Whatever your view of Brexit, mark my words, this is a moment when history is being made. As I was growing up as a child in the 1940s almost every observation about daily life made by middle class adults was prefaced with ‘of course before the war we could…….’ There was no such thing as maids any more and taxes were much higher as were prices. Life had changed and in the view of most, not for the better. We had won the war but the country was threadbare and tired and the Empire was crumbling. We had become a second class power.
But there was a social revolution going on which rightly advanced the interests of the working class by leaps and bounds with improvements in every sphere. The creation of the welfare state was life changing, so their conversations would be prefaced by ‘in the bad old days’. There was full employment, wages were very much higher, there was the NHS, pensions, benefits and slum clearance. Hundreds of thousands of affordable homes were being built. The standard of living was rising year by year.
We can now be certain of one thing. Brexit is a before and after moment. There will be winners and losers. What we do not know is who is going to lose. But when we do and those losers find out it is they who are paying the price for this misplaced experiment, they are going to be very angry. Because unlike world war two, Brexit was not thrust upon us by outside forces. It is entirely self inflicted.