Opinion: Time to join the Monster Raving Loony Party over Brexit?

It seems you can’t have an opinion on Brexit. Instead, you have to have a cast iron, line drawn in the sand, position. Either for, or against. Well I’m the exception to the rule, because honestly, the whole thing confuses me.

Sometimes I feel like the only one, as I hear others confidently asserting their opinions as to what will happen when Britain leaves the EU. From Ted the tractor driver, to Sally Taxi, to Mike the barman in the Red Lion, everyone knows it all. 

Except for me. Perhaps I was absent from school on the day everyone else was studying complex international trade relations.

See also: Catch up with all our Brexit news in one place

I actually voted remain, and not because I feel any particular attachment to the European Union. Although I’m very fond of our cousins over the Channel, I won’t be draping myself in a blue flag while humming “Ode to Joy” anytime soon.

Indeed, there are many things about Europe that frustrate me beyond belief, not least their maddening anti-science approach to plant breeding, and don’t get me started on Eurovision bloc voting.

Nevertheless, I felt that for many reasons, both farming related and otherwise, we’d be better off in. Does this mean I’m somehow elite? I’m a Welsh tenant farmer, so elite I ain’t.

Do I sneeringly look down my nose at leave voters? Considering several of my friends and family members are, as well as many people far more intelligent than me, absolutely not. 

People voted either way because they felt that would be the best option for them and their families. That’s exactly as it should be, and now we have to make a success of it.

Which brings me on to our politicians. I punched the air in delight when Dr Clive Black berated Michael Gove at the Oxford Farming Conference last month for some of the behaviour we’ve witnessed in Westminster recently.

I was brought up to vote, with a strong sense of what many people sacrificed in this country to gain that right, and although I’m never sure if I’m a liberally leaning Conservative or a conservatively leaning Liberal, I always have done. But now, for the first time, I feel politically homeless.

The Tories are a disgrace. They’re not only putting their party before the country, individual ministers are putting themselves before the country, and that is unforgiveable.

Grown men, and let’s face it, it’s nearly always the men, behaving like school children. Say what you like about the prime minister’s policies, she’s conducting herself with an incredible amount of dignity.

And where are Labour? With weeks until Brexit, and one of the biggest crises ever to face this country, Jeremy Corbyn is busy tweeting about a vegetarian curry he had, and manoeuvring for another general election.

And, despite the respect I have for David Drew, the shadow Defra minister, they’ll never get my vote as long as they refuse to talk about a badger cull.

I’m under no illusion that MPs in the past were all noble, selfless individuals; as Machiavelli put it, “politics have no relation to morals”, but for the love of God, bring back respectful debate, and maybe we can find a way forward out of the situation we’re currently in. 

This country deserves so much better than this.

Now, where’s that application form for the Monster Raving Loony Party gone?