Brexit, Omelettes and Red Cards

I don't usually blog about politics, believing a Citizen's vote is a secret known only to the voter and the ballot box but I'm making an exception for today's referendum result in favour of leaving the EU, aka Brexit.

"Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs" said the French Royalist leader General Francois Charette (not Lenin or Stalin BTW) in 1796, ironically the day before he was shot by a firing squad.

What critics of the Brexit vote seem to miss was this was not about the EU, this was all about an opportunity to give the English Establishment of lying, toadying, out-of-touch, venal, incompetent, decadent, condescending professional politicians who treat the electorate with contempt, a once in a generation kick up the arse.

The closest historical precedent was the 1945 "Khaki Election" when Winston Churchill – "the man who won the war" – and the Tory Party, were massacred in an electoral result they didn't see coming because citizens were more willing to take a leap into the dark with Clement Attlee and the Labour Welfare State experiment than stick with the "safe" status quo.

And as for anyone who says the Brexit vote was the triumph of the ignorant over the educated, that just confirms how condescending and out of touch they are.

It's not about lofty ideals. Instead it is all about giving Red Cards to Labour and the Tories. (It's an English football/soccer reference.) Labour received a yellow card in the last General Election from its traditional but increasingly alienated core voters but chose to ignore it.

Elections are never won because the electorate think one party is nicer and more noble than the other but rather they are lost on the grounds of "we hate this bunch of shits less than we hate the other bunch of shits."