Bucket Lists

For the last 3 and a half years I have divided my time between my professional life as a business consultant, author and speaker and anti-Brexit activism.  It has meant doing things I never thought I’d ever do in my life.  This article is a round up of some of the weirder and wonderful things that happened in the Brexit rollercoaster.  Ultimately we have not yet succeeded at turning back the tsunami of lies, digital interference and xenophobia sweeping the populist world, but the struggle to rejoin the EU continues.  I am considering how best to do that, having seen a torrent of tactics over the years and have written separately about this in a paper for Hendrik Klaassens, founder of the largest pro-EU and anti far right movement.  For now, here is my unexpected bucket list.

I was attacked three times by angry Brexiteers, gaining two black eyes.  I’ve also had a few death threats and damage to my bicycle several times over the years.  I must reflect that, given that the Brexiteers “won” the referendum, they really are the most unhappy winners I’ve ever met … what exactly are they unhappy about?  They are “getting their country back”, a 50 pence coin and some cockles.

Just recently I stood a dead cat for election, gaining more votes than Lord Buckethead and the local Christian People’s Alliance party, in spite of my specific instruction NOT to vote for the cat.  My cat Stan was even accused by the local Lib Dem chair of being a threat to their existence, despite having no party machine or resources.  As a consequence I am currently politically homeless and considering whether politics is in fact a dead cat.

I was subsequently reported to the Chief Police Commissioner of Kent by the standing Conservative MP Rehman Chishti, for making a satirical news item on election night about Mr Chishti’s poor track record as an MP and the alleged theft of a piece of foamex board.  The Police came round to speak with me in an advisory capacity but pointed out that no charges had been made, since no crime had been committed:

Last year I wrote a book on the gentle and sometimes abrasive art of Brexorcism, in other words having the difficult conversations to change closed minds on Brexit.  In some cases this amounts to a quasi-religious affair in some people’s heads, hence my use of the term derived from The Exorcist.  Although the book was critically acclaimed, I sensed that some in the Remain movement rather preferred quicker and easier things to do, instead of learning to make the deeper interventions that would change minds about Brexit.  Brexorcisms take time, extreme levels of patience and skill.  The Remain movement have, by and large, always been too busy to build skill.  With more Brexorcism on all levels (the people, the political parties and so on) we may have changed the course of history.  Will we do this, now that there is more time to learn the skills involved?

I also wrote three albums of songs against Brexit and got one of them to No 1 on Amazon:

I got arrested for driving an “offensive Mini Cooper” which had the words Bollocks to Brexit on the side of the car.  Subsequently Essex Police have not managed to locate the Officer in question, in spite of my attempts to help them.  They withdrew the charges, rather than face a humiliating climbdown for an officer who simply forgot he was on duty and who went feral.

I was blacklisted alongside The Rt. Hon Stephen Dorrell and a number of other Remain VIP’s by Remainiacs, some of whom later turned out to be fakes or closet Brexiteers.  One notable person was a historical figure called Emma Forage who I always suspected to be fake.  I was reliably informed that I was wrong, until it turned out that she was a Greek bloke who worked as an IT academic in Cyprus.  In the meantime “Emma” had done untold damage to my professional reputation which had impacted the work I was able to do with the Remain cause.  “Emma” also groomed a lot of vulnerable women to attack other notable remainers.  There were others who will get rumbled in time.

Spent 1000’s of hours listening to Leave voter life stories.  I converted these into helpful epithets for the Let’s Talk About BREX .. it book.

I also had my computer stolen by angry Brexiteers whilst I was at a pub in Westminster.  They really are angry …

On a positive note I went to the House of Lords and The Commons.  Not exactly a bucket list item, but it’s always useful to see the entire social system end to end if you are to be an effective change agent.  It was good to see inside “The Kingdom of Brexitania” in the same way that I believe we are better when we see our campaigning through the eyes and ears of the Brexiteers.

I was proud to get a call which led to my offer to help Gina Miller begin her Campaign 2018, securing support from Sir Richard Branson and £25 000 of financial backing to help kick start her campaign.

So, the question is “was it worth it?”.  In terms of the benefits of all this, I can count a great number of real new friends with whom I have exceptional bonds of rapport created from Brexit adversity.  That is the most important thing of all and outweighs the various cuts and bruises, cyber attacks and so on.

I am now returning to full time work, but with a wealth of experiences of change management that cannot be learned from textbooks.  Brexit has cost me a lot personally due to setting aside my business activity over 3.5 years, but the value outweighs the cost and, given the chance, I’d do it all again, although I still wish I’d never had to act at all.  I have still yet to hear a convincing argument as to the benefits of Brexit when compared with the need to rebuild Britain and to reform our politics on a world scale.  Brexit remains a weapon of mass distraction, whilst we sleepwalk into oblivion.

But the fight is not over.  We begin again now that spring has arrived.  I’m pleased to say that the paper I wrote on changing the game on Brexit has reached the central Remain movements and has been adopted as a template by a number of grassroots groups in the UK and beyond.  In brief, it begins:

Brexit will unravel of its own contradictions.  I believe this will be sooner rather than later.  Brexit’s implosion will come from either what I call external socio-economic, political, environmental shocks or “internal combustion”, due to the underlying inherent instability of the Tory party and the self-destructive nature of Brexit, which has already claimed two Prime Ministers and cost £66 000 000 000 in waste.

Read the full paper at “Brexit Futures“.

I am also devote a little bit of my time to bring the various disparate groups in the South East of England, to make them a more effective fighting force.  On a daily basis we have a campaign called “We are Everywhere“, which aims to keep our visibility up.

Most recently I initiated a petition to ask Boris Johnson to go on the Jeremy Kyle show so that he could trace all his illegitimate children.  In providing this “social service” we would also be cleaning up politics by stopping the continuing trend of lying as an acceptable behaviour in society.  Sign the petition at CON Dom.

As I write, Johnson continues to lie.  The latest whoppers are that he now says that Old Age Pensioners will be brought out of retirement to become a “Dads’ Army” cadre of Doctors and Nurses to fight the Corona Crisis: