I spoke to Leave voters across the country about what they really want from Brexit – this is what they told me We spoke to the real people, not the caricatures the news thinks will entertain us. There is common ground

The Queen, speaking to members of the Women’s Institute on Thursday night called for the country to “come together to seek out the common ground”.

Obviously, there is one topic fuelling most of the division now: Brexit. Unfortunately, despite all their political manoeuvring, politicians haven’t managed to set foot on a single patch of common ground.

Most of the time, they have only sought to pit people against each other. Even the phrase “the will of the British people” is divisive because they’re telling one half of the population that they aren’t part of the British people because they voted Remain. They are also telling the other half that anyone who questions Brexit is opposing the UK as a whole. We are talking about a majority of 51.9 per cent.

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Where is this common ground?

Our Future, Our Choice spent 2018 touring the country speaking to Brexit voters. I mean the real people, not the caricatures the news thinks will entertain us. Decent, patriotic and pragmatic people who voted for what they felt would improve the lives of the people in their area and in their country.

From my conversations with them they wanted three things: more control, a better NHS, and to be better off. Can any of us disagree with that?

We have a constituency-based voting system (FPTP) which means most people feel their votes change nothing because only two parties really have a shot at being in government. We all want more control. Our NHS has been limping from crisis to crisis and we all need it to get better. We all want to be better off and the regional inequality between Grimsby and Greater London is clear for all to see. So, and I know this might shock you, Leave and Remain voters are not from different species.

The ice has now melted

But still, Brexit divides us because we disagree as to how Brexit would affect the things we all hold dear. The reason the debate in 2016 was so terrible is because we were fighting on ice.

Brexit could mean a thousand different possible relationships with the rest of the EU, so as soon as anyone made a point about a specific type of Brexit, the other person could immediately counter: “But we might get a different Brexit”. Consequently, in 2016 we slipped and slid all over the place with both sides getting more and more frustrated, throwing punches that should never have been thrown.

In 2019, the ice has now melted. There are only three ways this ends. We leave without an exit deal. We leave on the exit deal that has been negotiated. Or we stay in the EU. Parliament rejected the Brexit deal by a historic majority a fortnight ago and rejected No Deal on Tuesday night. But they also sent Theresa May back to Brussels so she can be told yet again that there will be no renegotiation. All that does is waste time until she presents Parliament with the same deal again, a deal which would only increase and cement the divisions in the country.

The two things everyone agrees on

There are only two things the whole country agrees on when it comes to Brexit. We all hate the deal, and nobody wants Brexit to keep dominating the political agenda for the next five years or more. Given 48 per cent of the country voted to stay in the EU and 52 per cent voted to “take back control”, everyone hates a deal that means we leave the EU and have less control.

Secondly, for the past three years, the Government has been completely diverted by Brexit. They’ve budgeted for more than 17,000 Brexit civil servants when those salaries could have gone to doctors, teachers or house builders. The country wants to move on to the issues that matter.

‘The only way we can actually move on to focusing on the things that we all hold dear is by voting to stop Brexit as a people’

If we leave the EU with or without the exit deal, we’ll be spending the next four years negotiating an actual trade deal with the EU. That means that neither deal nor no deal will make anyone happy.

The only way we can actually move on to focusing on the things that we all hold dear is by voting to stop Brexit as a people.

Femi Oluwole is a member of’ ‘Our Future, Our Choice’, a campaign by young people for a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal