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 English soldiers
fighting to keep England separate – an island alone.
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
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