I write this whilst still in mourning: For my opportunities, for my future, but most of all for the state of the country in which I live. I have never called myself a Brit and today, more than ever, I realise why I never will.
I suppose my main issue lies not with the fact that the UK voted to leave, although that does pain me a great deal, but rather with the reasons why people voted to leave which I find altogether more disturbing.
On the fateful evening of June 23rd, I happened to have found myself in Clacton-Upon-Sea, the only constituency to have elected a UKIP MP at the last election and the third most Euro-sceptical region in the UK.
As we neared our destination, it became very clear that we were leaving the metropolitan world of London far behind us. The “vote leave” posters and both Union Jack and England flags became almost ubiquitous in equal numbers. We saw distinctly fewer people of ethnic minorities, and an alarming lack of young people. It was almost like entering a different world, the sleepy streets of Clacton were so far removed from the bustling streets of London, that it almost seemed as if we were driving into the past.
Having lived in London all my life, until now it had escaped my mind that there remains vast swathes of the country in which I do not and simply cannot feel comfortable as a black person. While the people I met in Clacton were largely polite to me, undoubtedly, I stuck out like a sore thumb.
I sat in the counting venue watching the decision unfold across the country, whilst people wearing UKIP rosettes complained about the perils of immigration and I wondered if they knew they were talking about my grandparents.
Cries of “let’s make our country great again” left me wondering whether they wished to return to the days of the empire when their country exploited half of the world. In fact I heard one older woman interviewed on TV last week who said “this country built half the world, of course we can survive”.
BUILT? Does she mean destroyed? It is just this sort of dangerous nationalism that terrifies me about the leave vote. Quite frankly, I’m not sure this vote even had all that much to do with the EU as an institution. I mean ask your average person to name 3 EU bodies and I guarantee they would find it challenging to say the least. I believe that a large quantity of the leave vote came from areas like Clacton in which they wish to return to a world which no longer exists.
Boris Johnson (or should I say our future prime minister) showed his true colours by accusing Barack Obama, the leader of the free world of harbouring “anti-British sentiment” due to the fact that he has Kenyan heritage. I accept that there may be valid arguments for Brexit, but the fact that this sort of blatant racism has succeeded in convincing the British public tells me a lot about the state of this country.