On Brexit and Everything After

As an Englishman in America I'm used to a few immutably core conceits; everyone likes my accent and wants to hear me talk more, the US is No. 1 in every way that matters, and nobody here gives a shit about the politics of England, no matter how much I try to tell them about it.

Even when Jalyss' family learnt the exciting news about how David Cameron had sex with a pigs head all they wanted to talk about was the other news of the day, which was that Jalyss told them she was pregnant with Toby. Which was exciting news and all, but it's not exactly David Cameron's secret passion for pork products.

Its come as a huge shock to me then that over the last few days people have actually been stopping me to ask what exactly a Brexit is. America, it seems, woke up to the same shock and panic as Britain. It was probably no more confused than most of the country that had just thrown themselves off the cliff. If the post-Referendum reaction is any indication a sizeable proportion of the vote may have been a mistake; people certain that Remain would win taking the opportunity to all give the status-quo a kicking, safe in the knowledge that their vote wouldn't make a difference ended up on the wrong side of screwing themself.

I'll admit that I watched along with the Brexit vote as it happened, in contact with some of the other politics junkies that I know in the UK, and it quickly became clear that Leave was headed for an upset, in every sense of the word. For future reference there is something hugely upsetting about watching your country commit economic suicide in realtime. I stopped hoping for a resurgence which wasn't coming about the time that Nigel Farage declared a victory for ordinary decent people, and praised a revolution won without a "shot being fired" (other than the ones which killed Remain campaigner, Labour MP Jo Cox).

Absolutely as much of a dick as he looks

For those Americans who weren't aware that the UK was even voting to leave the EU it must have seemed bizarre to wake up to find that they had actually gone and done it. Actually though, America is probably the one place in the world where deliberately tanking the world economy for 'Freedom' would be celebrated, so predictably the Republican party rallied around the vote. Expert judge of mood, and unlikely Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, made a speech in Scotland praising their decision to leave. He said that awkwardly in public, forgetting that Scotland actually voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, and again later in private after the crowd voted leave with their feet and left him alone.

Literally the best picture possible for this post

Of course, the presence of Trump on the day after Brexit was an appropriately grim visitation. Standing at his financially ruinous golf course, making a speech praising his own foresight as the flaming economy desparately stop, drop and rolled off a cliff, to people who didn't want him, his business, or Brexit and have somehow ended up with all three.

Since then the pound has plunged to its lowest point in my lifetime, the British economy went from the 5th biggest in the world to the 6th in four hours, and $2 trillion was wiped off the world market, the Leave campaign admitted they have no way of doing any of the things they promised withdrawal would achieve, and the UK has collectively gone through the five stages of grief.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression ... Acceptance may be some way off. I can only imagine the power surge as millions of kettles were put on at once, as the British people instinctively responded to crisis in the only way they know how: making themselves a cup of tea and cracking jokes about the predicament we've got ourselves into. Among the outpourings of shock, horror, confusion and loss, we found time to make memes, and spawned dozens of pages of satire to get us through the day.

There has been a predictable response in the aftermath about unity and looking to the future, although most of the hand-wringing has come from the defeated Remain camp, with little in the way of gracious victory from Leave. With a country totally divided, it's interesting (if a little disheartening) to look at the demographical split between Leave and Remain.

For those who aren't interested in charts of post-Referendum demographic breakdowns, first of all what's wrong with you?, and second of all, here's the short version. The areas that voted to leave were those with less money, fewer people with a higher education, and an older population. Some of the splits are surprising. Class and poverty were seemingly more important than race; ethnically diverse but post-industrial Birmingham voted leave, along with Britian's Northern rust-belt. Areas with high levels of immigration voted leave, but more heavily if the local economy was struggling. and over 65s were almost a mirror opposite of 18-25s. In each case there was a 3/1 split, with pensioners voting to leave, while the younger generation voted to remain.

This, somehow, has become the defining narrative of the vote. A generation which got to enjoy all the benefits of membership of the EU whilst they were working have propelled England out of Europe. The reaction has been swift and predictably blunt; many of the memes circulating discuss the younger generations anger that people who'll be dead before the full consequences of Brexit are known have dumped this on the young.

