New polling shows that just 9 per cent of Leave voters now believe Brexit was a success. For Mary, 73, from the New Forest, a former English language teacher and ardent Remainer, the referendum revealed family divisions. She believed her son, in his forties, had followed in her footsteps and voted to Remain. She was heartbroken when she learnt the truth.
I didn’t discuss the Brexit vote with my children. I just assumed we would all be voting the same. When they were children, I taught English as a foreign language and for years we had wonderful European men and women staying at our house. I thought they were a good influence on their lives when they were growing up. With hindsight, perhaps not.
In the run-up to the vote, I sat and watched the news with my partner, and he agreed with my intention to vote Remain. I never spoke to my son about it.
My son is a very intelligent young man. He is in his forties now but we always spoke about politics when he was younger. He lives in our town and I would see him every day. We would speak about lots of random things but never the vote. I just assumed he was going to vote Remain. Everybody we knew voted to remain. Or so I thought.
On 24 June, 2016, when the results came in, I couldn’t stop crying. I cried for days. My son came to the house and asked me why I was so upset. I explained my heartbreak. I asked him if he was upset too. He said no. He told me that he had voted to leave, and he didn’t regret it.
I was completely in shock. He didn’t understand why I was so upset. I divorced his father many years ago and he is still very close with him. My ex-husband had voted Leave and had also voted Conservative. My son is a Telegraph reader. As is his father (I read The Guardian). My son looks up to his father a lot and I think that had a big influence on him.
During the Brexit campaign, I was reading as much as I could. I know my daughter was as well. She voted for Remain along with her husband. I just assumed he had all the information, but I assume now that he was only getting one side of it.
Still, I was devastated. With people that you love and trust, you think that they’re going to vote a certain way or be a certain way. You believe that you share the same values. But we didn’t. I didn’t see it coming at all.
My son and I never spoke about the vote again. I’m not the arguing type. I just get upset for a while and keep quiet. He never brought it up either. I was desperate to find out why he voted the way he did. “Why would you do this to our closest trading neighbours?” I kept thinking. But he just didn’t want to discuss it at all.
In the seven years since, it is clear that he has changed his mind. He speaks about Brexit with such anger. He talks about what a mess it all is. He acts as if he never voted for it at all. It’s as if he is rewriting history. I never remind him though. I just nod alone. I don’t want to embarrass him. I’m sure he regrets it now.
My partner is another matter. He is a very sweet man but he’s not interested in current affairs. He doesn’t read newspapers and doesn’t pay much attention to politics. It never occurred to me that he might also vote for Brexit.
When he told me what he had done I have never been angrier. I almost left him. It felt like a complete stab in the back. How could he sit there and pretend to agree with me, and then go ahead and vote the way he did? What a terrible, stupid thing to do.
Just like my son, he regrets it now. He wishes he could go back and vote a different way. But it’s too late now. Look what’s happened.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/son-partner-secretly-voted-brexit-2543977 (Archive)
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