I don’t quite know what the point of this post is. I feel the urge to get some thoughts down, but where they will go is anyone’s guess.
So I’ve spent 2 years protesting and fighting Brexit. I’ve been on marches, something I’d never done before. I’ve met amazing campaigners and activists. I’ve made phenomenal friends – people who I would never, ever have got through these years without. I’ve become more of an activist. Ok, I started thinking that way after the 2015 General Election, but didn’t really do anything beyond joining the Women’s Equality Party – something I’m still very proud of being part of. I stood for Council, and I’d do it again. I want to build the local branch up, to really establish it within the community. A force for good, in the face of adversity and evil.
So as I sit here on New Year’s Eve eve, one large Baileys down, my thoughts turn to the new year, and what 2020 will bring. And I am, quite frankly, frightened and worried. I was never much of a Europhile before all this, you see. I’ve learnt so much. But you know, one of my main things about voting Remain was about having that extra layer of protection. Something to keep the worst of what the UK could bring and do to it’s own people, in check. And that layer of protection is going. And that is what scares me, above all else. Not Brexit itself, bizarrely. But what Brexit leaves behind, and what this country will become. That is what has made me anxious and scared.
Its started already. Since the December 12th election, it sure has started. The attacks, in essence, on the Supreme Court and its future. The creation of that Court, to have the highest court in the land separate from Parliament, and therefore not the House of Lords, was a measure of democracy. The Executive and Legislature in this country have quite blurred lines, but the Supreme Court was separate, as it should be. I find it so weird that there’s complaints of the Supreme Court becoming politicised, and yet there’s calls for political scrutiny of appointees. I mean. What? Any political involvement in the Court is blurring the separation of powers, surely? Judges shouldn’t be elected, at any court level. That’s just bonkers, as far as I am concerned.
I fear for our Human Rights Act; for our place within the European Convention on Human Rights. It was a Churchill thing, and drafted, in a big way, by British lawyers. How can this “sensible” country be driving down that road, towards a rogue and fascist state? Maybe the UK is having its “teenage” moment. It certainly feels like the last 3 years have been the toddler temper tantrum. Now we are in our teens, and we’re having teen strops. Maybe the country has had enough of being sensible, and this is the reaction?
Brexit is going to happen. I’m not going to “get behind it”, because I cannot get behind something that I fundamentally disagree with. What I fear is our steady march to fascism. I’ve been reading Travellers in the Third Reich, so I can see what is coming down the line, and it is. Let’s not be complacent or dismissive of this. The parallels are frightening, and we just have to keep the awareness up. It is the paragraph in the image below which keeps coming back to me. This is what is happening here.
The only way I can see to get through these next few years is to be active at community level. I feel this is where we build from. We look out for the most vulnerable and we stand up for them. We do what we can to hold to account from our local level. I still have a very pro EU/Remain Labour MP, who I know will do all she can to try to hold the government to account, but it does take us as activists and individuals to do that too. To back up our MPs where they are opposition MPs, or to lobby and hold government MPs to account. If I were in a Tory seat, either safe or new, I would be lobbying my MP, and going to see them at surgeries. I do feel like I’m in a bit of an opposition bubble here – separated from the outside world by an invisible, but red, wall.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried for my future, for the future of my daughters, my family, my friends and my country as I am now. I feel engulfed with anxiety, and I know I have to channel that into positivity. Right here, right now, I’m not sure how to do it. I just hope that when it comes to it, I am enough.
I Am Frog Princess 