How you feel about it?

LONDON MARCH: Took place on what the tabloids called Super Saturday.

LONDON MARCH: Took place on what the tabloids called Super Saturday.

Dear reader,
I trust all’s well with you, despite the floods?

Since my last letter, I’ve been to Brexit-choked England and a People’s Vote march in London to try to get a handle on this important, but apparently intractable, situation.

The march took place on what tabloids called Super Saturday. It was the first Commons Saturday sitting since the April ‘82 Falklands crisis.The politicians were inside, voting on the Let win Amendment (blocking Johnson’s attempt to get MPs to fast-track his deal).

‘Four hours isn’t enough to scrutinize the most significant… legislation in a generation’ reasoned Letwin, while the million or so outside shouted support for both the amendment and another people’s vote.

They were loud enough to be heard inside.

I know because Conservatives Michael Heseltine and Dominic Grieve, Labour’s Hilary Benn and Keir Starmer, together with MPs from a wide political spectrum, came out, told us so and thanked the crowd for their support. The amendment had been passed by 322 to 306 votes.

The same night, Johnson sent an unsigned letter to the EU asking for an extension, together with two unofficial, signed notes saying an extension was a bad idea! And so on. There have been numerous twists and turns since. There’ll be more.

Thankfully, I’m not in the UK to hear about them and I rarely read the English press anyway as it gives me the creeps. The recent visit reinforced this:

I was at a march of over a million people of diverse political persuasions, ages and backgrounds who expressed their desire for another people’s vote on Brexit which seemed logical, given the tortuous mess their elected politicians are making of it all.

It was an extraordinarily peaceful affair, but, according to the tabloids: ‘…Brexit tension threatened to boil over today as Remain activists on the People’s March clashed with a Leave counter protest.’

Other tabloids minimised diversity: ‘…middle class protesters with Waitrose picnics’; the number of attendees: ‘… hundreds turn out in London,’ and so on, and the march was mentioned in fairly derogatory terms on BBC news.

Next day, the media trashed the truth again after an interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who revealed that being hounded by the press made life difficult (M) and brotherly ties were as solid as ever, but the working relationship had changed (H).

This morphed, astonishingly and immediately, into the BBC news headline ‘Rift between Princes’ and has since fuelled endless over the top, negative press attention.

Who knows where all this muddle and sensationalism will lead, but the short story of where it leaves my family and I is that we’re applying for Spanish nationality.

My kids, grandkids and life are happy here on this small Canary Island. We lived here legally as EU resident Brits before, but the future’s now uncertain. We didn’t move the goal posts. Like 700,000 other Brits living abroad, we of course weren’t even allowed to vote in a referendum that would possibly change our lives.

How you feel about it? I’d love to know.

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Written by

Barbara Belt

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