Sorry to disappoint, this isn't about the Ambridge Archers but about a couple who live in France. He is a half British, half French writer and on Twitter goes under the name R S Archer (not his real name). His wife is French and their house is in the Dordogne, an area in southern France stretching from Bordeaux to St Etienne. Over the past few weeks he has regaled his Twitter followers with the story of another (unnamed) British family who also have a house nearby and who voted for Brexit.
At the end of June, the family realised for the first time that the parents would not be able to move to France after retirement as they had planned, which for the father is just six years away. They are now having to sell the house in France. This apparently all came as a shock.
You can read the Twitter thread starting with the tweet below. Be warned it is a very long one, perhaps 200 posts or more over a month.
Just had conversation with a British couple who have a holiday home near us. They voted for Brexit and have made no arrangements whatsoever for what happens on Jan 1. They have now discovered the reality of their situation.The blame apparently is with "Brussels".
— RS Archer (@archer_rs) June 29, 2020
Archer is a gifted writer, author of a series called the David Saunders' books apparently (also a pseudonym) and has produced a fascinating tale of a British family who come across as monumentally stupid, the accident-prone son even travelling to France to try and bribe the local mayor during a visit which ends with him being pepper sprayed by a gendarme. On another occasion his wife pushes the mother into his swimming pool. It is a rollicking good comedy, if you like that sort of thing.
Is it funny? Not for me, although I have followed the entire saga. I feel sorry for the British family.
They appear stunningly ill-informed and some of the incidents are beyond parody but Archer comes over as unbelievably smug. The terrible thing is what it all says about Britons. We have become the butt of European jokes - at one point Archer's wife says even the Belgians are laughing at us, as if that was the ultimate insult.
After much toing and froing, the family eventually conclude theirs is a hopeless case - and amazingly announce they are going to buy a house in Spain instead! It is dispiriting to learn that they still blame the EU for it all.
Unforgivably, at no point does Archer sit down and try to explain the reality, that they have been terribly misled and a vote for Brexit and then the Tory manifesto plan to leave the single market and the customs union, was always going to lead to the same end
Worse, Archer learns at one point that the father is to be made redundant. He is 59 with little chance of finding alternative work. His employer is moving operations to Holland because they can't risk a no deal trade relationship with Europe.
Their lives and retirement dreams have been shattered by Brexit, and although they are responsible for their own fate, I blame men like Farage (they still worship him) and Johnson and Gove. All the Brexiteers and the pro Brexit press are to blame. Over the years they slowly convinced a narrow majority that we were being asked for too much in return for too little.
In one of the world's oldest democracies people should be entitled to hear the truth or at least some realism both from the fourth estate and politicians but trust between the public and their elected representatives has been so eroded, much of it deliberately so by Russian money and malign influence, that nobody believes anything anymore.
The prime minister only makes matters worse. He himself cannot distinguish truth from lies and casually misleads every time he opens his mouth.
Archer's thread is one family's journey to the truth. They aren't quite at the end yet, still not quite understanding they have been duped. It is like the scammee's (is that a word?) reluctance to admit right up to the very end that the scammer has been dishonest. But eventually they have to.
Over the next few months many others are going to come to the same conclusion.
Membership of the EU was always a bargain, not in the sense of it being cheap although it is, but in the sense of involving a pact giving us many benefits in return for sharing sovereignty and paying a little money. We get the benefits and delights of an entire continent and privileged access to the largest, richest, safest and most integrated single market in the world.
Many of the rights we enjoy are by virtue of our EU membership but they have become so accepted and normal, like the air we breathe, that they seem to have been provided by nature rather than the result of a lot of painfully negotiated give and take over 45 years or more.
