Wonderful day in Leeds yesterday for the Great Northern March. The media are reporting about five thousand people attended and afterwards we heard from various speakers. It lifts your spirits to know there are so many people prepared to give up a Saturday to protest about Brexit. You can see how ITV's Calendar covered the story (HERE). We are seen about 47 seconds in to the report.
During the whole time we only had about three people shouting abuse but compared to the support from other bystanders it was nothing.
The conclusion I draw from it all is that most people still don't actually think Brexit is important. The majority are indifferent. For them the decision was based on the flip of a coin. I heard a woman on TV last year saying she hadn't made up her mind until she was on the way to the polling booth! To these people staying in or leaving the EU is akin to deciding whether to cut your toe nails or not. They don't think it will have the slightest impact in any meaningful way. What a shock they're in for.
This is why I know we will stay in or rejoin eventually. There are no upsides to Brexit, just downsides and they will only grow larger and clearer until even the most myopic and blinkered idiots realised it was all a dreadful mistake.
Knowing that we are part of a growing movement that is now larger than any British political party, indeed Brexit transcends party politics, gives me a lot of hope for the future.
I don't think the seventeen million who voted to leave are all racist xenophobes (although many of them undoubtedly are). Good sense and moderation will eventually overcome whatever short term problems Brexit brings. Brexit is driven by a small group of right wing, jingoistic press barons and nationalists. But the fanatics won't beat us because they can't beat us. We can't allow them to beat us.
Daniel Hannan is fond of quoting G K Chesterton's poem The Secret People and particular this section:
Smile at us, pay us, pass us
But do not quite forget
We are the people of England
And we have not spoken yet
He thinks the people of England spoke on June 23rd 2016. They didn't. But they soon will.
