I feel that I should somehow mark the day we dreaded, and hoped we would not have to face: Brexit Day.

I have thought and thought about this post, going around in anguished, frustrated circles, and find that I’m still still seething and incoherent with sadness and anger too strong to put into words at the loss of my European identity. To use a cliche, it does feel like my left arm is being ripped away. I feel embarrassed and stupid for believing that people carried away by Jingoism would see sense and not go through with this awful thing.

There have been so many words about Brexit, written and spoken in anger and sadness, horror, shame. Analyses, opinions, insults. I and people with far more knowledge than me have tried to explain the mistake to those who do not want to listen, for whom populist opinion or scorched-earth ideology carries more weight than objective fact, who derive pleasure from hurling boiling, sulphurous abuse at open-minded, educated, liberal people and revelling in the stench of our burning flesh. Words have not helped. Words no longer come.

If there has been any good from the last four years, it is that people have shown us who they really are, fuelled by the emboldening of open xenophobia. I’ve been emboldened too: I now have the courage to refuse to tolerate it. Those who now feel able to express racism and bigotry that has lain just under their skin, itchy and irritating, they are not my friends. Oh, they don’t mean me, no of course they don’t mean me. But if they feel able to express their ignorant, credulous opinions cobbled from manipulative hate media, about white, EU27 people, how on earth do they apply their hateful perspectives to me? I have spent my whole life on the back foot, tortured in the emotional labour of not making a scene, not calling out people’s ignorance from my position of (state) educated privilege but this self-regarding, attention-seeking hatred is not worthy of my friendship. Do not mistake my kindness for stupidity. I’m done.

People who have refused to educate themselves yet revel in the glory of their wilful ignorance might realise in a few years that their lives have not radically improved after Brexit. My fear is that the vigour of their enlivened bigotry will then prompt a search for their next scapegoat, and that will be people like me: British born sons and daughters of British Subjects invited to the UK for a better life, who have worked hard and done well. To them we’re all “bloody immigrants” and we’re easy to spot.

Fine.

Let the Leavers (and the complicit) enjoy their day of gloating. The worst people have won. For now. When tomorrow eventually arrives perhaps then they’ll ask themselves what exactly they’ve won. How will we be any better off for leaving  this powerful economic and social partnership? How will their lives change? Will all their problems magically be wiped away?

We’ll all bear the consequences of this folly. And I’ll never forgive them.