The concerns of a Remain voter

Felicity kindly invited me to try to express my concerns about the state of things.  I don't pretend to speak for all Remain voters.

Thanks Felicity. I don't have many 'leave' voters in my friends list, but the ones I do have are (mostly?) thoughtful people who have good reasons for voting the way they did. If their arguments were the ones that won the referendum, I think I could go along with it a lot more happily than I'm able to at the moment. I feel it was won on false pretences.

At the moment I'm trying to separate two things:

1) disagreement/disappointment with the result.  I hope you and others can understand is more than just 'sour grapes' -- it's beyond my ability to just 'suck it up'. I haven't seen you suggest that's the case either, by the way, but it's a running theme amongst some others and it's hard to bear. I think the winning side just has to be 'bigger' sometimes and let the losing side rail for a while.

I also think it is a responsibility of the winning side to address the concerns of the losing side, because after all, we're now going with the Leave verdict.  It's down to the leaders of the Leave campaign to confirm that it's all going to plan or admit gracefully that it's not.  Nothing goes completely to plan, so an acknowledgement of that would be helpful -- otherwise it feels more like everyone is defending their position at the cost of looking at the latest facts.  This goes for both sides of the argument.

2) distress about the fact that this vote has given those few (but not few enough, unfortunately) who want to use it as an excuse for blatant racism the chance to do so. I am not seeing anyone saying that all Leave-voters are racist, but I so far haven't seen anyone who voted Leave actually state that this is not in their name. It seems the gut reaction is to defend against the implicit accusation that they themselves are racist. This leaves me with the uncomfortable result that, in my Facebook bubble, the only people visibly upset about the well-documented increase in racist incidents the last few days are also the people that voted Remain. I would love to see the condemnation be universal, for those few (but not few enough, unfortunately) to see

I don't believe that you and other Leave-voters aren't upset about the fact that these hate crimes have increased, but so far I haven't seen a single one actually SAY it. You mention in your previous blog post about them being jailed and punished -- I guess that's close, and it's more than I've seen from any other Leave voter so far. Most have instead accused me (usually indirectly by way of a 'be like BIll' post) of 'stirring up hate and bile' - not my raison d'etre, I hope you agree.

I may still be failing to express myself clearly, although I'm trying hard, and using too many words. I ask you to try to see through my confusion and accept that I and others are genuinely trying to separate these two issues, which keep being pushed back together by both sides of the argument.

I'll try to summarise in one sentence what I guess I'm asking you to do: I would be more comfortable if you, as a Leave voter, would clearly say that the people using the referendum results as an excuse to attack and intimidate don't do so in your name. You might say it's obvious, but it would help me rest easier.

Perhaps you have a reason not to be comfortable with doing that, but at the moment that's the part I don't understand and am finding so frustrating.

- Matthew.