Oh Boris, you made my kids cry. .. and it’s all my fault

IF A week is a long time in politics then – and I promise that this is my last word on the Johnsons for a long time – it’s a lifetime in my family. And what an astonishing, upsetting, stunning week it has been, a stinging reminder that no politician should ever ask the public a question he doesn’t know the answer to. Now the snow globe is not just shaken but lying broken on the floor.

A week ago today my father was addressing the Remain rally in Hyde Park while my brother was headlining the one for Leave in Billingsgate. Afterwards we all went to Boris’s birthday party hosted by our brother Jo in Camden.

Jo had made his signature dish of chilli con carne, my mother brought cheese, I did the salad. There were toasts (if we brought presents, I forget what they were) and, of course, a very few ‘well-chosen words’ from Boris about what was going on, but nothing to frighten the horses. He was interrupted by my Remainer husband Ivo shouting: ‘Brexit, pursued by a bear market.’

It was business as usual, but I thought I sensed a rare despondence emanating from the then leading light of Leave. Everyone was calling it for a narrow Remain victory, a result that suited almost all of us.

‘Don’t worry, it will all be OK,’ I said, as he carved slabs of cheese. ‘If aught befall thee it is good.’ At this my brother’s blue eyes narrowed to focus on a distant horizon.

Soon after the cutting of a huge chocolate cake he was off to see ‘The Gover’. And it was by no means over. Campaigners on both sides had crisscrossed the nation and spotted that London and the large cities, and the rest of the country were parallel universes. You only had to go outside the M25 to see the red Vote Leave signs.

So that’s where we were on Thursday. I voted during the monsoon organised by the Brexit gods at my local church. Ivo kept muttering: ‘I know you’re going to vote for your brother’ and ‘Johnsons are thicker than water’.

I had to send him a picture of my ballot paper, then caught a plane to France to do a MailOnline event with my colleagues Katie Hopkins and Richard Littlejohn.

We sat in a tent on the harbour in a boiling Cannes as the sun went down, replacing warm sweat with cold rosé. I felt smug, almost pitying, that they were on the wrong side of history and the country would wake up on Friday with the status quo intact.

What a fool I was. As I watched the news all night, as area after area consciously uncoupled from the EU, it rammed home the truth. I live in an insulated, isolated golden bubble along with the pampered townie elites. I accept with appropriate humility that this, the loudest of fanfares for the common man, is a deafening raspberry to people like me, who have never felt the sharp end of mass immigration, only profited from it, while displaying contempt to the communities ignored by London and Westminster.

In the cold light of Independence Day 2016, I could see with perfect hindsight that my lot had this latterday Peasants’ Revolt coming.

I even worry that my decision to go on that flotilla with Sir Bob Geldof – who appeared to flick V signs to weather-beaten fishermen in their Captain Pugwash boats – might have helped the mutiny against the establishment and globalisation (the writer Allison Pearson, an Outer, tweeted me: ‘What are you doing on the condescending w***** boat?’). But I don’t flatter myself. I’m feeling too stunned to try to make light of any of this after what happened overnight on Thursday.

I can hear my brother’s voice in my head as I write this: ‘Don’t be gloomy! It’s going to be great. And for God’s sake, Rake, I beg you – please don’t write another of your pieces.’

If anyone is going to give Boris the benefit of every doubt, it’s me. But I have to write and say this anyway. The polls were wrong. The markets were wrong. The bookies were wrong. The pundits were wrong. But – although we can’t say the people were wrong, damn them – this still feels wrong to my stomach.

I understand the fury of people who can’t get appointments at their GPs’ surgeries or their children places in primary schools.

But when the BBC called it for the take-control freaks, as dawn spread over sea and the super-yachts squatting in the harbour, I went down to the beach and, by the shores of the Med, I sat down and wept.

When I went into breakfast all the Brits were sitting around, stunned. A woman stopped at my table and said: ‘Yesterday I pitched that our agency should be the European hub of Intel. Today we’re not even European.’

A Frenchwoman in a cafe said: ‘C’est une folie.’ How can the Leavers say with a straight face that we are still part of Europe if we leave the EU? We aren’t. The EU and Europe are indivisible. ‘Une journée triste,’ said the receptionist behind the desk, as I checked out.

On the way to the airport, the commentators on French radio kept saying: ‘La Grande-Bretagne a rejeté la diversité de l’Europe.’ What a verdict on us as a nation.

Suddenly, the last thing I wanted was my country back – not if my country is a rump little England, soon to lose Scotland and Ireland as well as its 43-year partnership with the EU.

I wasn’t sure I even wanted to go back to my country and almost ripped up my boarding pass.

All I could hope for with my heart and head and soul is that this – at worst Gibraltar, minus the sunshine – is secretly not what two of the marquee names of Brexit, Michael Gove and Boris, want either. In their hearts they are pro-European and pro-immigrant too. My children were contacting me in utter shock as my father toured the TV studios in a ‘Vote In’ T-shirt, saying what a brilliant Prime Minister Boris would be. ‘I cannot believe this has happened,’ my daughter texted. ‘I’ve been shaking all morning. I cried.’

MY YOUNGER son called and said everyone on Facebook was fuming, and you can understand the rage of the younger generation, who now can’t expect the freedom of Europe in the way we oldies have had it.

‘They’re all saying Boris has stolen our futures,’ Oliver, 19, reported. ‘The football stops for three days and look what happens!’

My phone was pinging with furious and often abusive texts, as well as sorrowful ones from friends in Europe. A French banker Frederic, who works in London with three young children, texted: ‘Please tell me one thing to reassure the kids. They were crying this morning.’

One from my French publisher, 90, read simply: ‘Chère Rachel. Je reste votre ami. Bernard.’ One from the writer Hanif Kureishi was one word: ‘F***ed.’

I hope we’re not, and – trying to make the best of things – I don’t see why we should be. Those who broke it own it now, and have a duty to do something to give hope to the 16.1million who voted In.

The Vote Leave lot, who are to be congratulated for their stunning victory, have a chance; now we are

My phone has pinged with furious and abusive texts

where we are, the EU had better come to the table rather than bully us into invoking Article 50 when it suits them rather than us.

Furthermore, the gracious outgoing PM has given the Leavers a space to make things better rather than apocalyptically worse.

As the BA plane approached Blighty, the announcement came: ‘If you are not members of EU you will need to fill out an arrival card.’ I felt a bit soggy again, as I did when I saw the big screens in the arrivals hall saying: ‘Welcome to Great Britain.’ ‘How long will we be able to call ourselves that?’ I asked myself.

To whoever takes over from David Cameron, who has been as kingly and calm as Charles I at the scaf- fold, I say this: we have already lost an Empire, don’t let us lose two unions too. And no more referendums, not in this country, anyway.

At the airport I steeled myself to call husband to ask how he was. ‘I’ll be dead soon so I’m not worried about me,’ he answered, wearily. ‘I’m worried about my children and grandchildren.’

So am I. When I left Heathrow on Thursday we were all part of Europe. As of Friday we aren’t.

I don’t blame Boris. He has played a brilliant blinder, he has followed his heart and 17,410,742 others happened to agree with him.

Nobody has worked harder or more bravely to give the citizens of this country the result they desired. Be careful what you wish for, folks, but more to the point: now I have to try to persuade my family – and my daughter says that she is ‘in mourning’ – that this is not all Boris’s fault; and I can genuinely say that it isn’t.

Frankly, it would be far easier, and perhaps more accurate, to blame poncey, out-of-touch people like me or Jeremy Corbyn – and unlike the Labour leader, I can prove I voted Remain. I’ve still got the picture on my phone.

My son’s friends are saying Boris has stolen their futures