JULIE BURCHILL

I love the mood of fractious dissent, but the other side clings to the EU like an old, corrupt comfort blanket

I’ve been a super-lark ever since I gave up drugs a few years back, habitually leaping out of bed at an hour I used to stagger into it, but in recent weeks my 5am starts have become more exuberant than ever. The reason is a simple one – BREXIT! Say it soft and it’s almost like praying… say it loud and there’s music playing. And that music, of course, is Land Of Hope And Glory.

Only joking. I was raised in a Communist household, have never voted Tory and still think of myself as a socialist in relation to issues such as taxation, re-nationalisation and the banning of private education. (Far more to the Left than many do-as-isay, not-as-i-do Corbynites on the last one, I’ll wager.) I’ve been a rebellious person all my life and this may well be partly why I find the current mood of fractious dissent very pleasing. (I find it hilarious when people are outraged to find that icons of rebellion such as John Lydon and Morrissey are Brexiteers – of course they are! It wasn’t Consensus In The UK and This Charming Mandate For Everincreasing European Federation, was it?)

But only partly, mind – I’m a rebel, not a nihilist, and genuinely believe that a Britain which trades equally with the whole wide world will be a better place than one in which it cleaves to a clapped-out clique on a fading continent. If Brexiteers in Parliament get their act together, Europe’s dominance will be well and truly over, and we must face this sensibly rather than cling sentimentally to past glories. (Sounds familiar…) It may be a rude awakening to shake ourselves free of the European dream, but vastly preferable to sleepwalking on into the certain moribundity that a half-brexit or no Brexit would bring.

But enough logic – it’s still a thrill. BREXIT! It may be winter outside, but in my heart it’s spring – spring 2016 and all the fun and joy of Victory Day still coming round that bend. Once again, I feel that familiar feeling of being quite niche in my interests, as apparently we’re all meant to be bored by now.

But how can people ever be bored by politics? It’s like being bored by sex or religion – the great trinity of enthralling social intercourse. I pity the poor fool who can’t wait for a world fit only once more for chatter of shopping, sport and the weather. “Wrap up warm!” the forecasters moan each morning, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re talking about more than the temperature.

But I don’t want a life in which “wrapping up warm” and “staying safe” are the be-all and end-all. I want to live my life like an adult aware of risks and responsibilities, not like a child or Chicken Licken fearing the sky will fall if things change.

Listening to the radio, looking at the internet and reading the papers, the scare stories are still coming thick and fast; as I write, we’re just recovering from Mr Kipling complaining that his French Fancies may suffer from a shortage of such complex raw materials as sugar (because they don’t grow that in the Commonwealth Caribbean, of course) and squaring up to a New York Times exposé about the effect Brexit may have on the freshness of cut flowers. The phrase First World Problems is greatly over-used, but it does come somewhat to mind.

The old glass-half-full/glass-halfempty personality test has never been so in your face. Where Remainers see “here be dragons”, I see a vista of possibilities. Property prices plunging? Great, now young people will stand a chance of making the first rung on the housing market. Workers hired for the cheapness of their labour leaving the country? Fine, now employers will have to pay a decent wage.

You cling to this corrupt, tatty old comfort blanket all you like, Remainers. But please don’t ever again portray yourselves as enlightened, democratic, daring embracers of change. Don’t call yourselves internationalists when you’re willing to sacrifice a generation of Southern European youth to the feather-bedded, over-used fantasies of a cabal of filthy rich old duffers who no one ever elected.

Like someone afraid to leave a bad marriage and step out into the sunshine of uncertainty, you carry on believing the gaslighting lies – “You look fat in that Union Jack mini dress! No one else ever will want you!” Before the referendum, I was willing to believe that our stroppiness made us Bad Europeans – but since the bullying began, I know that it’s not me, it’s EU. We hear a lot about Brexit breaking up friendships and families – the play I wrote with Jane Robins, People Like Us, which played to sold-out houses this year was about this very subject. But really, so what? “He not busy being born is busy dying” as a clever man once said.

If your idea of a life well lived is trundling along in a rat-run rut, driven by corrupt old men who are not answerable to you, you go ahead and moan on about how things ain’t what they used to be before the troubleraising genie of populism was let out of the bottle. You wrap up warm! But for those of us who believe that life is about questioning, challenging and change, there’s never been a better time to be alive.