I hate every single 'person' who voted out

I'm over trying to understand

The year was 2010. The Month was April. The 15th.

Ski season.

The bags were packed for Combloux and the whole family was sat around the table in our converted kitchen-dining room. The ‘telly’ was on. The first of the ITV general election debates. The first election debate to be broadcast by television in Britain. Ever.

Clegg, Cameron and Brown in the nation’s living rooms. Speaking directly to the camera and facing the hard questions directly from the audience.

 It was as if the Great British public was saying ‘yeah, so what? Why shouldn’t I switch over to the footy? Make that case.’

It was brilliant.

While Cameron was able to present a somewhat credible new face of Compassionate Conservatism, that Old Dinosaur called Gordon was drowning in a sea of Cleggmania.

My Blackberry started to buzz.

It was Nigel. He was working at the Brookings Institution at the time, heading up their Center for Middle East Policy. He was supposed to already be on a flight out from Washington to Beziers. 

‘Yes, Tim Chapman speaking, who is this?’

I obviously had caller ID, but anything to undermine Nigel and his obnoxiously successful life.

‘Hey Tim, it’s me Nige. Have you got the TV on Tim?’

‘Yes Nigel (I made sure to emphasise the L), Gordon is just not up to scratch’

‘No Tim, the Volcano. The one in Iceland Tim. They’ve grounded my flight out of Dulles, Tim. All the ones in Europe too.’

I felt my knees buckle. Fortunately, I was sat down. ‘Goodbye, Nigel’, was all I could muster as I pressed the red button.

What would the other mothers at that school gate think if Fiona tells them we stayed in London for the entire Easter break? The other boys sniggering at Julian when he flies in to Colorado from Heathrow instead of Switzerland for the Westminster annual Ski Trip. 

Awkwardly skidding down the slopes as the other, more practiced adolescents whip past him. A Chapman in third place. Unacceptable.

There was no time to lose. ‘KIDS, TO THE CAR’ I bellowed, as I began scooping up their suitcases and carrying them three at a time to the XC60.

Fiona was quickly brought up to speed.

Within seconds she was on the phone to the staff at the Euro Tunnel.

‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE ANY SPACES TONIGHT’

The four-minute hate filled rant which followed, much of it in French, was in retrospect, a faint foreshadowing of the TERF she would become in later years as exposure to Mumsnet did irreversible damage to her conscience and sense of proportion, with dire consequences for British teenagers with gender dysphoria.

A flash of pride, not just on behalf of Fiona, but also in my own sound judgement in picking a partner.

Three hours to make that ferry.

I briefly consider making a detour so I can go over the Dartford crossing, as I do love a ‘Dart Charge’ story so I have something to talk about with other Dads, but time was pressing. 

After mistakenly allowing Julian to plug in his Ipod Touch and play ‘pass out’ by Tinie Tempah I slipped Pink Floyd into the CD Player. With Dark Side of the Moon on full volume, I made short work of the A13 and A102.

‘Money’ we sang.

‘It’s a hit’ as I spun on to the A2.

‘Don’t give me any of that goody goody bull SPIT’

Two hours to make that Ferry.

As we drove past the last outposts of civilisation south of the River, past Blackheath and it’s brilliant fireworks display, something in the air changed. Some grim anticipation took over us. We were, as they say in the stands of Old Trafford, ‘not singing any more’.

The grim suburbs of South-East London, from Eltham to Dartford are almost too sterile to feel fear in. It feels like you are driving through one big service station. Huge car parks flanked by enormous box department stores, lines and lines of endless, characterless suburban sprawl. Like Los Angeles but significantly poorer and without good weather or any worthwhile celebrities.

But it is when one passes the M25 (a bloody nightmare, as always!), and you really start to get your teeth into North Kent, and the countryside, that your palms begin to sweat. It is within these putrid swamplands that Dickens envisaged the ragged Pip and the terrifying Magwitch.

Looking out the window, it becomes clear that Dickens was simply putting what he saw onto paper. Although the citizens of North Kent do not share the distinguishing physical degeneration of their southern cousins, they carry on their brow the same evil, suspicious expression.

One hour left to make that Ferry.

Fiona, perhaps distracted by the pondlife out the window, misses our turn onto the M2, and so we end up in that appalling sewer of humanity, the Medway.

By this point, the evening is in full swing. We are in proper Kent now, the residue of civilisation afforded by proximity to London is completely absent in the rivermen which throng the streets of Rochester. Howling at the rising moon, it’s pale light illuminating paler faces, white except for the incomplete rows of yellowing, decayed teeth.

I pressed on, taking every turn I could. I found myself in a labyrinth of depressing poverty. Chatham, where every front garden is unaccountably strewn with children’s bikes. The ‘University of Kent’, where the descendants of village idiots line up to crucify themselves on the altar of student debt. Gillingham, the worst, where both the paint on the houses and the skin on men’s faces peel back like tangerines.

Road led to road, led to road, and soon I began praying that the Minotaur would appear to devour myself and my family to rid us from this wretched, Kentish hell. 

It was not Theseus’s beast, but instead, the sudden reappearance of the M2 which liberated me from my despair. 

30 minutes to make that Ferry.

It was not the pull of our Combloux Chateaux which made me put my pedal to the floor. It was the push of Kent. The animal instinct which keeps a man thrashing at sea while he drowns, fighting until his last breath. 

Part of me started to feel like Clarkson. Obviously in polite company I could never admit to enjoying Top Gear, but on the odd Sunday night, whilst Fiona was asleep, I could often be found slipping down to watch midnight repeats on Dave with the leftover Cauliflower cheese.

In the end, I turned to Bowie. 

I was Major Tom. Thousands of miles from home, nothing but the four walls of my tin can separating me from the frozen abyss.

‘CAN YOU HEAR ME MAJOR TIM?’

I half shouted, half screamed, my eyes full of tears, as we pulled in to Folkestone, with minutes to spare.

I made a vow that day to never step foot in the so-called ‘Garden of England’ for the rest of my days.

But while I was happy to live and let live, the swamp-creatures which stubbornly cling on to life south of the Thames have inflicted their idiotic, reactionary coup on my people in the form of Brexit.

It’s impossible to get an au-pair, and the shelves in Waitrose are empty. The white working class have destroyed the precious pool of migrant labour which greases the gears of modern civilisation. Have they volunteered themselves to clean those toilets, walk those dogs and collect those bins? Have they heck.

Brexit was a declaration of war, and the sooner that David Goodhart and the rest of us liberal elites recognise this, the better.

They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be explained or understood.

Either we destroy them, or they destroy us.

I choose life.