In five days, the divorce is official. The paperwork is signed, and while there may still be negotiations on a fair division of the marital possessions and how we’ll interact in the future, it’s more or less done. I can’t tell you how sad I am.

I wrote about this back in March, and I suppose I should be grateful we had a ten-month reprieve, even if that was down to the breathtaking incompetence of our government. I’d hoped for more, that we’d have an eleventh-hour realisation that this marriage was worth saving… but no. Boris has signed the paperwork and the UK’s off to an unpredictable future inside the cloud-cuckoo-land that is Brexit.

I’m sorry for a lot of reasons. Most of all, I’m sorry because we’ve allowed difference to divide us. Not just for Brexit, but for, oh, everything. Those who thrive on division and disengagement, who love to foster feelings of resentment and hate… they’re the winners here. They’ve found weaknesses to exploit to shore up their own power, and what a damn pity that is.

It makes all our gains more vulnerable. More shaky, less substantial. Hard-won freedoms and equality, the gains we’ve made in a humanitarian sense in the last few decades — women’s rights, LGBT rights, steps towards racial equality, rights for the disabled and poor and disadvantaged — are under threat by angry white men who are making their last gasp effort to hold onto power. Everything we hold dear is at risk across the world, and by empowering those who believe in separation and inequality, that risk is increasing. We listened to the liars, or we were too damn complacent to fight them. God help us, we elected the liars and they hold all our futures now. If the past few years meant humanity made intolerance, hate and a mean selfishness not only electable but almost respectable and the status quo, what will the future be like when we must reap what was sown?

Division rules, a few benefit politically and financially, everyone else pays for it.

So this is a short piece, mostly threaded through with mourning.

Back in 2016, the year of Trump’s election and the Brexit vote, I wrote this: We have to live with our mistakes, now. Individually all we can do is try and stand firm, to hold up the light, to speak out when we see intolerance and hate. All we can do is be kinder to ourselves and each other, learn to listen, learn to bleed when our brothers and sisters bleed and be more open to difference. Frankly, we have to put our money where our mouths are. Support the causes of women’s health and reproductive rights, of GLBT rights, and everything else under threat by our political ‘masters’. Speak out. No more sitting back. No more complacency. No more “I’m all right, Jack, and sod the hindmost.” We can’t despair, because then the bad guys win. Stand tall. Stand firm. Fight.

That message hasn’t changed.

We can’t let the bad guys win, but they’ve stacked the deck and all we can do now is hold fast to what’s right and what’s moral, and keep putting one foot in front of the other, slogging on until we prevail.

Never give up. Never give in.

Don’t let the bastards win.

About Anna

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments. These days, though, she is writing full time, living with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.

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