There's been an equally swift backlash, decrying the young for acknowledging that death is inevitable and that old people are more likely to die first. My favourite, incidentally, is the claim that if it wasn't for old people we would all be speaking German, which hilariously combines Godwin's Law with an inability to do the math on exactly who is over 65, and how likely it is that they fought in World War Two.

The age a 70 year old would have had to have been to fight in WW2.

But look, this anger is pretty fair. It's worth noting that you still couldn't vote in this referendum unless you were 18, which means that teenagers who will be entering the workforce in two years time, when Britain actually withdraws, won't have any say at all in how their country voted. That's ludicrous. It's all very well saying we shouldn't turn on each other in the aftermath, but it might have been better to get that in before the elderly voted out of Europe. Anger about your future getting kicked in the nuts by a generation which already lived in a relatively golden age and who have left a legacy of bitter inequality, regional poverty and division, all of which lead to the current situation, seems reasonable under the circumstances.

The Left in particular seem hamstrung by how to respond now that their base constituency of working-class voters has pushed Scotland to the brink. This may be the biggest political consequence of Brexit. If Jemery Corbyn is deposed and Labour try to move back to the centre it's hard to see how they can survive. Competing for Tory voters with UKIP, having already lost support in the Northern cities to the right's Little Englander policies, along with Wales and Scotland become ever more divorced from the Union, will be the death of progressive policies in England. The idea of a Left Exit from the Neo-Liberal EU has handed England to the worst elements of the Tory party for decades to come. Good luck replacing the significant workers rights legislation with anything as expansive when Johnson, Gove and Farage are in charge.

So, how do we move on from here. I wish I knew. In the short term things are bad and will probably only get worse. The fragile peace in Northern Ireland has been undermined, Scotland are trying to negotiate their own deal with the EU and a second referendum on independence is far more likely to be successful now. The factional, xenophobic rhetoric of the leave campaign will only grow, and while theres already signs that many Leave voters are starting to regret their choice, it's only going to get worse once the actual impact is felt.

It's not like it's in the EU's best interest to make it easy for us. The opposite in fact. If they want to discourage other countries lining up behind Britain to leave they need to make it as punishing as possible for us. It shouldn't surprise anyone when they say they want us out as soon as possible, or immediately start talking about abandoning current agreements on immigration or trade. Why work with a country that's decided to abandon you? Why protect people who don't want to do anything in return?

By any measure, Britain is worse off for this vote. Its easy to say we need to reunite, It's a lot harder to do it. And just think, we wouldn't even be here, if it had been left to those meddling kids.

On Brexit

Somewhat to my surprise having torn myself away from the 24/7 raging dumpster fire that's American politics at the moment, it turns out that an ocean away there's another electoral sink hole taking place back home.

I mean, come on Britain, I turn my back for a few years and half the country seem to have lost their minds and started roaming the country bellowing Churchillian rhetoric about sticking it to Johnny Foreigner and flexing their biceps in the vague direction of Brussels.

Politics!

Until the last week I've been fairly sanguine that people probably weren't stupid enough to actually consider Brexit (a term, incidentally, that doesn't really do justice to the national economic suicide pact that withdrawing from a common market with our biggest trading partner would represent). I should have known better of course. The portents were all there; the birth of a two headed cow in Dorset. The fire wreathed comet in the night sky over Leeds. And, of course, the fact that in my inherent belief in the decency of the British people, I had somehow ended up on the same side as David Cameron.

Admittedly, we're there for different reasons. After all, it's his fault that we face what he's described as some sort of apocalyptic choice. There would be no referendum at all if it weren't for his pre-electoral courting of the Eurosceptic vote, a promise that I can guarantee he made with absolutely zero consideration of the fact that people might vote the wrong way on this. For future reference, if one side of a decision actually is such a cataclysmic disaster, it's probably not a good idea to give people an option to choose it.

