In these fraught times, not enough of us apologise enough.
A week ago I wrote an emotive piece about my last pre-pandemic holiday, when I was skiing in Zermatt and reminisced about the beauty of the European continent.
Now — a few trolls and leave-voting folk — took offence to my suggestion that Zermatt (in Switzerland) is in the EU. Of course I know Switzerland is not in the EU, I have two humanities degrees! I simply made an error in my typing, or rather; I miswrote. Easily done I suppose.
I hope you can accept my apology. I did not intend to trivialise the severe consequences of our leaving Europe. I know many will suffer, and not just people that enjoy skiing and the millionaires in the glass eel business.
But the point remains – it will be more difficult for me to go skiing after Brexit. Am I not allowed to be sad about this?
As we look to the disgraceful events this week in the United States, I am reminded of the similarly ill-dressed mob who called Remainers traitors; and those that said Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement was worse than the war because — “this time we have traitors on our own side”.
There has been much discussion by the alt right, comparing us, the now-remain majority, to the mob at the Capitol this week. I am reminded of the words of social and political theorist Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu; “mob-rule by the majority is as terrible as mob-rule by a minority”.
Rule by mob rule of the majority (ie Leave voters) is a different kind of mob, but it is nonetheless still a mob.
The mob we saw in D.C. was nothing like the remain 48% (although now it’s probably more like 60%). The remain side, the “experts”, win our arguments not through waging civil war, we win through the battle of ideas, the greatest battle of all.
We shall prevail. We shall win. We shall rejoin.
