KATIE HOPKINS ON A YEAR SINCE BREXIT

ATIE HOPKINS ON A YEAR SINCE BREXIT



Do you remember how you felt a year ago today? Going to the ballot box to cast your vote, making your voice heard on Brexit?

Remember the lead up to it and the drama of it all; Cameron obliged into calling a referendum by the surging support for UKIP and Farage.

An unexpected Tory landslide sending Call-Me-Dave trotting off to Europe to negotiate us a better deal. Coming back empty handed with like the Emperor, smiling in his new clothes.

Osborne telling us the world would fall in on itself and an emergency budget would be needed to save us from doom and damnation, scaring the elderly suggesting state pensions were at risk.



And a raft of other bold assertions - lies, fear, antagonism and hot air on all sides. A bus with a number on it - later to become the emblem of every 'thick and empty headed' Leave voter. A bus to beat us with, to show 'we didn't know what we voted for'. Unlike every Remain voters - intellectual heavyweights - apparently able to sift through the lies on their side.

Theresa May - a tepid Remainer - dragged about the place to say we would be better of in the European Union - convincing no one. And Corbyn - too busy fighting off leadership challenges from within his own party, a walking irrelevance, loved by people but laughed off his platform by his own team.

It was an exciting time. I would travel from my home in the 'Rest of the UK' with ordinary people, chatting about ordinary things. Gassing away to the lady in the cake shop, nattering to the bloke trying to find my gas meter and read the damn thing, and head to London.

London, a separate country. A different place. Divorced, acutely at times - from my place, my kind of people. And I suppressed a secret giggle. A giggle that never left me right up to the night when the results came in.

The certain knowledge that London had no idea how the Rest of the UK felt. Not all of us, not the people that tore down my Leave poster from my garden, night after night. Or defaced the BREXIT banners of my farming friends.

A sense that London was about to get a wake up call. The Establishment, the BBC, the powerful, the intellectual and every other champagne socialist residing in their luxury homes was about to get a pretty blunt reminder about how real people forced to live cheek by jowl with their decisions, actually feel.

As the election results came in I danced about the place in front a big screen. Celebrating every Leave region - tweeted my thanks to voters. I messaged Jeremy Vine in studio - urging him on - as if he was part of making their happen. I cried, I hugged, I felt elated. My people, my country - still stronger than the City of deaf snobs.

It was the finest of hours.

Before the darkest of times.

A full year later, and the country feels despondent. Theresa May delivered a master-class on how not to run an election campaign, and lost any negotiating power in Europe. Staunch Remainers - like necrophiliacs - smelled the reek of death on May and are much invigorated by it. Indeed the only fervour displayed by socialists and anarchists from the left.



Last week the Marxist Shadow Chancellor urged Brits to “get out on the streets” and join a left-wing rally on July 1 to increase the pressure on the enfeebled Prime Minister.

Amidst the political chaos we have taken a good kicking from terrorists, from the incompetence of people who were paid to know better. Our hearts are always in our mouths.

Westminster. Manchester. London Bridge. Finsbury Park. This station. That tower. This van. And rage and anger inside of most of us at the inaction - once again - by politicians with privileged access to intelligence.

I walked down an empty road in Regent Street, bereft of buses and cars - spooked by the stillness, the London Eye - strangely without a queue, sale items left unsold despite the weak pound. I don't doubt some time soon, Brexit will get the blame for this too. Quietly ignoring the fact, friends I know will not travel to the city right now.

They say we stand united. I say we are still standing, just.

I travel back to my home in the 'Rest of the UK' and I am relieved. Relieved not to live in that place, glad to be away from the lunacy, restored by ordinary people who see the possibilities offered to us when we take back control of our country. Not the propaganda of fear pushed in the capital.



We all need to take a moment to do this. To remember the endless nonsense we endured from the EU and why we voted to end it.

Remember that dance you did around your kitchen, or the thrill of knowing people spoke up against the Establishment and wealthy liberals - and their sanitised view of the world, and were heard, loud and clear. Remember how it felt to make change happen.

You need to be that person today. Hold it. Bottle it. Hang on to it. And we will prevail.