'Twas the night before Brexit, and all through the house...
... we're not sure if we're waiting for Santa or Nosferatu.
Tonight, everything is hushed. Where I'm sitting in northeast London there's a lightning storm toying with us. I say toying because 1) everything else is toying with us, so why wouldn't it, and b) the first flashes and rumbles came before the rain. Everyone is still up, judging by my Facebook, writing little last-minute posts and trying to talk some sense into the situation.
In fact, all anybody's been doing for weeks is trying to figure stuff out. Here's some if it:
First, my own Top 10 Reasons to Stay in the EU.
My old friend Ben changed his mind from Brexit to Remain. He's done it as gracefully and kindly, and modestly, as he does everything else. And he's explained it really well.
In the aftermath of the awful shock of Jo Cox MP's murder last week by a neo-Nazi, people are beginning to re-examine the way both sides of the issue have been presented. It's clear that many Leavers are people from the parts of the country where Cameron and Osborne's cuts have done their worst. People feel dispossessed, and they buy into the rhetoric that this is some kind of war between 'the people' and the 'elite'. After eight years of austerity, shrinking incomes and zero-hours job contracts, vanishing safety nets and the creeping privatisation of the NHS, people want it to be that so desperately that they'll vote for anything that looks like a change. Suzanne Moore has been writing about this. The swingometer is swinging all over the place - no one can see how it's going to go on the day...
Anybody who feels confused about the emotive way people are comparing the EU issue to the Second World War should read Patrick Stewart's powerfully moving article from last week.
And the poet Martin Figura summed it up pithily: 'OK people. Let's not saw off the branch we're sitting on.'
There's poetry: here's a letter my publisher's dad (Yay Dad!) sent to the newspaper:
Some logic for voters in Wales to consider:
Wisdom from John Donne:
Wisdom from the Simpsons:
Which echoes the wisdom from the Economist:
Facts from a disgruntled member of the public, who took out a full-page ad in the commuters' paper The Metro:
Ordinary people are also rallying round the memory of Jo Cox, who lost her life to this referendum:
Persuasion and love in capitols around Europe. This one is the Palace of Culture in Warsaw - where, with their own far-right government to worry about, they have good reason to be afraid of the confidence a Brexit would give Putin...
... Which leads us neatly to perhaps the most compelling argument of all:
And now, amid the thunder, lightning bolts and suspense, I am going to try and get some sleep before the morning. Will tomorrow be, as one newspaper has it, Independence Day? Or - as a Facebook friend predicts - the last day before the UK's Second Civil War?
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