I counted myself lucky to be away on holiday and out of the country during the week after the referendum result. The atmosphere was clearly pretty febrile as I watched events unfold from afar. As someone who voted Remain, albeit with serious misgivings, I was prey to a constantly shifting range of emotions, and still am to a degree. I was surprised however, to find an old friend of mine who works for a Labour frontbench MP texting me to say how ashamed she was of England. This set a whole new train of thought going for me. Whatever else I felt about the result, I did not feel any shame whatever about how England – as opposed to London – had voted. I couldn’t for a moment feel any sense of shame that the poor and disadvantaged who have suffered most from the financial crash in 2008 had vented their spleen on the establishment, even though I believe such venting to be misdirected. But the poor and disadvantaged don’t make up 52 per cent of the population or anything like it. While I am prepared to believe there was a degree of xenophobia at work in the vote to leave, I believe it far more likely that there was a grudging resentment – which I share – at the high-handedness of the EU (particularly in the Commission) and the woeful lack of any democratic accountability. Continue reading “England, my England: we need to determine what it is before we can move on from Brexit”