Help – my son has come out as a Bremainer!
The EU referendum is dividing families and friends as well as political parties. On Twitter, the lovely Sandra Howard admits that she is an In while her husband, Michael (Lord Howard), is a definite Out. Boris Johnson says “knickers” to the undemocratic European elite, but his father Stanley, sister Rachel and brother Jo are all backing Remain.
Meanwhile, George Osborne has caused ructions with his pro-Brexit relatives: Jennifer Little, the Chancellor’s aunt, is scathing about the Government’s “ludicrous” £9.3 million pro-EU leaflet. “I don’t believe a word of it. We do not have control of our borders!” thunders Aunt Jennifer.
Things are no calmer at Pearson Towers, where the Boy has announced he is an Inner because he quite fancies working “in Berlin, or maybe Italy”. His mother, your columnist, launches the Brexit branch of Project Fear there and then, haranguing the ignorant teenager with statistics. By the time you have children, I warn him, Britain will be so overcrowded with people fleeing the disastrous eurozone that it will take 18 months to get a hospital appointment, and school classrooms will have an average of 59 pupils and only one native English speaker, hopefully, though not necessarily, the teacher. If, I say, warming to my theme, most of our major cities have escaped being blown up by Belgian jihadists bearing EU passports!
“OK, I won’t have kids then,” says the boy and stalks off. Infuriating.
He is absolutely true to form for his age, though. The latest YouGov poll indicates that 75 per cent of under-25s will vote to remain. (By contrast, almost 70 per cent of over-65s want to leave the EU.) If you’re Barack Obama, you think that’s because the young are just wonderful and have not yet succumbed to cynicism. If you’re me, you think it’s because they are more worried about mobile roaming charges and cheap shagfests in Ibiza than controlling our borders and laws.
The setting of wife against husband, generation against generation, is as nothing, however, compared to the fight that has broken out between Samantha Cameron and Sarah Vine, the newspaper columnist who is also Mrs Michael Gove. The two women have been chums since their husbands became MPs. Sarah is godmother to the Camerons’ youngest, Florence, which is as close as friend can ever get to family. But the pair had a stand-up blazing row at a 50th birthday party shortly after Mr Gove announced he was on the opposing side to the Prime Minister. Sam was livid about an article in which Sarah had outlined her husband’s dilemma and quoted private conversations with Mr Cameron. In a mutual hail of expletives, she accused her former friend of “betrayal”. Oof!
Vine had tried to see off any looming aggro in her offending column when she wrote, with evident trepidation, “the Camerons are some of our dearest friends. We have been through so much together, both personal and political.” She admitted that she had not been totally straight with the PM, giving the impression that Gove was onside with Stronger in Europe, not out of active duplicity but just to avoid unpleasantness.
That bit certainly rang true. How often with friends do we take a cowardly “I can neither confirm nor deny” approach? Recently, I chose not to reply to a round-robin email from a businesswoman in which she said she couldn’t believe that people were stupid enough to think we should quit the EU. I happen to be one of those “stupid” people, but I don’t think it’s worth losing our friendship over.
The Brexit Catfight between Cameron and Vine was so heated and so personal because Samantha gets that Michael Gove can do serious damage to her husband. That’s why the famously tight-lipped thoroughbred lost her cool in public. You see, Gove knows full well that his friend’s EU renegotiation was an embarrassing failure. He has experienced exactly how much European law prevents British ministers from doing their job. Because he is so close to Cameron, he understands the weak spots, where best to slip in the dagger.
“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend,” said the poet William Blake. Such are the feelings of the Camerons for the Goves.
As for Sarah Vine, in doing her job as a journalist she effectively tendered her resignation as a friend. Although the women are said not to have spoken since their fight, Vine has told people she knows the PM and his wife are “incredibly stressed out” and she hopes that she and Sam will be able to make up after the referendum. In which case, she’d better pray that Brexit loses. It’s far easier for victors to be magnanimous. If the PM is humiliated by his clever friend, there will be no way back for their wives.
Why do the Remainers hate the Outers so much more than we Outers dislike them? I reckon it’s because they are defending the unlovely status quo.
As Boris said in his Gerald Ratner analogy, they know the EU is crap (and monstrous in so many ways), but the powerful have a vested interest in keeping it going. The cause of Leave is far nobler, and the Remainers can’t stand that. Undoubtedly, there will be lots more EU bust-ups between now and June 23. If there’s one among your family or friends, please let me know and I’ll print the best ones.
More peaceable souls will probably want to adopt the Theresa May position and split their crotch while sitting on the Brence. Personally, I will be wholeheartedly supporting my children in their idealistic pro-EU stance – while making sure the little darlings are not registered to vote.
Why do Remainers hate the Outers so much more than we Outers dislike them?