Thread: My Mum the Brexit voter. My mum is a working clas…

Some times were awful. I hold a distinct memory from age 14ish - my old shoes got a huge hole in them. Unable to afford new shoes, I wore my mum's trainers, 1.5 sizes too small. I still get those familiar foot cramps even now, age 29 and a half. I digress. The okay-notokay times

Endured into my uni years. I was lucky to join a year BEFORE the tuition fee rises. My mum commented to me "they don't people like us, our kind, lads like you at uni". That was 2010s. The resentment, in me and her, was already tangible. Cameron the enemy already. This remained so

For a while. My mum was not very political and never voted. From 2010-2016 her only political commentary came came maybe 2 or 3 times a year, in which she believed Cameron-Osborne had some agenda against her as a single working class mum. That resentment and paranoia built.

In 2014/15, she didn't vote. She expressed regret as she felt bad for Ed Miliand. Why? Because in a Q+A session on disability grants (we had a severely disabled cousin, mitochondria syndrome) he used those underrated words - "I Don't Know." But promised he'd revise it as he

Felt their pain and worry. However, as usual, she did not vote. She never did. Cameron won a majority and we moved swiftly on to Brexit. She didn't know whether to trust Farage "is he racist?". She sat on the fence poised to, as per, abstain at the ballot box. But then, George

Osborne made THAT announcement, that if we voted leave, a new, harsher budget would be made. For the first time, I saw my abstainer mum FURIOUS at the TV, at politics. Years of low level anger at austerity came to a head. "They're gonna punish mums like me if we don't vote how

They tell us to. They're threatening me. They do all these things to bring us down- tuition, disability cuts and that..and they're threatening us with more! THEY DONT GET TO THREATEN US ANYMORE!!!" That low level austerity anger was apparently not so low level. My mum was angry

At austerity and cuts all along and this simply pushed her over the edge. She made up her mind. My abstainer mum couldn't fûcking wait to vote against Osborne-Cameron's threats by voting brexit. No opinion about sovrin'ee or fish. She'd had it with cuts, attacks on her as a

Single working class mum and austerity. She was gonna teach them a lesson by voting Brexit. Nothing I could do or say btw. So she voted leave. I voted remain. I tried to talk her out of this and failed. We never talked about it. Years later, she denied, says she didn't vote.

She said she didn't care either way, that she liked Umunna for example, he seemed nice. 2019 election came. She didn't vote. She'd NEVER vote conservative. Corbyn "has never been working class" so no to him too. My attempted pleas at tactical voting ignored. Boris won. Is she

Happy with Boris? No. Is she happy with this brexit deal? "Don't really know or care tbf". Is she happy with Brexit? Doesn't care. She did, however, show a willingness to vote Starmer next time, because at least he used to be working class, like her. And that matters to her.

Austerity, for her, hurt both wallet and feelings, even through her thick layer of voter apathy. She is deeply wounded by class constructs. As am I, naturally. It made Tories AND Corbyn a no go, and made her vote Brexit simply to defy Cameron-Osborne threats that scared and

Angered her. Is there some wider electoral lesson to be learned here? Not sure. Are there others like her? Probably. Do I think any of this made voting Leave a good idea? Fk no. I don't. I have decided to share this anyway, though. Make of it what you will. Ty.

Thread: My Mum the Brexit voter.

My mum is a working class single single mum of mixed race children.

We grew up in a council house on a horrid estate

Though she now retrained she was, throughout my life, employed in menial jobs or unemployed. Some times were okayish

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Thread: My Mum the Brexit voter. My mum is a working class single single mum of mixed race children.We grew up in a council house on a horrid estateThough she now retrained she was, throughout my life, employed in menial jobs or unemployed. Some times were okayish

More from Brexit

You May Also Like

Thread: My Mum the Brexit voter.

My mum is a working class single single mum of mixed race children.

We grew up in a council house on a horrid estate

Though she now retrained she was, throughout my life, employed in menial jobs or unemployed. Some times were okayish