SURREY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD: A local boundary dispute has got out of hand. The catastrophic mismanagement of, well, everything has led to another government red line. Across southeast England.
There are goodies and baddies in any dispute. In this case it is unclear which is which, although it is clear that they should be kept apart. The UK wants to jettison Kent in lieu of constructing proper border infrastructure, and the stockbrokers don’t want filthy market traders on their doorstep.
So the only answer is a wall. Not a nice neat suburban picket fence, but an insecure upper middle class twelve foot fuck off job topped with barbed wire and broken glass.
And the angry suburbanites will insist that the plebs fork out to protect their investment.
It should also protect the snobbishly named home counties from the EU. Now that Brexit has ironically ensured that the EU is allowed incursions into England, Surrey has become frontier country. It alone will try to hold back the continental evils of rabies, garlic, and proportional representation.
A trouble shared is a trouble doubled. And expect paramilitary commuters to battle guerrilla hop pickers for control of Sevenoaks in the next few months as supplies dwindle.
One man inevitably on the losing side is Nigel Farage. The Kentish Brexit evangelist finds himself on the wrong side of the divide. Thanks to EU-wide freedom of movement, it is perfectly legal to migrate from the continent to Dover. And the Brexit he sold us has landed him straight back in the EU. If he loves England so much, he should move there.
East Sussex is also considering its position. Ultimately it should decide that its position is on the South coast, hemmed in by West Sussex, the County of Free Surrey, and the EU.
And the Garden of England will be no more. Instead, it will become the Garden of Europe.