How have your political views changed over time?
I once distrusted the EU
A bureaucratic mess.
Rules and regulations
That really made no sense.
Subsidies to farmers
To benefit the French
Germans in the driving seat
Or so it seemed to us.
We came late to the party
Were always on the fringe
Played the awkward partner
And constantly complained.
But come the referendum
I found my views had changed
The world is much too complex
For us to go alone.
Climate, immigration, terrorism, crime
These are problems for the world
That won’t respect our borders
And cant be solved alone.
Then there were the populists
Who pandered to our fears
I did not trust the lying words
That came from such as these.
Wealthy politicians
Whose wealth was held offshore
Wanted out of the EU
Before a change of law.
They blamed all immigration
On free movement, the EU
But folk are slowly finding out
That they weren’t told the truth.
Our farmers and our fishermen
Thought they knew the score
But they got what they asked for
And they aren’t rejoicing now.
Workers in the factories
Europe subsidised
Bit the hand that fed them
Common sense defied.
They say my generation
Betrayed those who are young.
But you can count me out of that
The Brexit vote was wrong.
The world is so much smaller
Than how it used to be.
We‘ve Portugese and Finns and Swedes
We call our family.
Most of us now understand
We got it badly wrong
But politicians dare not tell
The voters they betrayed.
We‘ll never get so good a deal
It’s too hard going back
But we must stay close to Europe
Nothing else makes sense.
Andrew Green's Poems 