London on the day of the Brexit vote — it seemed like everyone was in
I flew into London on the afternoon of June 23rd, the day of the big Brexit vote. I was there to visit my daughter, who is engaged to an Englishman; she’s loving the London life and the ex-pat vibe. We met up at the Airbnb flat she had found for me in Islington, an old London borough just north of the central city, currently in the throes of a hipster renaissance. It’s a bit like Williamsburg, in Brooklyn — the kind of place where thirty-somethings go to have children. The flat was on a neat block of narrow nineteenth century row houses, all painted white, each one sharing a wall with the one beside it, black wrought iron fences surrounding the tiny yards in front.
It was a picture postcard kind of scene, unchanged by the passage of time, except — in the window of the house next to mine, a bright blue sign peeked out from behind the ancient multi-paned glass. “I’m in!” it declared, in block letters, the two words stacked on top of each other, the “I’m” all in white, the “in” decorated with a merry red stripe, an upbeat little sign that was testament to the cheery optimism of the liberal urban community regarding the extraordinary Brexit election. “Leave the EU?” the sign seemed to say, “Of course not! I’m in!”
We decided to take a walk, and the sign followed us as we strolled along, hopping from window to window, jumping from one floor to the next, sometimes coyly draping itself with a lace curtain, sometimes peering through the portholes of old houseboats lining the nearby canal. Occasionally it bumped up against its staid cousin, a long red sign admonishing “Vote Remain,” a simple sentence in white block letters, no merry stripe.
We made our way to the busy High Street, where crowds of end of day Londoners were stopping off at pubs and picking up take-out dinners created by trendy chefs. The blue sign popped up in shop windows and between the blooms on a flower vendor’s cart. Near an understated little building labeled “Polling Place” the sign hopped onto a roll of round stickers my daughter unexpectedly pulled from her backpack.
“Want one?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer she slapped it onto my jacket, snapped a picture and within minutes hundreds of unknown friends on Facebook learned of my new found allegiance to the EU. I’m in!
That night we met up with some American friends and, over a round of Pimms Cups, we all agreed that Brexit wouldn’t happen. “It would be like Trump winning for president,” someone said, and we laughed, and clinked our glasses, the little blue sign glinting from the sticker on my jacket.
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