Mark Piggott

When asked to fill in my nationality - and when the option's available - I always specify 'English'. Partly because I don't have an ounce of Scottish or Welsh blood, but mostly because the very name 'United Kingdom' has lost all meaning. We are disunited. Brexit v Remain, North v South, Corbyn v Everyone. And - we are informed by those in the know - Old v Young. The Brexit vote appeared to confirm what moaning millennials have long believed: that the baby boomers had it all and squandered it on themselves, leaving the young to fight to the death for a ratty bedsit in Walthamstow. How dare the wrinklies vote to leave the EU when they'll all be dead soon?

I loathe labels but used to be described - indeed described myself - as a socialist. Perhaps as a result of having been conceived at a conference of sex-pest Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League (SLL) in Morecambe, then christened (or rather, named - my family are atheist) Mark after Marx, I never had much doubt about which side I hung. My father's family were working class, Methodist, union-organising, tenant association-running, pro-Suffragette, anti-bomb. Many of my happiest childhood memories were being taken on marches against nukes, apartheid and vivisection. Even now my father struggles with the concept that not all Conservatives are fundamentally evil. My mother's family were more extreme: my nan was an Irish Republican, and even now my mum's father remains a Stalinist.

I woke up on 24 June with a sense of impending doom. It was no doubt linked to the fact that after voting the day before, I had undergone an operation and so was waking up in a hospital bed. It wasn't helped by the fact that I was also waking up to the news that Britain had voted to leave the EU. It soon became clear that I wasn’t the only Briton who'd been badly bruised by the events of that historic day. On the airwaves and social media, angry Remainers were voicing their shock at what had just happened. More surprisingly, repentant sinners were beginning to beg for forgiveness: they’d voted Leave, not realising their votes counted, and wanted to change their minds.