Firstly let’s get something straight right off the bat. I’m not going too bang on about Polish frame builders or Romanian wheel truing experts coming over here and stealing our jobs. Nor am I going to advocate the wholesale repatriation of families who have come to this country and discovered to their delight they don’t have to cycle round rubble and shell craters to take their children to school. If that’s what your after I’m sure there’s plenty of nasty xenophobic stuff out there like the Daily Mail for you to froth at the lips over.

It’s a peasouper Watson as a certain enigmatic detective might have said. Which way should a responsible acolyte of the two-wheeled method of human-powered locomotion vote come the 23rd of June? Which camp will further the global and European aims of cycling? If Boris wins and ascends to the highest offices of the land will Boris bikes replace the car in every hamlet of this green and pleasant land, or will separation from our European biking brethren make access to the cycle paths of the continent more difficult for the ranks of the long socked cycle tourist?

Never mind the economy, immigration, workers rights or once again being able to buy tax-free booze and fags on flights home from Spain, why is nobody talking about the effects of Brexit on our way of life? Lets run through a couple of scenario’s……….

Firstly lets pretend that nice trusty worthy Mr David is right, that if we leave our poor little Island will be plunged into an isolationist nightmare in which none of our former playmates will speak to us or let us buy their things. The pound is worth about 0.0063 of a Euro and any British companies trying to export anything have their products thrown back into the channel by vengeful French dock workers in Calais.

Just imagine – suddenly those cheap to buy but ridiculously well specified Canyon’s and Focuses will be miles out of reach. Todays boutique superbike brands like Pinarello and Colnago will go from being mouth wateringly expensive to totally unobtainable unless you’re a multi-billionaire or a premiership footballer. The impact on the fashion conscious roadie could be catastrophic. It wont be so bad for mountain bikers, ok Laperrie will be off the menu, but they’ve gone off the boil over the last couple of years anyway. Cannondale, Santa Cruz, Trek, Marin should all be ok.

There is of course always an upside. The small British frame builder could suddenly find he needs a bigger garden shed. Brands like Cotic, On-One and Pace might have the chance to flourish as everyone suddenly starts to buy British. The post ‘Apocalypse Brexit’ government might suddenly wake up to these minor British manufacturing success stories and shower grants and aid on them until Orange Cycles are suddenly Yorkshire’s biggest employer with a factory larger than Halifax itself.

Then there’s the sensitive issue of cycle clothing. What’s a well dressed cyclist to do if the supply of Italian lycra dries up? You cant expect serious riders to sit outside cafe’s wearing Karrimor  jersey’s and Ronhill Traksters for gods sake. However – just suppose that caught in the teeth of the mass hysteria and protests which would surely ensue the government did something really radical? Imagine if they nationalised Rapha and made them produce affordable clothing for the masses? Suddenly the British are the best dressed cycling nation in Europe and the French and Italians are left looking to us for fashion tips. Ok, I do admit that last scenario is just a tad unlikely, but one can but dream.

However this is the biggest worry about Brexit. If we leave and forever sunder ourselves from our far more enlightened in the ways of the bike European cousin’s our best hopes for improving the cyclists lot on this sceptred  isle will disappear.  We will remain the country with the most pathetic half-assed excuse for a cycling infrastructure in the world, let alone Europe. Our cycle paths will continue to be badly thought out and worse built litter and pothole infested death traps. Car drivers will continue to persecute us at every roundabout and junction whilst screaming insults about non-payment of road-tax at us if we should dare to protest. That utopian dream of every British city becoming cycle friendly like Amsterdam will never become even a possibility as cycling is once again treated as a suspicious foreign pastime only fit for jonnie foreigners and hippies.

Why such a pessimistic view? after all Mr Boris ‘Brexit’ Johnson is a well-loved cycling aficionado regularly pictured wobbling through the streets of London looking like an accident waiting to happen. Well, I maybe doing the man a disservice but in a post Brexit Tory dominated world I can’t see cycling being a priority when most government ministers are more used to travelling in Bentley’s than on Brompton’s. Indeed, if as many suspect and our elected representatives indulge in an orgy of rolling back any European flavoured legislation post Brexit anything deemed un-English and pro-European maybe fair game. Egged on by the Daily Mail reading pot-bellied white van driving masses who knows what might happen? I shudder to think, but I’m sure it won’t be good.

So, what happens if we stay in? Well nothing really changes then does it? Our cycle path network will still be rubbish, lots of car drivers will still hate us and cyclists will still be viewed with suspicion by great swathes of the great British public. That dream of sitting outside a Manchester cafe nursing a skinny latte in the sunshine while watching a poetic ballet of cyclists streaming past in every direction in a kaleidoscope of happy colours will remain as distant as ever. Cycling will never replace football as our national sport and apart from sporadic coverage of the Tour de France (as long as there’s a vaguely British person winning) cycling will never really trouble our national conscience. It’s just not ever going to be as quintessentially English as Wimbledon or the FA Cup.

In conclusion then, I can offer no real guidance on how to vote on the 23rd June from a cycling standpoint. As with everything in life the only sure thing about Brexit in relation to how it may affect cyclists is that nobody really knows what is going to happen if the UK votes to walk away from the EU. We can guess, we can even possibly make a semi-informed prediction, but nobody can say for sure.

The only thing I know for certain is that the whole process and the protagonists on both sides have done nothing but depress and infuriate me in almost equal measure. The one certainty I have taken from the debate is that I really don’t trust politicians of any flavour in this country.

My advice is vote with your heart and gut. Go with your instincts and live with whatever the result is. That’s what I intend to do, and no I’m still changing my mind daily. Sorry…..

 

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