It’s hard to remain balanced on Brexit as a journalist when your life is at stake

I’m no longer simply observing, analysing and commenting upon the news, as I did before this madness gripped the country. I’m right at the centre of it

When I sit at my screen on Monday morning my first impulse is to fill it with filthy words.

I’m talking about the ones that push films into 15 ratings (or worse) when they’re included in scripts and would have my editors filling up my copy with asterisks if I actually used them.

As a journalist for The Independent I’m expected to demonstrate a certain decorum when I write, and to ensure the views I express are well thought out and backed by facts. The trouble is that Brexit is such a pervasive and personal issue it is sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of perspective. It’s just too raw for me.

I’ve written about the potential impact on people with diabetes – I have had type 1 since I was two as a result of my immune system destroying my insulin producing cells – on several occasions.

People like me rely on imported medication to keep them alive. Without it, our eyes stop working, amputations are a distinct possibility and our livers and kidneys pack up.

I also require some fairly heavy duty painkillers as a result of the cycling accident that nearly killed me just over seven years ago. I have many friends who are in a similar position. People regularly tweet me about it. Parents talk to me about stockpiling meds for their children, and ask whether I’ve got any further with my currently half-formed plans to get on a plane with a view to buying what I need abroad if it comes to that. I haven’t. Getting information on how one might best go about doing that has been extraordinarily difficult.

Because of all this I find that I’m no longer simply observing, analysing and commenting upon the news, as I did before this madness gripped the country. I’m right at the centre of it.

Like the EU nationals who live here and make an immeasurable contribution to the life of this country, those of us with long-term medical conditions have become pawns in the disgusting game being played by Theresa May and her unpleasant friends.

It is a foul situation to find oneself in, something I never thought I’d experience living in a modern developed democracy like Britain. Perhaps we’ve all been spoiled. But that doesn’t change the anger I feel at the people responsible for this state of affairs.

Where we are today is a consequence of the choices made by May. We should never forget that. And if those choices do end up killing people, she and her colleagues must be made to pay a price. It isn’t yet clear how they could be held accountable, beyond being booted out of parliament in infamy. But it’s something we ought to start thinking about.

To do that, to think about anything with a degree of rationality, at lunchtimes I take out my wheelchair, push it up a nearby hill and then around a park while listening to angry hip hop.

The MCs’ fury helps me purge my own, at least to the extent that I can write sensibly without resorting to my copy of Roger’s Profanisarus with a view to finding new and colourful expletives.

The issues created by Brexit for people with medical conditions like mine have been dreadfully under-reported in this country. By the end of today I will have spoken to both American (CNN) and Swedish TV channels about it, but not a single British outlet. None of the BBC’s many channels.

That speaks volumes. Overseas broadcasters seem to care far more about the way May & co are abusing people like me with her cold and cynical threat of a no-deal Brexit than do British ones.

The fact that I work for a media organisation that has encouraged me to write about it as I do here provides me with at least some measure of comfort.

Yours,

James Moore

Chief business commentator