Smile at us, pay us, pass us, but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, who never have spoken yet.
G K Chesterton. The Secret people.
Except that three years ago you did ask us to speak, and, Oh! how you hate what we said.I think it’s true to say that just about everybody, including those of us who had campaigned to leave, expected “Remain’ to win. All the great and the good, including the Bank of England, prophesied immediate disaster if we voted ‘Leave.’ But it didn’t happen.
Three years on, and they still haven’t given up. They hide behind the fig leaf of thwarting a ‘No deal’ Brexit, saying this would create economic chaos. Would that be the same chaos as last time? Are we scared of a little disruption? Now the Lib Dems have torn off the fig leaf and openly backed ‘Remain.’ I suppose that is honesty of a sort.
My opposition to our membership of the EU stems from my observations in business. Automation and large scale organisations are good for making cars, but not so good for managing people. Last week I was at a meeting in an Ashby office, which used to be the cottage hospital where four of my children were born. The new giant hospitals have enabled us to embrace new techniques and economies of scale but, Oh dear, something has been lost along the way. The European Union is an attempt to unify twenty eight countries with different cultures and needs. It isn’t working for countries on the mediterranean littoral, and certainly doesn’t work for us.