MADAM,

It would be unwise of me to claim that the 17 million British voters who chose ‘leave’ were all deluded, but they were misguided.

Countless writers will already be feverishly composing books with titles, such as: The Disunited Kingdom, The Breakup of the UK, The End of an Era, Meltdown in Good Old Blighty, Freedom for Scotland, How to Insult your Neighbours, Bonkers Britain, The Rise of Right-Wing Nationalism in the United Kingdom, and so on.

Certainly, David Cameron was the sorcerer’s apprentice in all of this mess. He was too naive to realise he would unleash a spell that could not be controlled. He thought this would all be like a public schoolboys’ debate on a rainy afternoon too wet to play cricket. It wasn’t such a bad idea to test the mood of the country, perhaps, but to consider the result as binding is bordering on insanity. What we’ve got as the outcome is a relatively small minority of vociferous right-wing nationalists thinking that they now have a mandate for doing lots of crazy things with the country in future.

Remain voters like myself are stunned and numbed by the situation, feeling helpless and alienated within their own country.

Leave voters with some sense of remorse should now come out of the woodwork and protest with us. Don’t let this country lose its credibility in the world. This is the time more than ever for common sense to prevail. I’m not sure we can leave it to our politicians to get it right anymore. They seem to be acting out a Shakespearean tragedy, just as in the climax to Hamlet.

I don’t suppose that our legal experts either will be able to find a technicality that will allow us to prevent the referendum outcome being implemented, even though they can usually find clever ways for rich people to continue to avoid paying tax. And I don’t expect our MPs will have the courage to veto the result in a parliamentary debate, as they will be so tied up with parliamentary procedure, whips, and the fear of a backlash from their constituents that they will be unable to vote according to their consciences.

The brain drain of talented and gifted young people from the UK has already begun, industry will move abroad, and we shall soon be embroiled in international crises centred around our various colonies, that is, in addition to the UK itself breaking up. The ‘leave’ voters, misguidedly thinking they were being patriotic, have done unimaginable damage to their own country.

It was the ‘remain’ voters who were the truly patriotic ones. They were the ones who genuinely wanted to preserve the unity of the UK and our standing within the union of sovereign European nations.

Anthony Owen

(Monmouth)