A letter from the future to those claiming to vote leave on behalf of their grandchildren, too young to vote.
Dear Grandad,
I know you claim you meant well when you said you voted to leave on my behalf, as someone unable to vote, but I really wish you hadn’t done so.
All that scaremongering about an EU superstate, EU army, Turkey etc was really hyperbole and you know we have vetoes on those. Anyway, those are issues best left to my generation and if we don’t like the answer we could always choose to leave then. Now we have no way back, at least on the terms we had.
It’s quite charming you are outraged at the EU’s imposition of rules on matters like oven glove safety, vacuum cleaner power and efficiency, and rules on importing ferrets, riding roughshod over our sovereignty and democracy, but I am much more concerned with the legacy your generation left me which is almost exclusively down to governments you elected to Westminster. This clearly demonstrates Westminster lawmaking has far greater practical impact than anything the EU does.
You had free university education, or the opportunity of it. You have now saddled me and my generation with the highest university fees in the EU, and all the debt that entails, whilst now removing my right to university education anywhere in the EU.
You have had final salary pension schemes and lucrative early retirement packages, yet you have raised retirement ages for my generation which are likely to rise further. You have been guaranteed a “triple lock” on your pensions whilst we can expect zero hours contracts.
You owned your own home on attractive mortgage terms at a young age, yet I’ll be unable to afford a home of my own for a long time. This is made worse by you and your generation spending your retirement lump sum on buy to let properties, increasing prices and making property unavailable to buy.
You bought a holiday home in the EU and some retired there. Yet you now deny me the freedom of movement that made this possible.
You have known for 30 years that your activities were impacting the climate yet you have done eff all about it, many Leave advocates denying the problem exists of course (what do experts know!). You’ve taken full advantage of cheap flights to holiday in exotic places, exacerbating the problem. Yet it will be my generation and those of my children and grandchildren that will suffer the consequences. And now you’ve removed Britain from one organisation where concerted international action and influence was possible, and starting to work.
You knowingly took the risk of the breakup of the U.K. Itself. The country you “wanted back” that you actually got back is the one prior to 1707 that you never ever knew.
I could go on, but I’d just like you to know that no, I’m not thanking you for voting to leave the EU and let’s be honest. You did it for your own self interest, not mine. You’ll need those immigrants to care for you into old age, wiping bodily excretions from you because trust me, I won’t be doing it.
Your concerned grandchild
ejwwest 