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I was embarrassed to be a Brit abroad this summer – but what I came home to is far worse

Apparently my life is just a ‘bump in the road’, necessary to drive over to deliver a no-deal Brexit

James Moore
Thursday 22 August 2019 10:43 BST
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Boris Johnson: I will 'go at it with a lot of oomph' despite 'negative' EU

Shortly after the Brexit vote, I wrote about feeling slightly embarrassed as a Brit going abroad in the wake of the nationalist bile it had unleashed. The Twitter response was predictable. I knew I’d pushed the right buttons when a woman whose avatar was a picture of the white cliffs of Dover mocked up with “full up” up in gruesome red graffiti asked me how I dared to write such a piece. What a patriot.

In the intervening period, that bile has turned into raw hydrochloric stomach acid as the ugly reality of the project has been revealed. The exposure of the lies that were told by Boris Johnson and his chums during the campaign has simply led to an escalating spiral of increasingly aggressive falsehood.

Those who have sought to point that out have been shouted down, and sometimes worse. Religious fundamentalists of whatever stripe would do well to dip into the playbook of the Brexit crew.

And now we have "Johnnywise the Brexit horror clown" (watch the trailers for It Chapter Two on YouTube) in No 10 Downing Street. Embarrassing? Try utterly humiliating. I was left wondering whether I mightn't feel like high tailing it out of where we were staying and hiding somewhere remote in the Breton countryside. If you’re not the sort of person who puts “full up” on their Twitter handle, would you blame me?

There's every reason to blush for Britain in the wake of what’s been going on. Much has been written about Johnson’s character, or lack of it, and how it influences the way he approaches the job. But for the answer, you only really need to look at what Carrie Symonds was reportedly heard saying at their home during their infamous row in the midst of the Tory leadership campaign: “You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt. You have no care for money or anything.” Prophetic indeed. What we’ve seen reflects that: the "Johnnywise" approach to diplomacy has involved stomping around making demands while throwing hissy fits when they’re not met.

The most recent example: the UK’s withdrawal from most EU meetings in the wake of Donald Tusk’s withering response to his latest letter. He’s making Britain look like a toddler in need of referral to a behavioural support unit.

Even in a part of the world where the broadband makes my own home's one-room service look good, it was impossible to entirely escape the unpleasant news flow emanating from home. I was daft enough to take my mobile (because, you know, we get cheap roaming through the EU). The downside of that was Apple News pushing headlines containing details of the latest threat or tantrum.

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But in the end I saw no need to hide. Was I embarrassed? No. Angry? Yes – hopping mad, in fact. After all, as an insulin dependent diabetic, I’m one of those dismissed as a “bump in the road” by Johnson and a certain Michael Gove. I require life-saving medication that this "minister for no-deal" is threatening to deny me.

There have been suggestions that opponents of no-deal Brexit – for which the prime minister has no democratic mandate – have given up and started to bow to the inevitability. I find that inexplicable and also infuriating. They need to wake up: lives like mine are being needlessly put at risk thanks to our mess of a prime minister and his friends.

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