January done, Brexit done

A shorter update this week. Quite a bit of casework but two events dominate everything else. Holocaust Memorial Day and Brexit.

We stand together

Trafford’s Holocaust event was on Wednesday. Incredibly well attended, the event grows every year. The theme this year was Stand Together. The event told the story of Sam Walshaw, born in Poland, he was only 11 when war broke out yet, miraculously, survived the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau. His parents and four of his siblings were gassed at the Treblinka extermination camp. Only Sam and his sister Rachel survived.

Three students from Lostock High school then told their present-day stories. The stand together theme was so apt. We live in an inter-related, co-dependent world and yet populist leaders in this country and abroad, foment division for political gain to an extent that I hope shocks. We need to be shocked. If we view the collective hatred of (our) faith, politics, nationality, skin colour as part of our daily grind without being shocked, then we have already begun preparing the ground for something poisonous to flourish.

I was incredibly moved by the three Lostock students. They had been through so much but they have come through it as incredible human beings and in that, there is so much hope.

Brexit is Done

I didn’t vote for Brexit. I lost.

I’ll not forgive David Cameron for holding the referendum during a period of severe austerity that imposed a loss of place, sustenance and respect on so many in our communities. I do not begrudge holding the referendum, I just begrudge the timing and the entitled self-confidence with which Cameron went into it.

Nevertheless I lost, we lost; and it should have been clear that we had to carry out the people’s instruction. We had to leave. Labour tried to prevaricate. For three years we prevaricated, neither fish nor fowl. Brexit but not this Brexit; Another referendum. And we got hammered for it, we lost communities that had Labour written through like a stick of rock. And I don’t really want to forgive the architect of that disaster, but it looks like I’m going to have to, as I think we’re about to elect him leader.

So Friday was my gammon day. I was a person to avoid all week if truth be told.

Sunday I did a bit of a solo canvass on one side of Gorse Street.