stark contrast, the rest of the chamber joined hands to sing Auld Lang Syne. One is symbolic of what seems to be the “new Great Britain”, the other of unity. I know which side I’d rather stand with.
I truly believe that the campaigners, and those who’ve led us to this today, will find themselves “on the wrong side of history” but it’ll be many years before it becomes history, for now it’s the present.
It poses a very real threat to some people’s way of life and - indeed - to very the life itself of some close to me if various medical import problems aren’t resolved (and this isn’t sensationalist or “project fear” - as people feel the need to give everything a stupid moniker these days to appeal to the tabloid audience - this is based on actual concerns of doctors, consultants, and researchers familiar with the supply chain)
All this for what? I still haven’t seen one tangible benefit beyond the usual sound bite rhetoric of “taking back control” and complaints about “unelected bureaucrats” etc. To those who wanted this, the next eleven months are yours. Show the rest of us what’s so great about Brexit. Prove all us “reamoaners” (oh look, another stupid moniker!) wrong by all means. Part of me hopes you do, because otherwise this is going to become a very different and difficult place to live.
On the subject of Scottish Independence, which comes up every time alongside Brexit. I opposed it, and in many respects still do, but one of the fundamental reasons for that opposition is gone now and if the EU offered formal reassurance we’d be welcomed back then I would - somewhat tentatively - vote in favour should the opportunity arise. I’d rather be a small nation in a group of twenty-eight, than a small nation in a group of three.
As for me? Selfish little me? If not for the house and other commitments, I’d be off. To Canada, which I’ve felt a strange draw to since I was about 12. Or, perhaps, to Germany, which I’ve visited a few times and - despite not speaking the language - have friends there and feel I could live there easily. Perhaps even Sweden or the Netherlands, which in my short time there felt welcoming.
For the rest of the year we remain closely tied to EU rules, and in theory nothing changes, but we stormed off in a tantrum from our seat at the table where those rules were made. After all, twenty-eight countries working together, we can’t have that, can we, how un-British 😞