Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Before referendum campaigning paused following the tragic murder of Jo Cox, there was growing disbelief among leading Remainers – the careerists, the big businessmen, the Bilderbergers, the Davos groupies and that tragic subset of my own trade that sees the journalist’s job as being to propitiate the governing elite – that polls should show a consistent lead for the Leave camp. It is disbelief born of their almost complete detachment from the realities of life outside London’s more exclusive postal districts. In their blissfully ignorant private world, they applaud each other’s existences, praise each other’s insights, and rejoice in their smug membership of an elite in which they feel safe because its ways are beyond democratic will: until now. As their presumptions and assumptions have been assaulted and undermined they have flailed about in panic: witness the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a straight face and to the embarrassment even of his supporters, promising an austerity budget to punish the nation should it vote Leave – even though he must have known a combination of his own MPs, the SNP and Labour would never allow such a measure through parliament...In the real world, as some politicians have belatedly recognized, people want change. They dislike being told that the United Kingdom cannot run itself. They deplore doomsayers who have lost faith in their country. They are angry that their country’s borders are open not just to geniuses with PhDs, nurses, teachers, plumbers, electricians and others who can contribute to it, but to welfare tourists, pickpockets, rapists and murderers. They resent a foreign power overruling their courts and their elected government. They are frustrated at being unable to change key policies when they vote. They detest contributing £8.5 billion a year net for Brussels to spend in countries less efficient, less productive and more corrupt than ours. They have had enough, above all, of being told that unless the UK concedes in perpetuity to foreign rule it will be worthless, and face ruin, danger and unremitting failure.
 

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