How To Find The Funny Side Of Brexit

What the hell just happened? Was the Brexit result a high-impact strop? The most emphatic "could do better" performance assessment an international organisation has ever received? A bored nation sticking its fingers in a tempting-looking electrical socket, just to see what happens? A genuine surge towards national self-determination? Or at least, towards more national self-determination, to add to the national self-determination we already had?

I am a comedian, or at least an alleged comedian, living in South London, or, as it is now officially known, "South TheLondonBubble." In the end, the Essex Bubble, Cornwall Bubble and various other Bubbles won the day. There are many Bubbles, inflated with many different gases, of varying degrees of toxicity.

As a person from London, England, the UK, Europe, the Northern Hemisphere and the World, I was in favour of Remain. As a father of two children below voting age, and the potential grandfather of hypothetical future grandchildren, I was in favour of Remain. As the son of an immigrant, who moved here seeking a better life, who himself was the son of an immigrant, I was in favour of Remain. As a comedian, imagining years of fractious politics across the nation as Britain angrily chisels its new niche in the world, I was hoping for Leave. Not enough to actually to vote for Leave, mind. Self-interest is a risky thing to post into a ballot box.

One of the intriguing subplots in this act of electoral primeministercide, was the media heralding the fact that 13 million registered voters did not bother to participate in perhaps the most significant democratic event in this democracy-loving nation's history, as "an excellent turnout." The final result ended up as 37.5 percent for Leave, 34.7 percent for Remain, and 27.8 percent for Can't Be Bothered (CBB). I can understand some of the reasons for voting Leave. Not all of them, but some of them. The CBB vote, however, utterly baffles me.

Not bothering to vote in a general election is understandable to an extent, given that the "first-past-the-post" system renders most ballot papers of slightly less value than a Zimbabwean dollar bill at the height of the country's hyperinflation in the late 2000s. Voting CBB in a referendum such as this is either an act of noble self-censorship, wilful negligence, or a deep-seated fear of pencils.

The younger generations—those able to vote but foiled by our national demographics, as well as those aged under 18, and those as yet unconceived or unimagined—are understandably unimpressed that their elders have bequeathed them a political inheritance they did not want. Such are the risks of democracy. We should look upon this in a positive light. A generation that has lived and flourished under the oppressive yoke of peace, co-operation and prosperity was understandably reluctant to inflict such stupefying strictures on its descendants.

Britain's Exit is, as David Cameron said in one of his many uninspiring attempts to tremble people into supporting the status quo, "a leap in the dark". Who knows how that leap will now end. Will our quirkily dysfunctional politics finally evolve into a more mature, and preferably more feminine, version of democracy? Perhaps we will have a points-based immigration system, so that we can more effectively asset-strip other nations who may one day compete with us in the global race. Perhaps we will embark on a glorious era of open-minded internationalism that results not only in the United Kingdom staying in existence, but in France, Germany, Spain and 25 other European nations applying to join, in an idealistic attempt to create some form of impossible pancontinental utopia. Perhaps the migratory millions of the world will take one look at the Brexit vote result and decide to stop being starving, or living in war zones, or wanting a better life.

Time, the insufferable know-all that it is, will tell. These will be interesting times. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny times. But interesting times.