Cameron's hope here, it seems, has been that Britain's instinctive complacency would prevent us from withdrawing out of a (reasonable) fear of the unknown. It's unsurprising then that so much of the argument from both sides has been doom-mongering of the potential consequences for and against Brexit, with very little in the way of actual reasoning about how Britain actually benefits from being a part of the EU, beyond the fact that without it the entire nation would probably slide beneath the ocean.

That kind of makes sense in a way though, because frankly any conversation that you could try to have about the EU fairly quickly runs into the insurmountable obstacle that nobody knows what it is that the EU does. I say that with such certainty because, as luck would have it, I graduated with a degree in International Politics, studied the EU and still couldn't tell you with any accuracy exactly how it works.

I used to think that was simply a side effect of the colossal scale of the European project; half a billion people in twenty eight countries casting a lazy triangle from Portugal, to Finland and down to Cyprus.

But, that's kind of the problem. Because having moved to America it's quickly become clear that while they're also ruled by an unaccountable, oligarchic Government, a bureaucractic erection on the body politic, they at least know what their Government does and how it works. Maybe not perfectly, but they can probably tell you who the President is. And what the branches of the Government are. Maybe even tell you about a few laws that the government has passed, or what the aims of the parties up for election are.

Now; can you honestly say, that having sat through the entire Brexit campaign, you know the answers to any of these about the EU? Let's start with an easy one: who is the President of the EU?

Got it?

Well, jokes on you, sucker, because you were wrong. You see, there's not actually any such thing as the EU President. Or perhaps more accurately, there's four; Jean-Claude Junckler (President of the Eureopean commission) Donald Tusk (President of the European Council), Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament), and ... err... The Netherlands (President of the Council of the European Union). I guess by that point they just though, 'Why not give it to an entire nation?'. Really we're lucky that they stopped there and didn't just devolve power to Europe's pot plants, or anyone named Steve.

Literally every single one of these men are the EU President

All of this would seem like so much fuel to the Brexit fire, and yet I don't think I've heard, at any point, the argument that the problem with the EU is the lack of transparency. Instead the arguments seem to boil down to not really liking current levels of immigration (which wouldn't actually be solved by withdrawing from the EU), disliking the amount of money we send to the EU, and a weird assertion that the EU itself is somehow fundamentally anti-democratic when compared to the UK.

This, for me, is the most bizarre of the Brexit arguments. Sure, there's great appeal to the argument that we're no longer able to control our own country since some sweaty palmed German or French bureaucrat has unilaterally decided to ban British measurements, or outlaw fish, or whatever fantasy was last pulled out of the void.

But putting aside for a moment that we get to elect representatives to the European Parliament every 5 years (and that our representatives have the worst record of attendance in the Union, in part because we repeatedly elected people who don't think the EU should exist), we're leveling the charges of the EU lacking democratic foundations while being profoundly undemocratic ourselves.

Our head of state is a 90 year old product of centuries of selective breeding to ensure we have someone whose face you can stick on currency and stamps. Meanwhile, the House of Lords, or to give it its full and ridiculous title, 'The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled' is literally full to overflowing with 800 apppointed peers, selected for their services in giving money to politicians.

Of course, just in case you were concerned, we do have an elected lower house, which is currently run by a party which won just 36% of the 66% of the population who bothered to turn out to vote, so there's that.

In fact, the Government is so democratic that when the population overwhelmingly decided that we should name our new research vessel Boaty McBoatface, and yes, I realise that I'm late to this party, they immediately rejected it in favour of RRS Sir David Attenborough, because screw the voting public.

Look. Sir David is wonderful. Frankly, I think we should be naming more things after Sir David Attenborough. If the decision was made to rename every street after him, even, it would only be his just desserts for the incredible work he has done, and I would put up with the inconvenience of having to try and arrange to meet someone on the corner of Sir David Attenborough Drive and Sir David Attenborough Road, only to find out that they're actually at Sir David Attenborough Street and Sir David Attenborough Walk, you know, up by Sir David Attenborough Crescent, at the intersection of Sir David Attenborough Boulevard and Sir David Attenborough Lane.

Sir David Attenborough and one of 500 animals named after him; Sir David Attenborough Lemur

It's a testament to how loved He is that the Government were able to effectively use him as a flak shield for their decision not to accept the results of Votey McVoteface. Using his name is like invoking some strange, unknown God. It has a special power to it. Who is going to argue against Sir David Attenborough? Who would begrudge him a ship. Nobody, that's who, which is convenient for when you want to jettison the poor choice that the people made.

So look out for us to remain in the EU tomorrow, or, if the results go poorly, for us to instead end up part of the Sir David Attenborough EU.

At this point, all I know is that whatever choice we make we really need to get better at understanding what exactly it is that Europe does, and why it's worth us being a part of it for the foreseeable future. Leave or Remain, we at the very least ought to be able to name some of its functions, beyond stealing our money, propping up Greece, and swamping our shore with baguettes and paella.

On Zapfletts

When my kids grow up I've decided I'm going to talk to them about the decisions I made about getting married. I have what I feel are good pieces of advice for them, mainly around exactly what 'tulle' is, and the coma inducing pointlessness of spending loads of money on chairs for the service. But above all there are two decision that I'm going to want to be able to point to without any hesitation and say that these were good things.

The first is in my choice of wife. I hope that she's their mother, because otherwise it's an awkward conversation to be starting with them. I hope that she's around still, I hope that they see her not just as their mother, but as a person. I want them to know Jalyss not just as a role, like their teachers or their pet, but as the individual she is. I hope they'll know her as someone I love and respect, who makes me happy, pushes me, teaches me, steadies and comforts me, and who can cook up a mean homemade pizza.

The second thing though is that I want them to know that they are part of a family that wanted them, values and loves them for who they are, and that they will be respected and cherished whatever they do. Unless they're a vampire, because then they're on their own.

I'm being quite serious here. If they ever start living in a coffin, adopting a range of, admittedly rad, capes with high collars, and rise only at dusk to go and feed on the still warm blood of virginal 19th century women as part of a dubious allegory for sexual awakening, I am disinheriting the heck out of them.

I have very strong feelings about vampires, you guys.

But, so long as they steer clear of vampirism, I also want them to know that they are part of a family that spans two continents and three immediate family names. Because as well as being a Willetts and a Zapf, they will also be a Zapfletts.

I've always been pretty adamant that I didn't want Jalyss taking my name. Much like asking permission from her father to marry, I see it as an outdated way of codifying women as property. My wife isn't an object, she isn't defined by me or her father.

Giving her surname up to take mine is denying her the agency to exist as a being separate from myself or her father. To me it suggests that her identity is conditional upon whichever man has responsibility for her, and whilst that works fine in a society or culture which denies women their own identity and agency, I didn't really want the first act of our marriage to be the transfer of ownership from Jalyss' father to me.

Jalyss, whilst not wanting to take my name, would have been quite happy to hyphenate her surname or just keep Zapf.

But I want us to share a name, to be a team, so having us just keep our own names didn't seem a good option. I want us to be linked by that thread of commonality, the unequivocal connectedness of having a shared identity.

I'm going to be honest here; writing this. I find myself getting uncomfortably close to expressing myself in such a way as to make it seem like it was solely my decision that Jalyss change her name. Which would be a betrayal of much of the sentiment behind the name change, as it means her actions were still based on my desire to not have her becomes Mrs Willetts. And so whilst it may look like this is just a groovy, granola eating left wing version of the same white, cis, male privilege showing through, I'd like to really make it clear that this was not the case of me simply coercing Jalyss into taking a new name so I could get my way.

I love Jalyss' maiden name, mainly, it has to be admitted, because it sounds like the noise of a futuristic weapon discharging into the vacuum of space.  So we wanted to maintain it, but I was also really keen that we do so through a gesture; a resolving commitment to one another that as we got married we each became part of a new family.

From Zapf and Willetts came Zapfletts,

Because that, for me, is what marriage is; a commitment to a new family. It's what Jalyss and I are, or at least what I hope we are. And part of that is sharing not just our lives, experiences, joy, frustration, money, passions, hobbies, illnesses, annoyances and mundanities with one another, but setting ourselves apart and distinguishing ourselves by name.

