Leaving do

The British people have voted by a narrow margin (four per cent) to leave the European Union, on the grounds that it's a millstone round our neck, it's dragging us down, it's burying us in red tape, and so on. Now we're about to be free of this ghastly institution, things can only get better and better. All our troubles will be over. Or so it's fondly believed.

But the opt-outers have been sold a pup. They've been conned. They've been taken for a ride. Ambitious politicians who want to make a name for themselves and climb the greasy political pole have spun a load of fibs.

They've painted an entirely false picture of the EU. That it's the cause of all our ills, that it tells us what to do, that it snares us in pointless regulations. And in particular that the large number of immigrants it sends our way are responsible for just about every pressing problem from unemployment to homelessness, the beleaguered NHS and high welfare bills.

Never mind that it's all untrue. Never mind that those familiar problems actually have a whole host of causes, mostly unconnected with the EU, like government spending cuts, a shortage of doctors, and not enough house-building. No no, they're all the fault of the horrid EU and we have to leave it fast or sink into a lethal quagmire.

What the EU really does has been deliberately suppressed. That it outlaws prejudice and discrimination. That it protects the environment. That it defends and improves workers' pay and conditions. That it strengthens our legal rights. And much more.

But all this has been thrown out of the window in favour of relying on our own government. A government that believes in austerity, spending cuts, selling off our public services, keeping wages down, and generally making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

If people really think they'll be better off under our homegrown politicians, with their contempt for ordinary folk, they are surely sadly mistaken. As the months and years go by, and nothing much changes, they will realise just what a massive trick has been played on them. And their fury will be horrible to witness.

Hatred unleashed

As someone virtually hate-free, I find it impossible to understand the sort of extreme hatred and violence that led to the murder of MP Jo Cox yesterday. I'm baffled as to what on earth went on in the mind of her assailant Tommy Mair.

Instead of seeing her as the rest of us would - a conscientious MP helping her constituents, a mother of two children aged three and five, someone with all sorts of plans for the future - he saw her as simply an object of hatred, a symbol of something detestable, someone to be brutally disposed of. So he shot her and stabbed her and left her for dead like a piece of trash.

As I say, I hardly ever feel hatred, and certainly not such virulent hatred. People can annoy me, puzzle me, frustrate me, offend me, but I don't hate them, I just deal with them as best I can and move on. To my mind, hatred achieves nothing but a poisonous and frightening atmosphere.

But some people delight in stirring up hatred, and the current referendum campaign has prompted a torrent of hatred from one reckless politician after another - hatred of elites, of bureaucrats, of migrants, of foreigners, of Europeans, of welfare claimants. It's hardly surprising that some individuals like Tommy Mair take their cue from these public figures and let rip with the same hatred, so ferociously that other human beings become simply enemies to be eliminated.

Of course the politicians make no reference to the widespread hatred of politicians, but that may also have been a factor in Jo Cox's killing. It seems to me that the hatred of politicians has never been so intense - and so mindless.

Maybe the politicians will now reflect on what their casual vitriol is unleashing. Maybe.

Pic: the late Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, West Yorkshire