We want our star back

 

Yesterday I joined a Rejoin march.   Previous protests have had up to a million attend, and this was a bijou c50,000 instead.    Full disclosure I could only get there for the final bit, but it was good to see that it was still a very civilised and enjoyable experience.   One of the things that struck me though was the older demographic.  Of course, this has become a thing at other protests too, not least I suspect because with the new scary laws to criminalise even peaceful protest, the young can’t really afford at the moment to take part.  Retired people though have far less to lose (at the moment anyway!).  

For me, the most interesting bit was the train journey home – the carriage was almost empty, but included a conservative, a hardish lefty and softish lefty who had all been to the march (and to the previous ones).  Sounds a bit like the start of a joke, but we had a really good conversation and it was a living example of how people can put aside their differences even when they belong to different tribes and agree to work together on something more important.   It certainly seems to be that, although it had been building for years, Brexit is when we properly divided up into tribes as a whole country.  Even usually quite reasonable people began labelling people as friend or foe and started shouting at each other rather than trying to find common ground.  Watching the Tory party tear themselves apart in the background to our conversation, imagining ‘remainer plots’ within their own ranks just shows how toxic it is to dig trenches/create border and barriers and decide who is in or out. 

Despite what feels to me like the obviousness of the solution, I am not convinced that the country is ready for rejoin yet, although I think the heat is going out of the argument which has to be a good thing and might allow everyone to climb down and find a middle way, at least for the short term.  When even the Telegraph points out that ‘Project Fear’ was right, things really have begun to shift.  

On our train journey home we talked a lot about how we had ended up here, and we could see the points where our views diverged, but we were still able to keep coming back to what we agreed on, and agreed to disagree on plenty of other things.  We listened, took turns to listen to different points of view, and maybe understand that the ‘other side’ has their own valid reasons too.   Not sure really how we get out of the mess that this country is now in, and some of the damage is clearly long term, but the broad coalitions that have formed within the Remain/pro EU camps show that it can be done.  I’m a natural collaborator, always looking for the common ground and so the fact that this is still possible at all despite the noise and fury gives me a (tiny) glimmer of hope that there might still be a way forward.