Cry, my beloved country?

It is dark, and I am afraid.

And I am moved to 'pick up my pen' and 'write'. Hopefully, it is for the best.

A General Election has been called, with a fractured, crippled Opposition, liberal forces recovering from a near death experience and with a Government who, despite showing all the signs of having no idea as to how a modern economy works, seem determined to apply shock therapy in a manner comparable to that applied to the economy of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, albeit hardly on the same scale. My recollection is that the latter didn't work so well.

Governments come and go. If you're old enough, that knowledge offers some reassurance. And, as a liberal, you're relatively prepared for defeat. The catch is that, whilst there has always been something that philosophically separates the two main parties, they have enough in common that you can be reassured that our society will remain evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Not this time.

A governing party that intends to fundamentally change our relationships with our neighbours in pursuit of an ideological chimera will, in doing so, risk what many of us thought was the comfort of a community working to bring neighbours together. Oh yes, it wasn't, and still isn't, perfect, or even close to perfection. But it had potential, it had kept the peace, and it created opportunities and freedoms that we hadn't previously had, and quite appreciated once we'd got them.

And whilst some Conservatives chuntered on about how awful the whole thing was, we didn't take them seriously, especially as what they offered as an alternative really wasn't very attractive. And, the more you dug beneath their rhetoric, the less attractive it became. They were persistent, though.

Their opportunity came, in the shape of an ideologically vacuous administration, mired in cynicism after years of austerity, with a Labour Party veering towards anti-globalisation. And they certainly took it.

God, I hate them for that.

The expectation, as it currently stands, is that whilst the Liberal Democrats will recover somewhat, the Labour Party will suffer a crushing blow and the Conservatives will gain a majority large enough to inure themselves against short-term unpopularity and by-election defeats. I hope that this doesn't come to pass, but some of my lifelong optimism has been knocked out of me over the past few years.

Thus, my sense of fear. A fear that our country will be changed forever, a country where blame and recrimination displace the decent, tolerant, imperfect society where most of us tried to rub along. A fear that we stop looking outwards to see what we can do to build a better world. A fear that we become mean-spirited and suspicious of our neighbours. Because that is the sort of society that some of our opponents appear to aspire to.

But there is only one thing to do with fear - confront it and use it to your advantage. 

And so we must, as individuals and as communities, send out a message that we are better than that, that whatever our political beliefs, we believe in a broadly internationalist approach, in working with our neighbours for a common good. And, regardless of the result of the election, perhaps our efforts will cause an incoming government to hesitate before it takes irretrievable steps towards severing our ties with the European Union...

Brexit: why I worry about what comes next...

I'm an optimist by nature. And whilst that tends to help if you're a Liberal Democrat, there is a risk that one is blinded to the underside of politics. Being reasonable in the face of the irrational may help you to remain calm in the face of provocation, but reasonable involves measured, nuanced messages and an aversion to sound bites.

The EU referendum was, as it turned out, not a place for the reasonable. Saying that there are positives and negatives to our membership of the European Union risked being shot by both sides, and it did become a rather unedifying contest. It would be fair to say that I wasn't as engaged as I might have been, as a result. I did have the excuse of a local by-election, which took more out of me than I had expected, but nonetheless, I wasn't as active as I might have been.

But anyway, those of us who felt that, on balance, our membership of the European Union brought more advantages than disadvantages lost. And yes, a small piece of me despairs that our country has changed in a way that will only emerge over time, some of the worst has emerged already.

We have sent a message to the world that we aren't keen on foreigners, that they are at fault for the state of our country. And some of those who campaigned for Brexit never intended that or, at least, claim that this wasn't their intent (and yes, Tim Montgomerie, I'm looking at you), but I'm afraid that it is the conclusion that many have drawn.

For those who voted for Brexit probably weren't racist on the whole. The catch is those who were now think that they're in the majority. In other words, they've won. But they're probably not finished. They have other fish to fry.

After all, Theresa May has promised to reduce net inward migration to below 100,000 per annum and eschew freedom of movement as part of any package relating to access to the European Single Market. That works both ways, in that our people surely can't expect to have the same rights to move to a European Union

In other words, less people leaving the country, thus even more people prevented from coming here - any net migration figure is dependant on those leaving the country too.

That suits the racists, especially as it will doubtless make it even harder for people from non-White countries to get those all important work permits. UKIP will doubtless start agitating to restrict the number of Muslims coming here, and a country thought to be threatening to minorities is a less inviting choice.

If the economists are right, and growth in the United Kingdom stalls, unemployment will start to rise, and there will be those who will call for foreigners to be sent home. After all, they'll be holding jobs to the exclusion of native British, which would never do. The fact that they will doing jobs that wouldn't otherwise be filled is neither here nor there, they will be the 'other' that must be removed.

And yes, crops will go unharvested, our elderly uncared for, patients untreated in the absence of the migrants who currently do these things. I'm sure that those who voted for them to be excluded will happily take up the slack.

The country will become a bit meaner, a bit more insular, a bit more populist, a bit less tolerant.

I may be wrong. I hope that I am. But it will take the engagement of the reasonable, the tolerant, the rational in order to resist such a trend. And in the face of a new post-fact politics, a stand at the barricades may prove to be too unattractive. For modern politics increasingly leaves no room for those with honest doubts or who are without the sort of emotional armour that is required to deal with the abuse that seems standard in our body politic - in other words, the very people whose voices we need to hear more of.