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