Ground Control to Major John

All Brexiteers are racists and narrow-minded bigots, blind to the catastrophe that leaving the European Union will bring. Incapable of listening to reason they will drag the country in concrete boots to the cliff’s edge and hurl it off into the abyss. They will willingly pull up the drawbridge and have no further participation in the world, reducing The United Kingdom to an agrarian, subsistence economy in which electricity and the Internet will be legends of old and the prospect of travel beyond these shores unthinkable.

Medicines will quickly run out and starvation will blight all communities outside the M25. Those inside will survive by cannibalism and soon the rotting corpses will pile up, foul the water supply and herald the return of the black death, cholera, smallpox and perpetual plagues of boils and suppurating sores. We will all die slowly, horribly, grinding our teeth in xenophobic hatred even as we draw our last, wheezy, shallow, asthmatic breaths.

I think that was the gist of John Major’s speech; it’s hard to be precise because his carefully chosen words were so nuanced, so subtle, so... oh, what’s the word? My feeble lexicon fails me. Basically, though, we’re all too thick to understand and even if we could grasp what he says we would be unable to act on it, so wedded are we to the cause of self-harm. He says we need to offer ‘a little more charm, and a lot less cheap rhetoric’. Oh look, said the pot...

But thanks, Big John, for so condescendingly summarising the contempt in which the high and mighty of the establishment hold us. You may not have noticed – you are far too nuanced and subtle – but this is no small part a major contributory reason for voting out. The more we are berated by the likes of John Major, Tony Blair and the miserable worm, Michael Heseltine, the more our conviction that independence is the right way is strengthened.

For those of us over a certain age it is unthinkable that a British former Prime Minister could even think to castigate a desire for freedom; have they no sense of history? If it had been made clear to the public what membership would eventually come to mean we would never have joined, but no, this was kept from us even when we began to suspect it. That’s when the insults began; we were narrow-minded bigots if we thought to voice doubts about the irreparable changes that were happening.

Major's legacy...

Once, a British leader would seek to emphasise how we were of one nation, of one mind and remind us of Britain’s pivotal place in the world. Now they attempt to scupper our future prospects by pouring cold water on our instinct for self-determination and in the process they claim statesmanship, gravitas and superior morals. But nobody is listening; It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Maybe Major thinks he will be remembered for his principled stance and believed his intervention will save us from ourselves. I have a feeling that when it is over, all he will be remembered for is shagging Edwina Currie.