{"id":7070,"date":"2018-12-18T00:35:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T00:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=7070"},"modified":"2022-09-11T21:03:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T21:03:11","slug":"brexit-remain-and-the-unicorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=7070","title":{"rendered":"Brexit: Remain and the Unicorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We gave people a choice, back in 2016 between carrying on with David Cameron, with life as it was, crap as it was, or a unicorn. The unicorn was Leave. The unicorn was a promise: &#8220;Leave and everything will get better&#8221;.<!--more--> If you give someone a choice between remain as they are, or fly with the magical unicorn, and where they are is bad, they will vote for that unicorn.<\/p>\n<p>The people who most often voted Remain are in my city in Oxford, they are doing well, and in Cambridge, in London, and in Bristol and in Manchester&#8230; but in most of the country most people voted for the unicorn. And the really difficult thing between now and the 29th of March, is telling people: &#8220;<em>sorry it has always been a unicorn, you were mislead into believing you were being offered a choice, a real choice, it was never a real choice<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>These are a&nbsp; few words from towards the end of&nbsp; a lecture given on December 17th 2018 in Nuneaton:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"background-color: transparent; display: block; padding: 0; max-width: 700px;\" title=\"Audioboom player\" src=\"\/\/embeds.audioboom.com\/posts\/7119759-geography-inequality-and-what-brexit-tells-us-about-the-british\/embed\/v4?eid=AQAAAIo2GFyPo2wA\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Click play, above, to hear the full talk given at King Edward VI College, Nuneaton, Warwickshire on 17\/12\/2018.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The book this talk is based on is published on January 15th 2019: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/books\/rulebritannia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of Empire.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Most people who voted Leave lived in the South of England, but not in the affluent south:<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6207\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6207\" class=\" wp-image-6207 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/BrexitMaps-1024x563.png\" alt=\"Areas are shaded by whether a majority who voted voted to Leave or Remain and also by the proportions voting in these ways\" width=\"630\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/BrexitMaps-1024x563.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/BrexitMaps-300x165.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/BrexitMaps-768x422.png 768w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/BrexitMaps.png 1350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6207\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Areas are shaded by whether a majority who voted voted to Leave or Remain and also by the proportions voting in these ways<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in medicines, if you are interested in aeroplanes, if you are interested in food even &#8211; everything becomes very tricky if there is a hard Brexit. The Conservative party are currently having the greatest argument within their party that they have had since the debate over the Corn Laws. They are a party split between a small group of MPs who believe it is possible to Leave with a hard Brexit, and most members of the Parliamentary Conservative party who don&#8217;t believe that &#8211; and who want a deal with rest of the EU. And then there are so many other MPs in the House of Commons who want to Remain, and want no deal.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you are the Prime Minster, or a new Prime Minister elected by MPs, and you had to break it to the country that they had been offered a unicorn &#8211; the way to do it is to leave it to the very last minute &#8211; as project fear turns into real fear.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">At some point in March you (if you are Prime Minister) write a letter and you rescind Article 50. But even after that happens you are still going to have chaos, because some people are going to be so very very very angry &#8211; for a very long time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7071\" style=\"width: 872px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7071\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7071\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/Mediumflags.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"862\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/Mediumflags.png 862w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/Mediumflags-300x149.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/Mediumflags-768x382.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 862px) 100vw, 862px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7071\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nuneaton, December 17th 2018<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">If you want to read more, then there is more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/books\/rulebritannia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>, or &#8211; if you just want to listen &#8211; just click play below&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For the &#8216;Brexit 2019 soundtrack&#8217;:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qwpz8snYCw8?list=PLtAS-2qKnf4pF8bWZ3QewlcdwuHV_OdGd\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Merry Christmas!&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We gave people a choice, back in 2016 between carrying on with David Cameron, with life as it was, crap as it was, or a unicorn. The unicorn was Leave. The unicorn was a promise: &#8220;Leave and everything will get better&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9100,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7070\/revisions\/9100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}