Dear Steve,
Can I call you Steve? I mean, I do feel like I know you, having heard from a friend-of-a-friend all about your aptitude for laziness, ineffectuality and taking credit for the work of others.
Maybe I don’t know you personally, but I definitely know your type: quick to play the hero while you’re riding high and then the victim when your petty plans go awry. So Steve it is. Silly, stupid Steve. Poor little victim Steve. Responsibility-avoidant Steve.
I’m so sorry to hear you’ve suffered because of Brexit, because I have too. The fundamental difference between us is that you’ve suffered the consequences of doing exactly what you wanted, while I suffered the consequences of your actions. You’ve finally realised your ideology is in direct opposition to good governance, good sense and the furtherance of your own career, while I long ago realised that trade barriers between my company and my biggest market would lead to a catastrophic loss of sales. And while you suffered the stress of possibly not getting your way, I suffered the pain of letting go of my staff of over a decade.
Congratulations on finally book-ending your seven years of self-inflicted torment. But I do have to wonder, while the harm you caused me and countless others like me, did you have to fundamentally change your business model to have any chance of staying afloat? Did you give up three-quarters of your premises because you knew you’d never be able to grow your business again? Did you lose money when your customers refused to pay their customs fees? Did you watch 65% of your sales disappear overnight while another 36% dwindled as your customers found suppliers elsewhere? Did you have to sell a home? Your car? Did you have repeated bouts of shingles from the stress? Because I did, Steve. I did and it fucking sucked.
So how dare you go on TV with your stress-recovery beard and your reward-to-yourself-for-being-a-big-brave-boy jewellery and talk about your Brexity man-pain. How dare you whine about how you shot yourself in the foot and then want a pat on the back for bandaging it.
You are not the hero of this or any other story, and I’ll be so glad when your embarrassed constituents consign you to the history books.
With zero sympathy,
Elizabeth
Fig and Pen 