Wake Up

FRIDAY 31 JANUARY

Awoke this morning to breaking news that two people in England have tested positive for the disease. I wonder if one of them was that Bristol student? Is Bertie now at risk?

The troubling development rounds off a remarkably busy month for news, with horrendous bushfires in Australia, General Soleimani’s killing, Trump’s impeachment trial in the US Senate, Harry and Meghan quitting the royal family, and Kobe Bryant’s shocking death.

All of these events generated massive media attention, and furious debate – especially on social media – about hot-button issues like climate change, race, privilege, gender and nationalism. Today heralded the denouement of perhaps the most seismic and contentious story of all, with Britain’s formal withdrawal from the European Union – or Brexit as it has become known.

As someone who voted Remain but believed passionately that once my side lost the vote we had to accept the result, I’ve been dismayed to watch fellow Remainers spend the past three and a half years shrieking in fury and refusing to admit defeat. It’s been an unedifying, ugly, visceral spectacle and what’s made it particularly distasteful is that so many of these ‘Remoaners’, as they’ve been dubbed, identify themselves as liberals.

Yet their pathetic response to losing a free, democratic referendum has been the complete opposite of everything liberalism once stood for, including fairness, reason and adherence to basic principles of democracy. I became so infuriated with the sore-loser squealing that I even voted for Boris ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done!’ Johnson’s Conservative Party at the general election last month because he was the only leader promising to honour the vote of the people. Of course, this made me an even bigger target for the howling liberal woke brigade.

Today, as Brexit becomes a legal reality, the cacophony of incessant liberal whining fills the air like a toxic stench. It’s been an issue that’s ripped Britain in two, dividing families and friends, turning mainstream and social media into seething cesspits, and leaving everyone drained, fractious and indignant. Even a specially minted commemorative 50 pence Brexit coin inscribed with the seemingly non-contentious words ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’ ignited a poisonous row between deranged Remoaners and rabid Brexiters. It’s so depressing to see such utterly uncompromising attitudes, on both sides, over even something as trivial as a coin. Democracy is going to wither away unless something changes.

As with those other extraordinarily polarising subjects, Donald Trump and Meghan/Harry, Brexit is not something you’re allowed to be neutral about. It’s imperative to take a firm, unyielding position and stick to it, even if facts emerge that contradict things you believed.

Yet on Brexit and Trump, I’ve found myself in a curiously middle-of-the-road place – voting against the former but wanting it delivered to safeguard democracy, and being a good personal friend of the latter who wouldn’t vote for him but wants to cover his presidency in a fair, non-partisan, critical-where-he-deserves-it manner. None of this has gone down well with the Brexit or Trump tribes. Nuance or impartiality just doesn’t cut it anymore in political debate.

As for Meghan and Harry, I admit to viewing the pair of them as disingenuous, virtue-signalling, hypocritical, selfish, narcissistic brats. Has some of my criticism of them been too aggressive? Probably. Has it been unfair? On occasion, perhaps. So, am I part of the tribal problem?

Yes, I guess I am. I have a dog-with-a-bone personality that can be a force for good, or perhaps not so good, depending on what bone I am gnawing on – from campaigning against the Iraq War when I was Editor of the Daily Mirror and waging a lengthy battle for better gun control in America when I worked at CNN, to trying to oust former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, or just feeling very irritated by vegan sausage rolls. The only common denominator is that once the bone’s in my mouth, I find it very hard to stop gnawing, sometimes to my own detriment.

At 11 pm tonight, as Brexit became official, I felt nothing but a weary sense of relief and hope, perhaps forlornly, that we could all finally stop shouting at each other and find some common purpose.

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