Bloody tribes

It is commonly accepted by political analysts that we are a divided country over brexit. Half want to remain. Half want to leave. We're all bitter. It's xenophobia vs a liberal internationalism or a form of culture war as we see in America.

I would say this is misleading and untrue, but because the question "do you want to leave the EU?" requires a yes or a no , i.e. a binary question which you can affirm with  one answer only  , you are of course going to get a situation where people have fallen into one or two camps. 

Yet I find that I don't really belong in either camp and neither does the electorate once we get passed a yes or no answer on a ballot. At the Euro elections we found the Brexit party on about a third of the vote, the liberals on about a quarter.  Then what happens is that the media try to put the votes for other parties into these respective camps to see who now would actually win a second  referendum.

The thing is in doing so commentators miss something, which is that ultra remain is about a third of the population (liberals, greens, tiggets or whatever they're called).  The ultra Brexit group - leave and be damned I think you would say-  are also about a third of the electorate.  The remaining third are the ones that aren't as fired up either way and would be happy with a compromise or a gradual phasing out of the EU , or they'd remain if that's part of going with the flow.

I write this because I for one am sick to death of the ultra remain lot claiming to speak for the "48%" as if all who voted for remain accept their worldview. I'm appalled that this group see anyone who voted for brexit as racist, stupid, xenophobic and or a clone of UKIP, Farage or the worst possible stereotype of a leaver.  Note I'm not in favour of as another referendum. No it's not the 1930s. No Brexiters aren't "fascists". Yes Labour is a cesspool of anti-Semitism.

Likewise I'm appalled by the leave side. Yes leave won the vote. But no leave did NOT win by a landslide. Had the vote been 60-40 or above, then I would understand the ultra Brexiters and the" will of the people argument ". But it was a very close vote. It seems in going for too much , too soon ,  rejecting any compromises,the whole Brexit project could be derailed as May often warned. May isn't innocent in this either, her negotiations were bad , but even worse she never seemed to include colleagues in them and tried to bounce people into whatever she could concoct . Thus there was and is no actual consensus as to what brexit should be and people-MPs especially- know what they don't want rather than what they do. 

So in summary I'm fed up with being dragged into having to choose between two tribes that claim to speak for half the population each and be forced to indulge in a question that has in principle been settled. Can't we talk about the many other pressing matters to face the country and world?

On top of this is the fact no-one is even thinking about what happens after we leave the EU. At present we are simply trying to get out or in some cases keep ourselves in. But. What country do we want to be? Do we want to be a Switzerland or a Norway ? Do we want to be a Venezuela or a Zimbabwe? Do we want to continue the pretence of being a great power via acting as limpets to others ? Via the USA or the EU? Or do we simply acknowledge that they best days are over and we check into the retirement home and act as  helpful grandparents, via our soft power,  to the nations who can claim global reach?

The current situation could be rectified if we could have a national conversation as to what we want. But alas we're still stuck with the leave and remain tribesmen. We're still in 2016.