Politics has failed humanity just as it forges wonderful new links – a new Brexit vote would help stop the rot

Forget squabbles about borders and backstops. We need to look at the bigger picture

Delia Smith
Friday 22 March 2019 19:04 GMT
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Sovereignty and isolationism are simply out of date
Sovereignty and isolationism are simply out of date (Delia Smith)

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“Your Country Needs You” was never more true than at this moment, except there’s now an add-on. Your world needs you.

Anyone who is willing to turn aside from superficial chaos and engage in some serious thinking cannot fail to perceive there is a much bigger picture here, one that goes way beyond endless squabbles about borders and backstops.

The world has shrunk. Its population now stands, as it were, shoulder to shoulder, connected by a technological communications network that stretches from anywhere to everywhere. If you were to say that collectively humanity is gradually undergoing a process of becoming joined at the hip, you would not be exaggerating. Everything – business, commerce, technology, science, the arts, leisure, anything and everything – now happens on a global scale. There is an undercurrent of growing unanimity in the human species, particularly among the young, in its infancy perhaps but now unstoppable. As one writer put it, “it would be easier to stop the world from turning than to stop humanity from converging”.

What is of paramount importance, and what of course we’ve always known, is that people need people. One person might be a train driver and another a doctor but each will have need of the other at some stage. Everyone is different but as the saying goes, the optimum is achieving unity with diversity.

Coming from a football background, I have learned that is a concept which very much figures in team building: a successful team is when each individual within it is more important than the project. Once the team begin to grasp that each individual player is vital to the whole, they then begin to play for each other and become successful – but the important bit is team building which always needs time.

Now think world, or more specifically team world, and “imagine”, as John Lennon did, that the world will be one. If we are to find a way out of the turmoil and chaos nations are going to have to learn how to work together and, of course, you’ve guessed it, cue the European Union! A group of nations formed after two world wars and two atomic bombs in order to try to prevent such atrocities occurring again. And if we’re thinking future and the world uniting, this has to be at the leading edge – remembering team building takes time.

Conclusion: sovereignty, isolationism and cutting adrift is madness and simply out of date. Politics has failed. Now we the people have to be the ones to decide on our future. So please join us on Saturday and help us to secure this pivotal and vital people’s vote.

Delia Smith has given funds to provide coach travel from Norfolk and Suffolk to enable people, particularly students and young people, to attend today’s Put It To The People march

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