I love to make up new words and see them gradually used more by others – for a writer, there’s no greater thrill. My brilliant ‘cry-bully’ – coined in this magazine back in 2015 – has probably been the most successful, to the point where it’s sometimes amusingly used by cry-bullies themselves, Owen ‘Talcum X’ Jones being the wettest and most bellicose example. Then there’s ‘Frankenfeminism’ (centering the fetishes of cross-dressing men over the rights of women while identifying as a feminist) and ‘Transmaids’ (the people who do this.)
But the one I’m most pleased with, though the least used, is Le Grand Bouder, or – to translate it into a lovelier and more popular language – The Big Sulk.
In extreme cases, Brits suffering from BDS even left these sceptered isles to seek ‘refuge’ in France and Germany from the alleged crypto-fascism of Brexit Britain
Referring to the inability of some Remainers to get over the fact that they lost the referendum fair and square, this condition often leads to Brexit Derangement Syndrome. I’ve seen this mental affliction transport its followers into a realm of magical thinking only reached otherwise by the most extreme of the trans-brigade. For instance, cult members will often identify as younger than they are; think of the then 68-year-old Ian McEwan relishing the idea of ‘oldsters, Brexiters, freshly in their graves’. During a social media spat, a Remainer told me to move over and make way for the youth, of which he was one – he’s three years older than me!
One can only imagine what these poor befuddled souls are going through now, with the right (which these days pretty much refers to anyone who doesn’t believe in literally limitless immigration) on the up throughout mainland Europe. In extreme cases, Brits suffering from the terminal stage of BDS even left these sceptered isles in order to seek ‘refuge’ in France and Germany from the alleged crypto-fascism of Brexit Britain. I can’t imagine anything more delicious than hearing these hysterics now trying to justify why they’re living in countries which (by their definition, not mine) are or are about to be ‘right-wing’ while back here in deplorable old Blighty, a Labour government is set to romp to power in a few weeks’ time. An octopus playing Twister would look straightforward compared to this lot.
What this sequence of events will throw into mercilessly sharp relief is that – as Gareth Roberts summed up so pithily on X – ‘the Remain movement was never about Europe, really. It was about British snobbery.’ It was never about having the freedom to wander. Britons were travelling to and living in Europe long before the EU was even a gleam in Konrad Adenauer’s eye – think of a penniless Laurie Lee in 1934 deciding to go to Spain on a whim and ending up assisting the anti-fascists. Or the artists colonies on the Greek islands which acted as a magnet for the louche of all nations, or the teenage Beatles first residency in Hamburg.
No, blind belief in the EU was an early example of the ‘luxury beliefs’, the phrase coined by Rob Henderson in 2019 to describe the way espousing certain opinions is mainly done to signify superiority to the ‘herd’.
The most passionate EU-ophiles were signalling that they were not of the ‘left behind’ classes, thrown on the scrapheap in abandoned industrial towns. These Remainers weren’t the ones cut out of even the most humble jobs by an influx of cheap foreign labour running roughshod over the unionisation it had taken the British proletariat so much effort to achieve. On the contrary, they were those who hired cheap Eastern European cleaners and builders, keen to cut corners and save money while painting their choice as being somehow an affirmation of the international brotherhood of man. The gap between the puffed-up fantasy self-image and the tawdry reality of the most rabid of the Remainers was revealed in the days following the referendum result, when the ‘swivel-eyed’ and ‘spittle-flecked’ persona they had attempted to paint Brexiteers as came home to roost.
During the campaign I was repelled by the casual arrogance and bad manners of many Remainers and their open loathing of the proletariat; Bob Geldof being accused of mocking fisherman on the Thames, Will Self snarling at the black working-class writer Dreda Say Mitchell during a debate. But this was nothing compared to how this most entitled of pressure groups reacted when they were beaten fair and square. It was Glastonbury weekend, and the Sunday Times carried the following: ‘The chavs have won, mate,’ one cut-glass raver told his mate. ‘I’m already looking into dual citizenship.’ Elsewhere in the paper a Brighton Remainer commented ‘If you give a vote to every man and his dog, you have to be prepared for the answer you get.’ ‘WELCOME TO CHAV BRITAIN’ was a friend of a friend’s Facebook status the morning of the result. It was an eerie feeling, having presumed that literally everyone I know believed in the principle of one adult citizen, one vote. I suddenly suspected that I’d been hopelessly naive in thinking this, and that some acquaintances secretly believed that people who hadn’t attended university shouldn’t really be allowed to vote on matters of importance, but excluded in the manner of prisoners and lunatics.
It’s always Brexiteers who were painted as insular misanthropes – but we wanted to embrace the whole wide world, and saw no reason why we should cleave to countries just because they were majority white. Brits often (due to the Commonwealth) have more in common with Bajans than Belgians, or with Australians than Austrians.
The misanthropy of some Remainers, with their livid Hyacinth Bucket-ish hatred of the white British working class, can no longer be covered up with endless performances of ‘Ode to Joy’. They’ve flounced around feeling superior to the common little oiks who voted Leave for long enough. Now they’re going to see a bonfire of their vanity, as populism – so vulgarly American, my dear! – cuts a swathe through their beloved Europe. They won’t learn any lessons, though. Remaining is now a fully-fledged cult, all about the ‘feels’ rather than the facts. When the facts about Europe turning to the right are put to many Remainers, they generally refuse to even face them, preferring instead to talk about how upset they were by the referendum result – something that happened a whopping eight years ago.
These are idiots whose fealty to the EU is so hopelessly devoted that I honestly believe that if a united European army of fascists crossed the Channel on U-boats and goose-stepped from Lands End to John O Groats – flying the EU flag – Remainers would still be bleating ‘O, why can’t we rejoin the EU? It’s so civilised’
But these are difficult days to be an EU groupie. Even over at the Guardian, Polly Toynbee is serenading our spunky little island, swimming again the tide of ‘a fissiparous European far right bound by anti-immigration sentiments’. But this is the very bloc that her kind warned us we would have to keep ahold of lest we be revealed as Little Englanders to a mocking world. I’m feeling a new phrase coming on – maybe Le Grand Bouder has had its day. How about La Grande Gêne – the Great Embarrassment?