What to tell your grandchildren

The depths to which the remainiacs are descending is simply staggering. A recent article in The Times to which one of our supporters drew our attention shines the spotlight on a murky group fronted by, among others, the Labour peer Lord Adonis. It will be targeting young people, urging them to tell their grandparents that if they care about their grandchildren, they should reconsider their support for leaving the EU. In other words, they are trying to ferment inter-generational conflict to further their miserable hopes of stopping Brexit.

This “Ring your granny” strategy has a very dubious past. It was apparently used  to build support for same-sex marriage in Ireland.  One of the other promoters is a crackpot by the name of Madeleina Kay, who managed to get herself thrown out of  a Brussels press conference for wearing a superwoman costume! One report claims that her blog features pictures of her posing with pro-EU pond life such as Bob Geldof, Eddie Izzard, and Nick Clegg. Enough said.

Let us be clear:- there are people who either supported Brexit or else who have accepted the result of last year’s referendum who are genuinely concerned about the lack of progress with the negotiations so far. They are worried that a no-deal scenario would be far more damaging than we are being led to believe. The leading figures of this new campaign, however, have a totally different viewpoint. They want us to stay in the EU. They were convinced that Article 50 would never be triggered; when it was, they hoped that  the government would get cold feet and back out. Now reality has dawned that we really are leaving, nothing, it seems, will dissuade them from using every means, fair or foul, to frustrate the democratic result of last year’s referendum.

So, Grannies and Grandpas of this world, what should you do if you receive a phone call from a worried teenage grandchild? Here are a few suggestions:-

1. Tell them that they should be grateful that the boil has finally been lanced and that over 40 years of our unhappy relationship with Brussels will finally come to an end, meaning that this problem won’t be bequeathed to their generation to sort out.
2. Tell them that they will be the main beneficiaries. Yes, it may be tough for a year to two before things settle down, but within a generation, free to rebalance our trade with the growing economies of Asia and the Commonwealth rather than the sclerotic EU and free to set our own taxes and tariffs,  we will become more prosperous than if we had stayed in.
3. Tell them that you can remember the days when we were an independent sovereign country and not only did we manage very well, it was actually better to be ruled by democratically-elected people from our own country than by unelected bureaucrats  in Brussels. Suggest that they stop being myopic and look beyond Europe to Australasia, America and Asia where successful nation states are the norm – and are flourishing. The Brexit vote, in other words, was a vote to re-join normality.
4. Tell them of our deep love from freedom; how Magna Carta and our Common Law legal system have given us safeguards which are absent even now on much of the continent where Napoleonic inquisitorial legal systems reign supreme. Point out that we would have lost all this before they reached middle age if we had remained in the EU.
5. Tell them that they will still be able to travel and study abroad. No one is suggesting putting up some sort of drawbridge nor is there any reason why we can’t stay part of the Erasmus scheme.
6. Tell them that by being able to restrict immigration, it will make life a bit easier for them (albeit only slightly) by removing a little pressure from the housing market and thus helping them to buy their own home.
7. Tell them to ignore the miserable self-flagellants who are always talking our country down. Remind them of the many events and people from our long history of which we can be proud. Maybe some of them have only been taught tosh in history classes, so a bit of education may be needed here, but what of our great military heroes like Drake, Blake, Nelson and Wellington? Inventors like James Watt, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Logie Baird and Tim Berners-Lee? Tell them of Wilberforce and the campaign to eradicate slavery; of Churchill and how we stood alone against Hitler in 1940; of David Livingstone, the great missionary and explorer. The list is endless.
8. Finally, tell them that you are not going to be around for ever and that one day their generation will have to take over. Warn them that if they continue swallowing all this nonsense from remainiacs, they won’t be fit to run a whelk stall, let alone the country!