WORDS: Gary Kelly

I voted Remain and would again, however, it’s the kind of slavering elitist attitude in the Tweet below, that allows me to understand what drove people to vote Leave. Maugham has done some great work, granted, in exposing the lies of the Vote Leave campaign. However, when it comes to the priorities many of us have outside of the London that Maugham and his cronies inhabit then we may as well be from different countries.

Maugham is a Centrist, the way aspects of the media present this is if it’s something new and exciting. For us in ‘the provinces’ it is exactly this, the status quo which has been a contributory factor in allowing austerity to to spread like a cancer in our communities. Recently Maugham was talking about putting a legal case together for a General Strike to challenge Brexit. The last general Strike in the UK was in 1926. At no point during Austerity Britain, which is now entering its 11th year, has Maugham thought about putting a legal case together for a General Strike. Not once.

Here in the North East of England, the effects of austerity are everywhere, they all around us. The likes of Maugham minimising this place, and places like Morecombe, makes me consider voting Leave in the event of a Second Referendum just to spite him.

Some of the banners on that march which have turned up at the weekend are emblematic of a snivelling elitist metropolitan classism which is a slightly more liberal version of the well worn Tory ‘I’m alright Jack’ mentality. I acknowledge totally that vast majority of people on that march do not share the sneering thinly veiled class snobbery of many of the ‘leadership’. However, it is an aspect of the Remain movement. If we are to heal divisions when all of this is said and done, we should acknowledge this and challenge it. to my mind it is nothing but a more passive aggressive mirror image of the outright aggressive and toxic attitudes we see in a vocal minority within the Leave camp.

This is not supporting a football team, this is real life and the lives of millions. The toxic interplay between the vocal minority on both sides of the fence is stoking up tensions to a level that once that particular genie is out of the bottle it may be very hard to put back in. I worry that rioting, or worse, could occur this summer. Nobody wants that, not even the people who puff their chest out and think they want that. Violence doesn’t just end there, it spreads, like a virus. We really do not want a society which is more like the blood feud culture of the Caucuses Mountains. If people keep operating like bad actors in all aspects of society then tis bad feeling will last a generation. I lived through the Miners Strike, there are families still broken, people still ignore each other in the street, sometimes fights still break out because of it. Don’t think it can’t happen, it happened and is still happening.

London is not the centre of the universe. Yes, I do think that we should stay in the EU, because as it stands more powers to a Tory led government are not going to help ‘the provinces’.  Similarly as it stands I see no evidence to suggest that Centrists assuming power would change the London centric nature of Westminster policy making and the distribution of funds. 

THIS is one of the main factors that people voted leave where we are from. Corbyn gets this, understands and will absolutely make our lives better via government intervention should he assume government. If of course his assumption of a leading role in our Government is not hamstrung by people like Maugham. I see no evidence to suggest that Centrists would do nothing but sabotage any attempts that Corbyn would make to improve the lot of millions in this country out of sheer spite.

The London-centric attitude is one of the main factors that people voted leave where we are from. Corbyn gets this, understands and will absolutely make our lives better via government intervention should he assume government. 

I see people like Jo Maugham who are the first to smear people as ‘cultists’ when in fact he and others like him and their slavish obsession to the EU, are the other sideof that coin/discourse. They just don’t know it as they are absolutely sure they are right. It is that arrogance which has been a factor in the longevity of austerity as much as outright Tory hostility. Again, Maugham has done some good work exposing the lies of the Leave campaign, there is no doubt about that, but that comes with an agenda, quick to misrepresent a person out here working for the people. Corbyn is one of us. 

People would do well to calm down, and recognise we are all people, not part of some Ultra group attached to a football team. 

Personally I would drop Labour and Corbyn like a sack of hot shit if a better and quicker way to end austerity presented itself.People around me, people I know and peopleI know of through others are dying. I’m getting phonecalls and text messages 2 or 3 times a week about suicide attempts, suicides or the slow suicide of relatively young people through drugs and alcohol andjust general bad living. 

Not that I know what Maugham and his ilk go through in their daily lives but I’d suggest that a Barrister, on Barrister wages, is insulated somewhat from the effects of austerity and how we are living, out here on the perimeter. What I would like to make clear is that by London-centric I don't mean everyone in London, there is poverty allover that city. We have more in common with the people of Grenfell and that wider community. Those are our people. 

When it come down to it people don’t give a fuck about Europe, they just want to eat,they just want to live, they want to be able to plan for the future. Voting Leave wasa protest vote for millions of people led astray by bad actors like Boris Johnson, Gove and Farage. Sold a tissue of lies and misrepresentation which they back peddled from the morning after the Vote.


Getting why people voted leave yet Jo? 

They had nothing to lose, so even an infitesimally small chance of change was better than nothing, 

I’m sorry you might, just might, be slightly inconvenienced that your weekly Camembert delivery will be a few days late and a bit more expensive. I’m sure you can afford it you bellend.