Dear David,
On the 24th of June your career ended with a vulgar political manoeuvre. In recent weeks, you imagined yourself as a cynical strategist, a cockney Frank Underwood but you ended in the manner of a Benny Hill show
The fatal outcome was unimaginable to you. Certainly, the campaign was going to ravage the country, but you assumed that in the end people would fear the unknown and reject change.
A referendum is a precious way to make sure the common order remains unchanged and to reassure the generally conservative nature of the people.
The referendum sequence was therefore well under way, with a soft campaign denigrating the Brexit camp and semi-defending the Remain and the European model, in order to get back the leadership of the Conservative party and to annihilate the ambitions of the UKIP. But then, politics is not 'Game of Thrones', and can end badly when one has only his own future in mind and not the common good. MP Jo Cox had to lose her life, she was a voice to be heard for progress and our future. Watching your personal shipwreck on Snapchat in 24 hours was somewhat tragic and extremely funny. What a funny idea you have, you the politicians, to expose yourselves on Snapchat, to always seek the voices, even the most improbable by using communication, rather than by taking courageous measure for society. It's probably easier to take selfies than voting for tax redistribution policies.
It is also very easy to make people feel they still have power in a healthy democracy by offering large referendum, rather than ensuring ethical use of power (talking about Panama). France has no lesson to give in the above matter, at least when you take a fatal blow at elections, you resign.
Because this is it David, the referendum was not only about Europe. It was the first time the forgotten masses, losers of Labour and Tories policies, had their say. What have you done for these people, who saw their incomes decline, their benefits disappear and lost their jobs, feeling it was stolen 'by foreign EU workers? You had forgotten them altogether.
For the supporters of Brexit, Europe is not a guarantee of security and stability, it is the insurance of their social meltdown and the origin of many of their ailments. To their fears, you responded with less security and more precariousness, leaving the Brexit comedians and clowns juggling with xenophobia, false promises and lies, with no other proposal than patriotic nostalgic reverie of a lost Empire. And to their astonishment and ours, it worked.
So yes, it's true, it's unfair David, you are not solely responsible. You don't have to "do the hard sh** alone" as you said to your aides. The austerity policies imposed from Brussels, catastrophic financial policies from central banks and the liberal orthodoxy of our single market are also responsible for these fears, the reject of Europe and your defeat.
Jean-Claude Juncker, Mario Drahi, and all your colleagues in Brussels will also miss you and you are right to find it unfair that they stay in office. But maybe one should not have proposed this referendum in the first place? Europe deserves better than that, right? European construction is complex, the laws, agreements, the lengthy work of cooperation and mutual understanding, it does not really amount to a silly double or nothing game.
The English have shown you that they were able to vote Brexit. I recognize in this act everything I like about them, the punk mind, humour, big mouth and this wonderful islander mentality which tends to make them forget the world and good manners..
This referendum is a great Pandora box, why not propose another one about the need of the Monarchy? Scotland is proposing to hold a new one on independence, wait for Ireland... And then a last one on keeping or scratching the Commonwealth? India fought long to come out of the Empire, and it's really unfair to see that with a single vote Britain may leave Europe so easily.
Finally the referendum, for once, clarifies things. We are rediscovering that a country is a gathering of different people with very diverse opinions, for holding together it takes will, a common project of future and worthy politicians. With Brexit, everybody plays with cards on the table: your team is disqualified, the regions are back to life and Europe is pointing to what it is: a wobbly and fragile construction. And the good news is that democracy works.
Thank you David, I wish you the best for the rest of your career.
I am very much looking forward to hearing your first former British PM conference in Doha by the end of the year and discover your memoirs in book shops 'Of pigs, Brexit and life in the shadows' by 2022!
Yours ever,
Alexis