When I married Jalyss I did so knowing that it meant leaving behind a lot of what I had grown up with. I left my culture, my country, my job, friends and family. And I did so to form a new life, and a new family. It won't be the same as the life I had before, and my family will be new too. I've gained brothers and sisters in Jalyss' siblings.

And I've gained a wife, too.

But there's a part of me that also sees myself as having lost something, as well. I won't get to see my nephew grow up. I won't be there for birthdays, holidays, or weekends. I won't get to hang out with my Dad and watch the football, or go out for a cup of tea with my Mom after work. I won't get to irritate my Sister, or hang out with my cousins.

So, part of marrying Jalyss is me getting the opportunity to extend what it means to have a family, and who my family are. I love the grand gesture, and the radical deed. And the most obvious commitment we could make to one another, and to our new family replacing our old, is for a name change that represents that. From the distant, separate lines of Zapfs and Willetts', a brand new one. A joining of two families that creates a third.

I love that. What better way of signalling this new union, this new family than a distinct new break. And what better way of defining ourselves than a new name; one which speaks of where we came from whilst also placing us together.

And so, Zapfletts. I'm looking forward to explaining that to my kids.

K1 Visa Interview

This morning was my VISA interview at the embassy in London, an endeavour that I've been preparing for off-and-on for months. Preparation, for me at least, mainly involves rechecking the same three forms again and again, just in case their contents have noticeably shifted since I last looked, or they were suddenly, startlingly nonexistent, like a papery dinosaur-analogy. Short of interning my documents in amber, which is time consuming, or just letting it go - unwise outside of Arrendelle - it's hard to see what more I could do to keep them safe, and yet every night for the last few weeks I've convinced myself that I've probably forgotten to include my passport, or haven't actually got enough copies of each bit of paperwork, and rechecked them.

It's hard to overstate how paranoid I've become about this. I got to the point last night where at two in the morning I went through every bit of paper again and then slept on the containing folder. JUST IN CASE.

With an appointment scheduled for the embassy's opening time of 8, I naturally leave nothing to chance and get up three hours early to catch my bus, for the half hour journey to Marble Arch. By the time I arrived (well before 7) there was a queue of about 40 people. I curse myself for my own tardiness and join the end of the line. Clearly some of them had been here a while, despite the very clear instructions for people not to turn up too early. Idiots.

Probably in a fit of pique at the uncomprehending English, the security guards commits a grievous breach of social etiquette and moves the head, and direction, of the queue. Like Jesus with a badge, his officiousness causes the first to be last, and the last first. The early first fail to pay enough attention, and the crowd reforms around them. The curiously English feeling of unfairness begins to tell; one woman is very obviously realising that she has lost her rightful position, and tries, unsuccessfully, to negotiate:

"This woman was in front of you" she says to the people who have moved to the front, pointing at the woman behind her. Clearly this is preamble. What she really means is "I was in front of you" but that level of directness would be impolite. Better to masquerade her dissatisfaction as altruism. The people in front ignore her, unmoved in any way by the increasingly frantic protests. The security guard who caused all the fuss turns and goes back inside. 

Stretching across the front of the vast Embassy, watched over by a grotesque monument to Reagan, the queue resettles and grows as more people join it. Fronted by one of those frequent green spaces that London seems to be full of, the building is, by comparison to it's surroundings at least, squat and ugly. A giant gilded bird rests over the front awning. Presumably it's intended to be an eagle. It looks more like an especially ugly crane. A pigeon lands on its head, defecates and flies on.

This is probably not the way immigrants are supposed to remember the process of assimilation into the US. But too few of those entering America have described watching errant birds pooping on the symbols of freedom, independence and liberty. The shit spangled banner. 

The doors open, a staff member rolls out two enormous cupboards. The queue is divided, then divided again. I am in the initial group, about 12th in line. I show my first set of documents. My photocopies are in black and white. Nobody else's are. I start to sweat straight through my shirt. Documents are taken, checked, handed back.

I begin to worry that my iPad won't get through the security sweep. Laptops aren't allowed in, but no mention was made of tablets. I have convinced myself that I am about to be sent away for bringing contraband items, and start working out where I can drop off my bag to get back for my interview without it. My name is called. I remove my belt, watch, shoes. The guard asks to look in my bag, and pulls out my iPad case.

