No-deal Brexit is class war. It’s time to take back control and defeat Johnson and Rees-Mogg once and for all

I do not hate the people who voted Leave in 2016. Many are working-class, many donate to food banks, many are carers in our communities. No – the enemy are those who have turned good people against each other

There was always talk of division in our house.

Some of it was literal. Whether Everton or Liverpool would win the old “First Division”. Some of it was actual. Mum was an Evertonian and dad a Liverpudlian – a “mixed marriage” as my grandad would say.

I remember thinking “I hate you, mum” because her team had beaten mine in the FA Cup in 1967. This was when I used to stand alongside dad on the Kop. Before Everton signed me up and showed me the light.

Obviously, I didn’t really hate my mum. I just felt like she had got it wrong. I had a similar feeling recently. We were sat having a cup of tea and she said: “Pete, I voted Leave.” After I had picked my biscuit up off the floor, I said: “Mum, Leave is Boris Johnson. Leave is Rees-Mogg. Leave is Michael Gove and David Davis.” She nodded and said she had changed her mind.

I didn’t make some lofty economic argument full of big numbers and lost jobs, although I could have, as the north will be beaten up by a no deal. I just reminded her of the people she was aligning herself with. People who do not represent us. People who do not share the same values as us. People who do not speak for us.

In Liverpool you see a difference every time a team gets to a final and flags hang from windows; or when you get in a taxi and are asked, “You a red or a blue?”, or when you get your first kit and kick a battered “casey” (football in leather casing) around on the “georgies” (King George V playing fields) as I did in my day.

But whether you are a red or a blue you know what it means to come from Liverpool. You share the same working-class values and there is a sense that what brings us together is way bigger than our differences. It’s why there are moments when our city’s red and blue are so close it’s almost purple. Like after Hillsborough, when the Kop was covered in red and blue scarves, by red and blue shirts, with red and blue memories, shedding red and blue tears.

Contrast this with what populists like Trump or Farage would do. They point out difference. They would say: “If you are a blue, hate red because they are the enemy. If you are a blue, hate red because they are trying to change Liverpool. If you are a blue, hate red because they are not like you. If you are a blue, hate red because it is their fault. Hate the media too, because they are red. And the government, they are red. And the politicians are red through-and-through. But you can trust us. We are blue. Like you.”

It’s how Remainers became unpatriotic Remoaners who hated Britain even though it is Brexiteers putting the union at risk. It’s how calling for more democracy through a second referendum was twisted to become undemocratic. How can giving people a say based on what we know now, based on a clear, defined understanding of Brexit, be undemocratic?

It’s how the Second World War has been unforgivably recast, not as Europeans (and a wider world) standing alongside each other, dying alongside each other, in the fight against fascism, but as British soldiers fighting to keep Britain separate – an island alone.

Or contrast Liverpool’s unity and sense of togetherness with the divisive words published by former editor of The Spectator and our new prime minister, Boris Johnson: “They see themselves whenever possible as victims and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society.”

It goes on to talk of the “deaths of more than 50” supporters and “the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.”​

It’s why Liverpool must never forgive Boris Johnson.

I am not saying everyone from Liverpool is perfect. Esther McVey... enough said. Then there’s Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, who is for his own reasons happy to see his workers lose their jobs, and not give people a say in their future. Come on, Len. Sort it out.

And what about his mate Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the party I have supported all my life until the recent European elections, when I could not support the two-faced fence-sitting any more. Come on, Jezza! Shake your head, la!

And of course, there’s me. I am not perfect either. I didn’t have a clue of the detail in 2016. I had never heard of a customs union, or just-in-time manufacturing and how Brexit will devastate our car industry. I never thought about the Irish border and what might happen to peace over there. Which makes me think others probably weren’t aware of the detail either.

This is why I do not hate the people who voted Leave in 2016 despite the efforts of populists. Many are working-class, many donate to food banks, many are carers in our communities. Many support Everton. They are not the enemy.

The enemy are the people who take advantage of differences and turn good people against each other for their own self-interest. Those who have turned “taking back control” into taking control by seeking to shut down parliament, by working together behind the scenes to sell off our NHS, by unveiling a prime minister barely anyone voted for.

We have to get back our democracy and demand a “people’s vote”. It’s the only way we can all genuinely say we know what we are doing. It’s the only true way to take back control. Let us be heard.

Peter Reid is an ex-Everton footballer and former manager of Sunderland Football Club