Why Brexit is like PlayStation
Even Brexit voters have lost faith with Brexit. And I’m one of them. Here’s why it’s been a waste of time.
Matt Goodwin, the Sage of Kent, recently conducted polling which indicated that should the EU Referendum be run again tomorrow, Remain would win by quite a margin. Here’s his typically brilliant post.
Of course the EU Referendum won’t be run again tomorrow. Our bosses were badly burned the first time round, when we, as a nation, did ‘a wrong vote’, and they are very unlikely to give us the opportunity to decide anything of significance ever again. To be honest, they’re not even that keen on letting us decide for ourselves how much pizza we should have for dinner.
Just look at the next election, when we will be graciously allowed to choose between an out of touch, squeaky voiced technocratic charisma vacuum, and his slightly more out of touch doppelgänger. In fact nothing strikes more of a false note than watching Starmer and Sunak going at each other at PMQs. There is not an ideological cigarette paper between these two political pipsqueaks. They don’t belong at opposite sides of the dispatch box, they belong in the same party.
And it’s no surprise that so many voters are having what Prof Goodwin calls ‘Bregrets’.
I voted for Brexit, and I think it has been a complete and utter disaster.
I don’t want to say ‘the wrong kind of Brexit’. But it is clear that one of the main reasons voters are expressing feelings of Bregret is that literally no advantage seems to have been taken of the opportunities Brexit offered.
Immigration, one of the top two reasons voters wanted to leave, has actually increased. No significant trade deals have been done. (Sorry digital trade deal with Singapore, you do not count.) No industry has been deregulated as far as anyone can tell. No EU laws, even the tiniest, seem to have been dropped-we’re still having to click a pop up every time we visit a website, and usually two for the mucky ones.
There has been no discernible benefits whatsoever. Only down sides. And that sense of failure is reinforced and even celebrated at every turn by a pro EU press and social media.
When I think of Brexit, and how it played out. Which I do a lot. Too much in fact. I think of it like this:
One year, around November time, some nice middle class parents, got foolishly drunk, and offered their slightly wayward offspring a choice of Christmas presents. They had two options. Some lovely hand crafted wooden toys made by a wonderful Italian gentleman called Geppetto who they met through their Polish nanny’s ex employer, that delightful German couple, whose Air B’n B they stayed in during that sustainable development conference in Bonn.
Or a Playstation.
Then they spent the entirety of November and December saying how wonderful it is going to be to have genuine hand crafted wooden toys in the house. And how impressed all their Belgium friends are going to be to see them in the play room. And how low rent and horrible it would be to have a nasty Playstation in the house, stinking up the place.
But when it came to the crunch, and the kids were finally offered that choice, between the wonderful (environmentally sourced) hand crafted wooden toys, and the awful PlayStation. They went for the Playstation.
And their parents went ape shit.
Clearly the only reason the silly kids has gone for the PlayStation was because their malleable baby brains had been twisted and turned by all those insidious TV adverts. TV adverts for PlayStation shouldn’t be allowed anyway. Especially on the side of buses, where they are scientifically proven to be the most persuasive to the weak minded. It was clear the kids weren’t even making a choice really, they were being brainwashed, so that doesn’t count.
And besides they’re really too young and impressionable to actually decide their own Christmas presents. And double besides, in the end, the parents weren’t really properly actually asking their daft children what they wanted for Christmas, it was just advisory, so yeah, again, that doesn’t count. And so, the best thing of all would be to invite the kids to have another go, an opportunity, this time, to make a proper free unbrainwashed ‘Children’s Choice’ , and choose the lovely wooden toys instead, like they should have done the first time.
And the kids go. Nope. Thanks and that. But we think we’ll stick with the PlayStation. And also. It’s March now. So can you, you know, get on with it?