My iPad gets through. I talk too much to the man next to me in the queue. He tries to look interested in his own paperwork. I take the hint.

The VISA interview process is two steps; the first inspects all my paperwork, the second involves an interview about my relationship with Jalyss, I have been assiduously prepping for the second. I learnt her Birthday. I know her middle name. I have the story of how we met down to a fine art.

The first part comes quickly. I'm second to be called, it's 8:05. I give fingerprints and hand over my file.

"So, you're engaged" the clerk says. It's an in! I start my pre-planned speech about how we met. "Congratulations" he interrupts, "passport?"

He takes the papers I've been conserving for the last few weeks. My paranoia has paid off, and everything is mercifully, thankfully, wonderfully present. He accepts it and sends me away to wait again. This was the bit I was worrying about and it's already over.

The seating area, sparsely peopled when I left, is now full. The heat has risen considerably, and two industrial fans have been set up. I position myself on a near empty row. A man immediately comes and sits next to me. It's a breach of that other unspoken English rule about personal space, that nobody should ever sit beside you if there's another space available.

The day before I got profoundly uncomfortable when, on an otherwise empty train, a man came and sat across the aisle from me, which, in fairness to me, is a pretty odd thing to do, and shouldn't really be allowed, Today I don't begrudge anyone their seat, even if it isn't typical. "Look at me" I think. "Personal space doesn't bother me and I keep trying to start conversations with people. The process is working. I am becoming an American!"

The numbers that were previously being announced are now simply flashed on a screen. It makes it harder to read when you have to look up regularly to check you haven't been called for. The book I'm reading, a collection of Charlie Brooker's columns called 'I Can Make You Hate' seems an inopportune choice in the context, and I avoid showing the cover or spine to anyone who may be registering my choice of reading material and making judgement calls about my suitability to get a VISA, especially once I start silently laughing to myself. The conjoined seats shudder, and my new friend get up and goes to sit elsewhere.

I 902 flashes up, and I hastily stuff the book in my bag and struggle to get all the evidence of my relationship out whilst I scurry to the window. I had expected a private room, a guy in a slightly too large suit to offer me a coffee, and a smoke. My cop film expectations are not met. A woman asks me to repeat the process of scanning fingerprints, to prove my identity. In front of her she has 4 forms with my photo on. If I'm not me, I'm a pretty good match.

She leafs through the file in front of her, looks at me, and back to the file. She asks me to talk about Jalyss. This is the only question in the interview, I try to say as much as possible without coming across as desperately lonely. I keep an eye out for signs she's trying to get out of the conversation. She doesn't seem to be listening, so I stop,

"I'm going to approve your application" she says. I haven't yet got the evidence I prepared out. Photos, call record, receipts, letters and print outs I'd spent the last few days collating and obsessively filing. A curator's egg of my relationship with Jalyss sits in a folder my bag at my feet. "You can go now"

"Errr. Is that it?" I ask. I think she may have made a mistake. Where's my interview? "Jalyss' middle name is Jarynn. They're made up" I tell her. I sound like an irritatingly precocious 6 year old announcing she's completed her flute recital. I want to punch myself in the kidneys. I learnt this stuff, and I'm going to get it out there, "Jalyss is a conductor; but not a musical conductor - or an electrical one!" When I practiced that line in my head I paused for effect, and to allow time for them to laugh,

"Yep. You can go now" she says, "go celebrate."

My 'interview' has lasted just over a minute and spanned the length of one question. I am strangely disappointed at how anti-climatic it was, my preparation seems unnecessary. It's hard not to feel cheated. I'm not sure why. I close my half opened bag and leave the way I came in. Nobody stops me.

The queue outside is still growing, like a bureaucratic game of Snake. The pigeon has returned to rest on the eagle.

I have up to 10 days to wait for my VISA and passport to be returned to me. 12 days until I'm hoping to fly, and 24 until the wedding.

I'm not nervous about going yet, although I'm sure I will be soon. But for now I'm just grateful I don't have to worry about those bloody documents any more.