Oh my, this thread has gotten very heated over the last couple of days!
I know that I'm likely too young to give my opinion on the current situation in politics, so I apologise if I don't really have a right to comment on this topic, but I feel like I have many things I would like to say regarding Brexit and the present political climate. I apologise in advance, this could be quite long.
I must admit, the current Brexit situation really worries me. There's only 10 days until we're legally due to leave the European Union under Article 50, and there doesn't really seem to be much of a solution in sight now that votes on Boris Johnson's deal have been vetoed twice. Admittedly, I think it is now extremely likely that that deadline will be extended, but I'm really not sure what is going to happen next.
Personally, I'm very, very conflicted with regards to how to feel. Before I say anything, let me just clarify; I have never personally supported leaving the EU. I have always personally been in support of Remain, and if I was allowed to vote, I would vote to remain any day of the week. Despite my personal opinion, though, part of me agrees that we should honour the 2016 referendum result and uphold democracy; we had a vote, Leave won and we should act upon that result in some way, shape or form. It's how the British voting system has always worked and I don't see any reason to change that.
However, another part of me is in support of a new vote on Brexit, whether that is in the form of a general election or a second referendum. Even though I was only 13 when the original vote was carried out, I remember the campaigns from both sides very well. In the run up to the vote, words like "no-deal scenario" were not even an afterthought in most people's minds. The whole Brexit campaign was very positive; there was a real sense of a vision, a hope for a more idyllic Britain. All of the talk at the time made the negotiating process sound incredibly easy, and most people (myself included, despite being a Remain supporter who has been somewhat apprehensive about leaving from the start), thought that leaving the EU would be far easier than it has turned out to be. A lot has changed since the country voted to leave in 2016; as the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics, so 3 years and 4 months is practically an eternity by comparison. We now know considerably more as a nation about what Brexit will entail and how it will affect us, so part of me personally thinks that we should have some form of final say on the matter. Many people have changed their minds since the initial vote, and I think that a new vote with new knowledge would be a more accurate representation of how Britain feels about Brexit; as David Davies once said "A democracy is not a true democracy if it cannot change its mind." If the vote goes through and the country still wants to leave, then that's fine. I will accept the outcome and happily support any motive to pass the best possible version of Brexit for our country.
As I said above, I am definitely very conflicted with regards to how I feel (despite the fact that my paragraph arguing for a second referendum is considerably longer than my paragraph arguing against!), but one thing is for certain; I am confident that we will eventually find a resolution to the present impasse in Parliament. I think it will be a game of patience, but I think things will work out sooner rather than later. However, I think that we need to be very careful what we do now, because the effects of the things we do now could have consequences lasting years, potentially even decades.
