I want my country back|New Statesman

As Tories prepare to elect a new prime minister – yet another one in a long sequence of candidates previously anointed by an unelected, self-appointed Australian-American foreign billionaire, whose discrete presence on the British political scene has gone totally unnoticed and unmentioned when proclaiming independence day. The EU is nearly gone, but he is here to stay, forever, to vouchsafe for British independence from foreign interference – and nobody noticed the paradox. Or didn’t dare to.

I want to wake up tomorrow in a country where people are kind, and tolerant, and decent to one another. A country where people – all people – can feel at least a little bit safe. I want to rub the sleep of neofascist nightmares from my eyes and find myself in a country where we do not respond to the killing of a politician by voting against everything she stood for. A country where we are polite to our neighbors. A country where we have dealt like adults with the embarrassing fact that we once conquered half the world, instead of yearning for a time when our glory was stolen from enslaved people a convenient ocean away and large parts of the map were the gentle pink of blood in the water. I want to go back to a Britain where hope conquers hate; where crabbed, cowed racism and xenophobia don’t win the day; where people feel they have options and choices in life and are less likely to press the big red button to bring the house down on top of us. I want my country back.

This was never a referendum on the EU. It was a referendum on the modern world.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/i-want-my-country-back

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