Stupid people being stupid

I constantly surprise myself at my fury at this whole useless, shambolic, moronic Brexit mess.

I was never that bothered about Europe. I just took it for granted. For as long as I can remember we'd been part of it, and I didn't really give it much thought.

Other people did. There were some super enthusiastic people, and I couldn't relate to them, because for all that it may have started to create peaceful cooperation in a continent that had been at each others' throats for too long, by the time we joined it had become much more about trade and business, a process that only accelerated with us on board. Even the much debated freedom of movement, much as I liked it, seemed to be more about the needs of business than any really noble pursuit.

Then there were the people who hated it. People who read the Daily Mail, or the telegraph, or found other ways to flag themselves up as fuckwits like wearing tweed or growing a handlebar moustache. I didn't listen to their moaning about bendy bananas, or European armies, or the rest, because it was clearly bullshit, so let them chunter away in the corner- what did it matter?

But then we decided to have a referendum - failing to learn the lessons of history that these are invariably bad ideas - the main purpose of which was to heal the Conservative party ( and hasn't that worked well). And didn't it turn out that the idiots won. We can discuss all day why, but it was a terminally stupid decision. Everything people said about it being a mess, about any deal we could get being worse than what we had, about it being a financial disaster - anyone who has managed to extract their head from their backside can see it is all true. But we can't back down apparently - we can't turn around to people and tell them that it is a disaster and we need to change our mind. Because, the people spoke once and , you know, 'no take backs'.

I think the origin of this rant is my mistake in catching a few minutes of Question Time on Thursday. There was this guy in the audience who had traveled all the way to the studio to have his say. He'd got dressed carefully, not forgetting his tweed jacket and to wax his moustache. And he'd sat through a debate filled with facts, verifiable facts about what a complete and utter embarrassing mess Brexit is becoming - we don't even have an agreed stupid position, we have loads of different stupid positions - maybe we think Europe will find it harder to laugh at us if we keep them guessing about which one we will finally settle on. Anyway, Daily Mail guy sits through this, it comes to his turn, and he comes out with "things would be much better if we stopped remoaning about everything, stopped talking this country down, and started talking it up", all delivered with the smug smile you only get through a unique coalition of ignorance and arrogance in the right ratio.

And I realised that I can't. I can't talk this country up because I have never been so utterly ashamed of where I come from. Which makes it all the worse that people in tweed jackets have so thoroughly blocked the escape routes from this utter shambles.