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Author Ian McEwan last week likened the UK to "a depressed teenage self-harmer" in a speech to remain supporters in Westminster on Brexit. Not mincing his words, he said the EU referendum had stirred in the nation "the lowest human impulses, from the small-minded to the mean-spirited to the murderous".
According to the Guardian, during a two-day Convention on Brexit and the Political Crash, McEwan gave an impassioned speech in which he said: “This country, like a depressed teenage self-harmer, takes out a razor to scour a forearm and now contemplates its own throat.
"Truly, Brexit has stirred something not heroic or celebratory or generous in the nation, but instead has coaxed into the light from some dark, damp places the lowest human impulses, from the small-minded to the mean-spirited to the murderous.”
He also said that the result of the referendum, if it were held a mere few years in the future, could have been quite different. Taking into account the change in composition of voters after 1.5m "oldsters" die off, he said: "A gang of angry old men, irritable even in victory, are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth. By 2019 the country could be in a receptive mood: 2.5 million over-18-year-olds, freshly franchised and mostly remainers; 1.5 million oldsters, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves."
Admitting he himself was a "denialist", he went on: “I belong to the smallest, saddest, most pessimist faction: I am a denialist. Almost a year on, I am still shaking my head in disbelief. I know it’s not helpful, but I don’t accept this near mystical, emotionally charged decision. How can it be that in a one-off vote, a third of the electorate have determined the fate of the nation for the next half-century?”
The comments follow a comparison, according to some Spanish media reports, that McEwan in March drew between Brexit and Nazi Germany. El Confidencial reported McEwan said: “Brexit has been a real disaster, and I feel bad because we are a parliamentary democracy and I don’t like these decisions adopted by plebiscite which remind me of the Third Reich.”