Brexit: Land of Hope and Glory

It is unfair, you know.

Unfair how all Leave voters are labelled as being “racist” or “xenophobic”. Some are, true; yes, there has been a rise in race-related violence since the vote, but most Leave voters don’t have a racist bone in their bodies. They are as horrified as the Remainers. Instead what they voted for was their country, their sovereignty. But what does that mean? Why were they prepared to risk all for that seemingly impossible dream?

Let me tell you.

I believe in a country.

I believe in a country where people are happy and free. Where it is safe to walk down the street or for your kids to play outdoors. A country of village fetes and communities that have grown up together, who know one another and look out for one another. A country that is proud of its military, a military that won that country its freedom in war and now protects us in peace. A country where the people all speak their national language and have pride in their national history. A country that trusts and believes in those that govern it and unite behind the government that it elects every five years. A country that will accept foreign tourists and treats them with honour and great hospitality, but will not be dictated to by foreign powers.

That is sovereignty: we decide, not them. Foreigners can come in and they can trade, but only on our terms. And if we want them to leave, we have that right too. A country that respects, not derides its elderly; a country educates its young. A country where the rich do not rub the noses of the poor in the dirt and where the same shops that were there thirty or forty years ago have not been bought out by faceless foreign corporations. That is the dream: the dream of sovereignty, and please respect those who voted for it. It is nothing less than a Land of Hope and Glory.

Personally, I did not vote for it. But I do believe in it. I believe in it, not because I know that it can exist, but because I know that it does. Last year I witnessed it first-hand. Last year I took a holiday in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, known as North Korea to most of us, a country that exercises its independence truly and completely, 100%, the most sovereign state on earth.

And so please, I urge all of you who espouse sovereignty, to see it for yourself, for all those dreams the North Koreans have attained. They love their leader even more than we love our Queen and they unite behind him completely. That is the sovereignty dream in the 21st century.

I, on the other hand, voted the other way. Time will tell who is right. But in the meantime, please do not deride those who wish to turn the UK into a European North Korea as racist. They deserve far more respect than that.