Blue passports are a sop to backwards-looking blue-kippers and an absolute insult to the rest of us

Theresa May's latest ploy to appease the hard-right ultra-nationalist Blue-kip demographic that she's so fundamentally reliant upon since her catastrophic vanity election is her announcement that post-Brexit passports will be blue.

This blue passport policy is clearly a ploy to shore up Tory support from the older more Brexit-enthusiastic generations. It's obvious from the way this change of passport colour is being continually framed as getting our blue passports back.

Almost nobody under the age of 30 will have any recollection of having a blue passport, and a hefty proportion of under-40s will only remember having had the burgundy passport that was introduced in 1988.

Framing this £500 million expenditure as getting our blue passports back is rhetoric to appeal to the nostalgia of backwards-looking members of the older generations.

Meanwhile it's a great big "screw you" to the younger generations who voted so heavily in favour of remain and can't even remember the times of blue passports and visa applications for travel in eastern and southern Europe.

To these younger generations (and the significant minority of the older generations who voted against giving the hard-right of the Tory party the green light to conduct a shambolic let's just make it up as we go along stagger out of the EU), the blue passport will serve as a constant visual reminder of the rights that have been confiscated from them against their will.

Perhaps elderly Daily Mail/S*n/Express/Telegraph readers will be delighted and overjoyed at the news that their passports will be blue again if they live long enough to renew them, but those of us who have benefited from having the right to travel, live, work and study in 30 other European nations (in which we enjoyed the exact same rights and protections as the locals), the blue passport will always be a reminder of how we had these rights revoked against our will by a one off confederacy of the backwards-looking, the Europhobic, the Tory right, the delusional, the easily led, and the downright racist.

A recent BMG poll threw up an incredible result. It turns out that the employed (in full-time or part-time jobs) are split 62% - 38% in favour of remaining in the EU and retaining our EU-derived rights, while the mainly retired 65+ demographic is split 62% - 38% in favour of tumbling chaotically out of the EU and abandoning these EU derived rights.

Changing the passport colour to blue is clearly and undeniably a sop to the 62% of mainly retired people who don't give a damn about stuff like our EU-derived workers' rights, or our EU-derived right to settle, work, and/or study in countries across Europe.

They simply don't care about retaining these things because they don't intent to take advantage of these rights. 

I mean what use are the right to work anywhere in the EU, or our EU-derived workers' rights to retired people? And what use is the right to free university education that is available to EU citizens across numerous EU states to someone who is enjoying their retirement?

And as far as the Blue-kip demographic are concerned, they're absolutely fine with scrapping rights, liberties and protections they have no use for in their retirement, in return for the simple nostalgia hit of having a blue passport.
 

One positive from this whole ridiculous debacle is that the longer Theresa May and the Tories insist on exclusively targeting their policies and propaganda at the hard-right Blue-kippers, the deeper they're digging their own demographic graves.

Hundreds of thousands of Brexit voters have died already since the Brexit vote 18 months ago, and hundreds of thousands more will have died long before they ever get the chance to apply for their beloved blue passports. 

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of youngsters are entering the electorate every year as they turn 18, and to them the blue passport will serve as a continual reminder of which political party is responsible for revoking rights and liberties from them in order to appeal to blue-kippers who spent decades benefiting from those very same rights and liberties before deciding to smash them all up just so they could have a differently coloured passport.

The more the Tories tailor their policies and their propaganda at the dwindling blue-kipper demographic, the more enraged the younger generations are going to become.

And the blue passport will be a continual reminder to them, and to the rest of us, that the party responsible for this needless destruction of our rights and liberties (not to mention the catastrophic economic fallout) are the callous and inept chinless wonders with blue rosettes on at election time.

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