Although no one can say the dust has settled, we've now had a week and half to digest the indigestible. The deed has been done and those of us who dislike the result have little choice, if we are democrats, but to lump it.
Of course I'd love to wake up and find a second vote had been held overnight and produced a resounding win for Remain (or Get Back In Before The Doors Are Bolted). Actually, a Remain by one vote would suffice.
I am as sure as I can be no such thing will happen.
The referendum was always a ridiculous and unnecessary idea, called solely in David Cameron's narrow political interests, and led to a campaign based on lies, exaggeration and sheer nastiness. But it was flagged in the Tories' general election manifesto so was hardly an undemocratic instrument. It's happened, Leave won and we probably just need to get on with making the best of the rotten mess it has caused and the greater mess it threatens to create.
It is perhaps also time to stop insulting the broad mass of Leave voters, 51.9 per cent of the impressive turnout of more than 72 per cent.
Some, beyond the least question, are thoroughly obnoxious people - racists and xenophobes who would not have been too out of place in the Third Reich. Others were gullible enough to swallow the lies they were told about all that EU money being diverted to the NHS - already retracted - or the immigration crisis being solved just like that (not going to happen, it's now admitted).
But many more simply saw Leave as the best option for the UK, a chance to reclaim sovereignty and so on (I'll be honest and declare I saw no truly coherent arguments in favour of withdrawal, but I would say that). I think they were hopelessly wrong but must respect their contrary opinion.
@ajjolley @peterjukes @CambridgeNewsUK sick of being branded racist, narrow minded & bigoted BY bigoted people for having audacity to vote!
— Alf (@AnnDear) June 26, 2016
Oddly enough, I know virtually no one who voted to leave. No one that is, among the people I'm related to, meet regularly, watch football or play badminton with, work with as fellow-editors of Salut! Sunderland or in my freelance journalistic work ... The nearest I've got to personal knowledge of Brexit is Boris, recalled without antagonism from times we both spent at the Telegraph (he as a fine writer; me as a hack) and a few, mostly retired journalists I follow on Facebook or Twitter.
Those pro-Leave journalists worked or, in a couple of cases, still work for tabloids. I am not sniffy about the popular press. Their reporters were almost always the best, among all the broadsheet, TV and radio hacks on any given story, and they were always the best company on the road. A good tabloid journalist makes the transition to a broadsheet (I used the term loosely since so few newspapers survive in broadsheet format) much more successfully than tends to happen the other way round.
My interpretation of the prevalence of pro-Leave views among them may be flawed, but here it is. Very few of the people I worked with at The Daily Telegraph shared the Telegraph's life and world view. They wanted to work for what was a great paper for news and sport but were more likely, at least among the reporters, specialists and sub-editors, to support Labour or at a pinch the Lib Dems than the Conservatives. It didn't get in the way of work because there was genuine journalistic talent and professionalism that easily rose above inconvenient clashes of belief.
But if you worked for the Mail or the Sun or the Express, for example, you were - or so it seemed to me - prone to believe wholeheartedly in everything your paper stood for. This probably came with having to defend it so often to the people you were trying to interview, but that is not to say it was insincere and there needs to be no apology.
And at Facebook I come across acquaintances, remembered from those days, advancing strident pro-Leave views. I would not dream of suggesting these are the ramblings of a bunch of thickies.
Two Facebook postings, from either side of the debate, bear repetition. One writer wishes to distance himself from all the fascists, racists, lowlife thugs and hard-of-thinking halfwits who shared his attachment to Leave. The other resents attempts to portray Brexit as the product of an unthinking, lumpen working-class vote.
* Jamie Pyatt, a Sun journalist and passionately pro-Brexit, posted a clip of some hideous English Defence League characters spouting hideous EDL bile.
"I will vote in anyone for PM who will track these people down and through a gentle and painless operation ensure they are never able to produce anything that could one day enter the gene pool."
* Eddie Mulholland, pro-Remain, a photographer with whom I have worked (for the Telegraph) on numerous occasions, always enjoyably:
There seems to be a lot of 'blame' being thrown at the working class for voting in favour of Brexit.... Has anyone got any figures to back this up such as a breakdown of backgrounds and jobs of these voters ?.... No ? Were the voters asked to specify which 'class' they belonged to ? I think you'll find the answer is no. So can all the middle class w****** who work in the media stop blaming the 'Working class' for this debacle. It's easy to say "it's all happened because the thicky workers all fell for the Brexit lies...." But what about all the educated that voted... It's not that simple so stop looking for scapegoats and get on with it. We lost. Move on.
Both make valid points. It's a shame for decent Brexit voters that they can hardly escape some guilt by association with all those dubious people, from Farage to the chilling far-right leaders of France and the Netherlands, who also wanted Leave to prevail. And it is condescending to suggest that we must heap exclusive blame, as Eddie puts it, on "thicky workers".
If I am right in fearing Britain is an uglier place because of what has happened, it makes no sense to make it more unappealing still with inelegant, unedifying attacks on those who thought differently and voted as conscience dictated.
@PostRefRacism @peterjukes @Taz_Abass as someone else pointed out "not all vote leavers are racist but all racists will vote leave"
— (((Sharon))) (@ShazM106) June 25, 2016
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