I didn't vote in the referendum.

So it's over, it's done, the nation has spoken and we're out. I didn't vote, mind. That's right, I didn't vote in the EU referendum. Yes, I talk and comment on politics regularly (too much some would say), and I'm sure my reluctance to vote came as a surprise to some of my friends, it was a surprise to my family.  But what did I have to vote for? What was my choice? 

Vote out? Align myself with the far right, closet racists and the misinformed nationalists. Those who seek to remove our rights, relegate us to mere work drones living to work and working in poverty. No, I couldn't do that. Of course, that's not the whole picture at all. A huge number of Brexiteers were disenfranchised working class poor, abused and ignored by the establishment and marginalized to an existence in poverty.  I feel their pain and understand their anger, although not their view that immigrants have caused all their woes, they clearly haven't, it's the establishment who have. The same establishment, elements of whom, have pointed them towards the immigrants, and ironically the poor and sick, as their enemy. And, elements of whom have been actively directing the out campaign.  Voting out will not make the life of the poor and disenfranchised any better. On the contrary, out will mean more suffering, more pain, more disenfranchisement, more austerity and more hate and division. That will soon become apparent.

Or.

Vote in? Align myself with the far right, closet racists and the misinformed nationalists. Those who seek to remove our rights, relegate us to mere work drones living to work and working in poverty. Hang on! That all sounds a bit familiar.  I used to be a fan of the EU and understood the benefits it brought. One world, one people, and all that.  Although that was then. In recent years the EU has changed, embarking on a program of watering down employment rights and environmental protection to make us more competitive, embracing TTIP and as for what they did to Greece, well.  Many EU countries are moving to the right, some the far right. The EU continues to expand east, and with it NATO, purposely antagonizing Russia, in clear dereliction of the agreements and promises made at the time of Glasnost. Not to sound like an 'outer' the EU is becoming a monster, a powerful capitalist monster, at that.

Some not really much choice there. As a good friend of mine puts it, 'the opportunity to choose the least odious of two odious turds', again! I just can't participate in these charades, these illusions of choice, any more!

For 6 years those on benefits, those living in social housing, the sick, the disabled have been marginalized and scapegoated, blamed for the country's problems, pilloried and attacked by our government and the press. It was all us and the immigrants what done it. As I remember it, the EU didn't come to our  aid, the EU didn't step in to support us or hold the governments to account for said attacks. When you've been vilified by the government, the media and a population too wilfully ignorant and easily fooled to understand that it surely can't be the poorest in society that have taken all the money and brought the country to its knees, what stake do you have in society? Note, I'd say. No matter which side had won the referendum the attacks on the weak and vulnerable were guaranteed to continue; does it really matter who's kicking you, or how hard the kicks are? Not really, you just want it to stop. I wouldn't have voted out, but I couldn't vote in either, I had no reason or right to vote, I hold no stake in society, 6 years have made that clear.