If you can read this thank a teacher

We are delighted to see our dear German friends, Nonie and Torsten.  They arrive in an aged BMW, fulfilling every preconceived idea about Germans loving quality cars that last forever.  We settle them in with rosé and catching up.  After a while I hesitate to ask the question but the right time never comes.  Finally I blurt it out:

"How did you feel on 24th June?".  The atmosphere immediately freezes and there is a pregnant pause.

Nonie was in tears.  She went to work on autopilot that morning to the tearful hugs of commiserating  staff room colleagues.  Torsten looks thunderous as Nonie proceeds to tell us about her classic stages of grief.  The last phase is anger and it is clear that this is still the major emotion.  They both feel utterly betrayed by a campaign that allowed so many lies to go unchallenged.  Yes, they agree that Cameron was incompetent and slothful and that complacency led to this outcome.

They avoid eye contact while they tell us what they really feel about living in the UK.  After 20 years teaching in state schools and approaching retirement they feel betrayed and are now planning to retire in Germany.  Devaluation of sterling will impoverish their pensions.  Living in Germany may devalue them further but staying in the UK is unthinkable.  Why should they stay, they argue, in a country in which they feel unwelcome, despite their years of service in secondary education?  I quip that an Irish acquaintance was able to vote but this merely enrages them - they had no vote. Mentioning the disenfranchisement of long-standing expats seems superfluous at this point.

I put it to them that the referendum was purely advisory, that the campaign was based on lies and that Parliament must be made to vote to trigger Article 50.  No, they say.  "You have voted, now you must go and go quickly" they retort, echoing the words of Frau Merkel and Herr Hollande.  Nonie and Torsten are reasonable, intelligent people and if they are thinking in this punitive way, then what are Europe's leaders thinking?  Will the UK be shown the door?  Is there a clause for this?  Will Merkel and Hollande tolerate the delays?  How the UK economy will cope with years of uncertainty remains to be seen.  How will we be able to recruit the native speakers we so desperately need to teach modern foreign languages? We are now seen as a nation intended on doing monumental self-harm - a quick look at European headlines is illuminating.   The post resignation humming of Cameron added some humour the very dark days after the referendum but left the reputation of British politics in tatters.  It is clear that the UK is to be punished for its folly and European capitals will gain from our loss.   And Germany will gain Nonie and Torsten.

The letter I always wanted to write

Dear Mum

I have spent too long trying to understand your decision.  It is time to break the radio silence.

When you voted OUT what did you think would happen?  I wonder what wrongs you thought would be corrected.  What benefits did you think would accrue from this act of defiance?  Did you think that we would wake up on June 24th to a new dawn?  Or did you have a sudden realisation that there was no plan and this could start going horribly wrong?

You live in a beautiful city with two Universities.  With your splendid university education behind you, rich with the input from many European teachers, and your two degrees did you not think about the negative impacts on our higher education system?  Did you not know about the Erasmus student exchange schemes or the European Commission grants driving research?  Did you not think about the many Europeans turning down job offers now because they no longer feel welcome?

Just what were you thinking of?  Did you not think of the prospect of an independent Scotland and your grandson's future?  Is a new passport a fair exchange for all those English tuition fees he has had to borrow?  Do you think he will want to come back to England now?

Is immigration really such a problem for you?  Where will you find your next Polish cleaner?  Do you really begrudge them a place here?  When I woke up from my operation, the one that saved my life, the anaesthetist was Spanish and the consultant was German.  The intensive care nurse was Portuguese.  Do you really want to throw these highly skilled and dedicated people out of the country?  Does it worry you so much that we need them to staff the NHS, an institution that has looked after you almost all of your life?   Do you think that the NHS is safer now that the country has voted, by a narrow margin, to leave?  And what did you think of the £350M promise?  Were you really taken in by that?   Did you see how quickly it was retracted after the result was announced?

Did you not think about the pension and healthcare arrangements of the 1.5 M British expats or did you swallow the line in the British press?  If you looked at the headlines you would be forgiven for thinking that this was only about inward migration from the EU.  Did you not realise that this is a two-way street? 

I really fail to see how you think that you have got your country back.  I can't see the benefits: - the loss of business confidence, major corporations threatening to leave, the jitters in the City, a downgrading by Standard and Poor, all of which will diminish further the pension pots of millions of pensioners.  Were you really convinced by the angry and threatening words of both campaigns?   I could see this coming: the wagging finger from Obama and the famous last words of Osborne were the turning points.  Did you not feel belittled and insulted by their words?  So why did you not think this through?