Sir Paul McCartney gives his views on Brexit

Sir Paul McCartney gives his views on Brexit

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norman lebrecht

September 21, 2019

From a BBC interview:

‘What put me off was that I was meeting a lot of older people, kind of pretty much my generation.

‘And they were going, ‘All right Paul – it’s going to be like it was in the old days, we’re going to go back.’ And it was like, ‘Yeah? Oh, I’m not sure about that.’ And that attitude was very prevalent.

‘I vote for someone I believe in and so often there’s nobody I believe in. I have to get a bit inspired. At the moment I’m not really inspired.’

Lennon would have voted Leave, right?

Comments

  • Mustafa Kandan says:

    It is a very brave decision to leave at any cost; which includes less wealth, influence and even ultimately unity (Scottish referendum results would be very different if they were held today). I hope there will not be any significant decline in great British cultural institutions as a result.

    • Alan says:

      It is not brave. It is quite ridiculously stupid.

    • double-sharp says:

      [[ I hope there will not be any significant decline in great British cultural institutions as a result. ]]

      We’ll pass your hopes on the 155-th Airborn Pigs Squadron, who will come and do a farewell flypast

  • V.Lind says:

    “Imagine there’s no countries
    It isn’t hard to do…”

    Doesn’t strike me as somebody who would go to the wall for sovereignty — that song seems to me more consistent with all friends together, i.e. union.

    As the point of a united Europe was essentially to prevent the kind of intra-Europe wars that had despoiled so much over the centuries, I can see Lennon, the Lennon of “Nothing to kill or die for” being all in favour.

    When he sings of the world living as one, he is not using the last word in the sense HMQ and all the others who self-refer that way do.

    So, not right.

    • Araragi says:

      I generally don’t like speculating on what dead people would have supported because it’s impossible to know. But isn’t this sort of the “Hitler liked pizza” fallacy? Just because Lennon may have agreed with the open borders aspect of the EU doesn’t mean he would have been against leaving in light of the expansive, expensive, corrupt, and undemocratic bureaucracy it’s become.

      • Saxon Broken says:

        “corrupt, and undemocratic bureaucracy”

        you may not agree with the policy choices but: (i) the EU does not have much of a bureaucracy since it employs fewer people than most English local councils; (ii) it is definitely democratic, with nearly all decisions requiring the agreement of all countries to be implemented.

        Moreover, to be a member of the EU you must be a democracy with an independent judiciary.

        You claim is absurd and bizarre.

  • Anon says:

    ‘Lennon would have voted Leave, right?’

    Imagine all the people, fleeing the Middle East…
    You may say that I’m a tory, but I’m not the only one
    I hope someday you’ll join us
    And the EU will be minus one

  • Una says:

    Do we really need anyone else’s divisive views in Brexit?

    • double-sharp says:

      Britain’s legitimate authority for debating these issues has been illegally dissolved by a rodent with a tote-bag. Given that situation, anyone with anything useful to add is more than welcome to chip in.

    • V.Lind says:

      Gimme a unifying view on it, then. I’m sure we would all like to hear one.

  • Gustavo says:

    Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, bra…

  • Steven van staden says:

    “And they were going”… For heaven’s sake, what’s he saying or not saying?

    • V.Lind says:

      Indeed — he seems to have caught their idiom, in which the verb “to say” has been obliterated. Now the interlocutor “goes” and the response begins “it was like…”

      As for a No-Deal Brexit, Britain goes, and it was like economic chaos.

      • double-sharp says:

        In Liverpool, this expression is entirely normal. Not everyone who lives in Britain went to Eton – thank heavens!

        • V.Lind says:

          Oh, please…you don’t have to go to Eton to report what people SAID.

          And this form of utterance is a relatively recent phenomenon.

          You going, like, Scousers are like illiterate? I’m like, no they are not.

      • Steven van Staden says:

        … and I suppose he also begins his sentences with ‘so’. That too drives me mad.

  • Jack Spratt says:

    Honestly the first time that I have read anything political from the great man.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    Wow!! He should be an orator, not a singer, with that kind of articulate insight!!!!!

  • B.K. says:

    So now you’re entertaining the idea that John Lennon – the guy who famously wrote, “Imagine there’s no countries” – would have voted Leave? That’s a special kind of daft.

  • Edmund Pilling says:

    I think Paul is right just want to stay England and keep its culture that’s all

    • V.Lind says:

      I thought his desire was always to be on the Mull of Kintyre. He (and his late first wife) raised his kids there. He may have a house in London, but if he wants to be carried back to the Mull of Kintyre he might need a passport after Brexit.

  • christopher storey says:

    A profound insight from one of the great thinkers of our time…………….?

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