And so the parents, very reluctantly, and very slowly, go down the shops, and get a PlayStation. And not one of the good ones with a disc drive, no, they get the online only version that’s a bit cheaper, and definitely not as good. And while they’re in the shop they quickly double check with the shop keeper whether there’s a version of PlayStation that comes in sustainably sourced rosewood. And when the shopkeeper tells them there isn’t, it makes them really cross.
And they bring the PlayStation home, it’s June by this point, and they throw it down in front of the kids and say. There you go, this is what you wanted, happy now? And then the parents go upstairs, to have an angry shag.
And the kids are like. Thanks and that. What games did you get? And the parents are like, games? Games?? What do you mean games? There are no games. Games are expensive. We haven’t got money to spend on games. We might have if we hadn’t wasted it all on a PlayStation. But we did. And now we’ve run out of money. And it’s all your fault.
And the kids are like. Games are kind of the point. A PlayStation without games isn’t really worth having. Some games are really cheap too. We don’t need the expensive ones.
And the parents shake their heads and say you wanted PlayStation, this is PlayStation. Knock yourselves out. And then they go back upstairs again, and start Change UK.
And so the kids boot up their PlayStation but without any games it’s a bit of waste of time. And they soon get a bit bored of it. And then their parents keep coming in and showing them photos on their phones, of their French friends’ kids having fun with their beautiful hand crafted wooden toys. Even the Swiss kids get to play with them. And they’re all smiling. And having fun together, breezing their way through an airport, where they don’t had to queue, even for a single minute. But you can’t play with them. Because you haven’t got wooden toys, you’ve got a PlayStation. And it’s rubbish.
And then a few more months go by and the parents come in to the play room and look at the PlayStation gathering dust in the corner and they say.
You never play with that, it was a waste of money. And you were stupid for even wanting PlayStation in the first place. What would you think, if we decided to sell it, and spend the ebay money on half as many wooden toys as you would have got if you’d gone for wooden toys in the first place? Like you should have done.
And the kids say, yeah maybe, it does seem a bit of a waste of money doesn’t it?
And the parents say ‘See? We were right all along.’
And that, in a nut shell, is Brexit.
We wanted a games console, with loads of fun games to play. And instead we got angry parents, who will never let us choose our own Christmas presents. Ever again.
One big reason Brexit is such a disaster is that no one with any power wants it to succeed. They told us it would cost us money, cause misery, and bring only downsides, and now they are doing their very best, to be proved correct.
They hate Brexit, and they hold the British public in contempt for voting for it. If ever they needed proof that we were bovine, unsophisticated, Neanderthal, Pavlovian, racist hate monkeys then there it is right there, blinking cool blue light, under the telly.
I usually believe in cock up over conspiracy. But with Brexit it’s like there’s a conspiracy, to cock it up.
I voted Brexit and would do again for two simple reasons.
I don’t want my life to be micromanaged by one massive unaccountable government, which doesn’t hold my best interests at heart-and I certainly don’t want to be governed by two of them.
And the laws that apply in this country should be written and voted for democratically, in this country.
That’s it.
Brexit so far has been a complete an utter waste of time, money and emotion. But as far as my reasons for voting for it are concerned, nothing has changed.
On the upside though, I do have an actual PlayStation. With plenty of games. And it’s bloody brilliant.
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This is a brilliant and original take on the democracy deficit of half -Brexit. Hilarious and heartfelt. I voted to remain though I was convicted having worked as a lobbyist in Brussels throughout the early/mid noughties. I saw the complacent, ineffient gravy train in action. Now after watching the way in which remoaners have acted, I will vote to leave in a future vote. I have also fully transitioned from being a socialist to being a libertarian because that and moral conservatives seem to be the only people who care about being ruled by plutocrats and panic merchants.
Came here from the comment you left under a Spiked article. A very enjoyable read and I love the Playstation analogy. I also agree that the main reason to vote Leave was the principle that the UK should be governed by the UK government and that reason is just as valid now even if the current government are completely useless.