When I told two neighbours that I had become a no-deal Brexiter they physically recoiled from me.
‘You can’t.’
‘But there’s no other option,’ I said.
‘You can vote Lib Dem,’ they said.
‘But that’s the same as a second referendum. Even if the Lib Dems came to power, the ones who hadn’t voted for them would hate the ones who had.’
Until 2016 I wanted to leave the EU. My thinking was half-baked. There were the silly laws driving farmers mad, the judgments of the European courts and the fact that Brussels hadn’t signed off its accounts for years.
So when the chance came to vote to leave, I thought — good. But then I began to look into the consequences. I am biased towards Poles and didn’t want them to go home. I hadn’t realised that if they did go home, more non-EU immigrants would arrive to replace them so communities would still be disrupted. I don’t think most Brexiters realise that.
I hadn’t realised that the EU had once been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on account of the fact that we haven’t had a war in Europe since we all began to co-operate through trading. And on a selfish level, I wanted to be able to carry on travelling freely through the EU.
Then it emerged that not only did the thinkers I admire want to stay in, most of parliament wanted to stay in. MPs are there to represent the interests of their constituents, not their prejudices, and they know so much more about the EU. And with Richard Dawkins unable to sift the evidence to make a definitive decision, how would my husband Giles and I be able to? Why ask us? Imagine going into a primary school and taking a vote on whether homework should be banned and then implementing the result.
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