Where are the Leave Campaign? Left Already?

Have they left? Who? The Leave Campaign of course. There was a time, up until last Wednesday in fact, when you couldn't switch on the television without having to gaze at Michael Gove,  Boris Johnson or Priti Patel. But now, they seem to have gone to ground. So where are they? Are they all holed up somewhere, panicking, hyperventilating and saying things like. 'OMG! What have we done? Half the country hates us and thinks we are small-minded idiots. Better get on with it. Hang on though, what did we say we'd do?'

A friend of mine, very politically aware and once a Labour MP before he was kicked out by a Lib Dem over the Iraq war, has actually said that we may never actually leave the EU. He told me that it would take at least 2.25 years for us to cut all ties and that within that time so much may have changed in the EU that another referendum will be activated. Pipe Dream? Maybe, but at the moment I am willing to believe anything that gets us back to where we were on Wednesday.

I honestly thought that Remain would win and even Nigel Farage, on referendum night said that he thought that Remain 'had edged it.' I confess to being surprised, shocked even at thye result and yet I do not believe that the EU is perfect - far from it, especially with the 12 unelected decision makers at the helm and the money that seems to leak away from what some call the 'last gravy train'.

Even the most passionate Remain supporters will accept that the EU is not flawless, but by being a part of it we could, maybe, have influenced decisions.

What the politicians must now turn their attention to are those people who used the opportunity to spit at the government, the Labour Party and the whole of the Westminster elite. They have been fobbed off for too long while their  towns and cities have changed fundamentally. Yes, of course, immigration is a good thing, for all the reasons that have been repeatedly repeated. For some of the indigenous people though, immigration has been too numerous and too swift. It needs managing and a sense of fairness needs to be seen to be applied to all. Places in the North West; Bury, Bolton, Preston. Blackburn - the indigenous population there do not feel that 'immigration is a wonderful thing' - they just feel pushed out and forgotten.

So when you feel pushed around, bullied even, the chance to bite back is irresistible. The Leave vote won out, not because people wanted to leave the EU, but because they wanted to punish those who they felt, have punished them.

As a Labour Party member, I have to confess to being sick of the internal divisions, the self-indulgence of infighting, the vanity of MPs who think that they have a right to form little cliques and to sneer at he leadership. ALL the Labour Party should be should be thinking of those people who rely on them for fairness and justice: the poor, the dispossessed, the asylum seekers, the old, those who want to find a better life, the unemployed, those recently out of prison and those who need a step up. We can't look to the Tories for sympathy. Despite their phrase of 'compassionate conservatism' no one is fooled.

So reach out Labour, as the Four Tops instructed and look after YOUR people.