It’s been a blast, Britain, and you’ve put on a thoroughly entertaining play, but I’m afraid I’m going to step out before the end of the last act.

Because it’s pretty obvious that despite all the lies and the electoral fraud and the lies and the misrepresentation and the lies and the BBC’s “mistakes” and the lies and the obvious unfitness to govern of pretty much everyone in a leading Conservative role – oh, and the REALLY VAST LIES, I MEAN, LIES SO HUGE YOU CAN PRACTICALLY SEE THEM FROM THE NEXT GALAXY… the British electorate is going to vote the Tories back in again. Again! I mean, I still haven’t forgiven them for the 1980s yet, and you think this utter shower of shite can be trusted in any way?  

Which means there’s going to inevitably be a no-deal Brexit, with Britain leaving the EU at the end of 2020.

And I’m sorry, but that’s really not my problem any more. I voted Remain the first time around. And I could see which way things were going right from the start, which is why I applied for Swedish citizenship the day the referendum was announced, a year before it was actually held. Long before that, I always voted tactically against the Tories, even when that meant voting for my idiot boss as the Liberal candidate (he lost, unsurprisingly). But this time I can’t vote in the General Election at all, because I’ve lived outside the UK for so long.

Which says it all, really. I’m a European. I’m not British any more. I don’t need to worry about what’s happening in that quaint little country where I used to live. I’d fix things for you if I could. But I can’t. So I’m going to do what the rest of Europe is doing – shrug my shoulders, wash my hands of you and get on with doing European things, like having a huge market to sell my services to and being able to travel as and when I like. Rejoicing in our differences and our similarities and our varied cultures and languages. Trying to move away from colonialism, not towards a mythical Golden Age of Empire. Accepting that the world is getting less and less white and more and more generally brownish and being perfectly happy with that. Not being offended by people speaking foreign languages in the street – because usually the person speaking the foreign language is, in fact, me. The immigrant. The economic refugee.

So I’m unfollowing all the Twitter people who have striven bravely to prevent Brexit. I’m even, regretfully, going to unfollow my beloved Ian Dunt, who’s put in a Herculanean effort explaining this insanity, sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis. I’m even going to abandon the utterly wonderful Jess Phillips. Because British politics really isn’t relevant to me any more. And I simply don’t need the stress. My feed’s going to be pretty empty for a while, but there are plenty of other things I can fill it with. It’s a big world out there, after all.

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