Guest Editorial by Dave the Sandman

“There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”  Arthur Conan Doyle.

Last night was, to say the least, momentous. A seismic change in European geopolitics has sent shockwaves around the world; one I thought I would never see in my lifetime. Now a nation has spoken, heads are rolling, a Prime Minister has fallen, an Opposition Leader looks to follow, and a storm is brewing. And thanks to the wonders of the online world I watched it happen in real time, one eye on the BBC News live updates webpage, and my ears filled with the glorious rolling trollfest that was the Ralph and Sargon livestreams.

A measure of last nights vote importance is this: The last time I was engaged enough in politics to sit up all night and watch voting announcements in real time was way back in May 1997 when the Labour Party finally took control back from an entrenched Conservative regime that had run Britain into the ground over 12 years. I watched the country rise up and give Labour its largest landslide victory in history and as a proud son of the industrial north, whose family has coaldust entrenched in its DNA, it brought a tear to my eye.  That morning I watched the dawn paint The Houses of Parliament a beautiful soft pink as I sat on a park bench on the opposite bank sipping my extra-large Costa mocha before wandering into work a bit further along the embankment whistling as I walked.

But we know how that worked out. My suspicions about the true face of Tony Blair and his Nu Labour Islington clique and Hooray Henry mates proved to be horribly true. Cool Britannia became nothing more than a yapping poodle whose choke chain was handed over to a cosplay cowboy chimp in a suit whose name was Bush, and once again we armed for peace, were forced to choke down paper thin lies, and reluctantly were dragged into yet another US led clusterf*ck war that never seemed to end. Tony Blair has more than that war to answer for in my own personal world. Thanks to him my relationship with politics was forever tainted, the betrayal tasting like bitter ashes. Thanks to him and his swivelly eyed spin doctor crew who politicised my profession and turned us into his personal propaganda department my love affair with my work was also broken beyond repair.

So I did a Pontius Pilate, washed my hands with a sneer, threw the towel to the tiles, and walked away. No more politics, and a major shift from government to private sector work. It was a bitter change…but it worked out well for me in the end.

And that was that. I have spent the rest of the new millennium gloriously disconnected from the political world, observing from the sidelines with that sneer still firmly planted on my mug. You see I was not only a Labour party supporter, but a staunch ‘European’ at heart. I honestly wanted the EU to work, but I’m also old enough to have watched the slow creep from Common Market to European Union, and the benefits of being a part of the EU drowned out in a rising tide of bureaucracy as our national sovereignty and identity has been chipped away by a shadowy unelected pack of besuited mandarins in the carpeted corridors of Brussels.

While I wanted to get along, as that’s my nature, inside me a little John Bull kept shouting “Oi! Wake Up! They are putting chains on Proud Britannia! Fight Back You Fool!”

What was once a good idea – a common market trading block to act as a counterweight to the industrial and technological trading powerhouses west over the Atlantic and far to the east of Europe – was perverted into a shady power grab and extortion racket run by an unelected and unaccountable pack of rats and button men. We gave it our best of British Bulldog spirit and played the game. The match was lost, and now it’s time to shoulder our bats and walk calmly back to the pavilion for cups of tea, a few sandwiches, and a heads down for the strategy to win the new match before us.

Last night I watched 17,410,742 of those little John Bull’s rise up, “crawl over a mile of broken glass” (as one wag politician quipped early on in the race), and shout “ENOUGH!” My head is filled with the words of Shakespeare and Kipling, my ears with the tear inducing beauty that is Elgar’s “Nimrod”, and that sneer has turned into a Cheshire Cat grin of pure joy.

While I suspect some did vote ‘Out’ on the back of EDL esque xenophobic fears of “teh muzzies” and “they’re takin our jobz” Im pretty confident that most were, like me, sick of seeing our national sovereignty taken away, and our country used as the slush fund provider to bail out the never ending parade of shambolic policy catastrophes and failed states. Like me, I guess most were sick of being extorted for cargo container loads of cash only to get a few scraps thrown back from the table and benefits applying to only a minority of UK businesses and companies while the rest were saddled with the red tape as part of the deal.

And I hope a lot voted ‘Out’ out of a sense of pure “F U!” after being accused of being racist, bigoted, xenophobic, knuckle dragging Little Englanders by the media, especially pestilential Uber-SocJus rags like the Guardian, and the Labour Party clown parade care of Citizen Khan and Comrade Corbyn. You see I hope this is a sign that “The Times They Are A Changin’”, and the regressive lefts chokehold on politics is finally slipping away. I hope this is a massive sign that playing the “Bigot!” card isn’t going to work anymore, and the inevitable social backlash against the Twitterati and Tumblrinas has begun.

Let the Guardian continue to run its once proud name into the dirt and splatter its front page with smears and sneers. Water off a ducks back you Islington chatterati chumps. Cry louder! I can’t hear you over the Elgar turned up to 11 and gales of laughter. Look at the results map. Your so called left wing socialist Remain support turned out to be those yellow bits of the map where all the rich fat cats, Hoxton Hipsters, Hooray Henrys, investment bankers, Trustafarians and venture capitalist vultures live…..that and the so called multicultural paradises that are in fact inner city regressive left socjus swamps of London like Tower Hamlets. You are not the left wing “progressive” majority any more…. You are the regressive left minority. The real working class voted against you. We are sick of you and your café latte socialism. Get used to it.

By the way, Guardian readers and Stronger In “Bigot!” barkers …..I believe a heap of salt would go wonderfully with those eggs you are wearing all over your faces. Dig in my pedigree chums. There is plenty to go around.

Now, I know I have rattled on a bit, but I wanted to give you a small perspective from a small voice. One increasingly old man, proud of his country which once again seems to be the one saving Europe from creeping authoritarian tyranny. A man who yesterday felt like a stranger in a strange land, but today feels right at home again. Proud of his national history and heritage, and proud of his chips and fish or Balti and rice Bulldog Breed identity. So while I live by the code of Kiplings “If” I want to leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Listen to this bit of Elgar, and just as the music is rising about the one minute mark read this:

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm,

This England”

There you go….. now you have a taste of how I’m feeling right now.

Good luck later in the year my American chums and chumettes. We have shown you the way. Now, it’s your turn. As one of my favourite media figures used to say:

Good Night, and Good Luck.