From Top To Bottom: Some Thought’s On Britain’s Brexit Nightmare

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THE MAGNITUDE OF THE CRISIS now overtaking Britain is difficult to exaggerate. A society obsessed with class has somehow to deal with the impossible fact that those on the bottom have over-ruled those at the top. Yes, that has happened before in the history of the British Isles: in 1381, 1642, 1832 and 1945. But on all those occasions the Bottom was inspired and supported by a small but crucial faction of progressive Tops. Brexit is different. Brexit has turned the progressive historical tradition on its head. This time the Bottom has thrown in its lot with a rogue faction of reactionary Tops.

No one in New Zealand has summed up the situation more succinctly than ex-pat Brit, Josie Pagani. “Nearly every one of the working-class kids I went to school with voted to leave,” she lamented, “while everyone I went to university with voted to remain.” The bare statistics back up Josie’s observation. On the day of the Referendum, the Guardian website affirmed that the factor most closely related to whether a person had voted to Leave or Remain was their level of education.

Josie’s heartfelt cry recalled one of my most intense Springbok Tour experiences. I was part of a protest crowd that had gathered outside the Springbok’s Dunedin hotel. People were angry that the deal Hart had negotiated with the Police, under whose terms protesters were to be allowed within sight of Carisbrook, had been broken. In light rain, they sat down on the street and awaited developments.

Pretty soon the “Blue” riot squad emerged from the hotel car-park and jogged into position. Across the street a somewhat smaller crowd of Tour supporters had assembled to watch the fun. “Rug-bee!” they chanted, “Rug-bee!”

The Blue Squad commander ordered the protesters to disperse. Nobody moved. He ordered his men to advance, halting them at the very edge of the sit-down demonstration. From somewhere in the crowd, someone started singing the national anthem.

The officer in command looked at the crowd. He saw university professors, lawyers and school teachers; frail old ladies and young middle-class students. The lone singer had been joined by others: God of nations, at thy feet, in the bonds of love we meet, hear our voices, we entreat, God defend our free land. The Police commander sighed. Slowly, rank-by-rank, he withdrew his men.

The pro-tour crowd fell silent. What was happening? The truck-drivers and shop assistants, freezing workers and bar staff didn’t yet comprehend the slowly emerging truth. The new reality which, by the end of the 1980s, would become frighteningly clear. Their credentials for citizenship weren’t good enough. They no longer counted.

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The Springbok Tour supporters’ 1981 vote of appreciation to Rob Muldoon’s National Government was the New Zealand Bottom’s last hurrah. Three years later, Rogernomics was unleashed upon New Zealand. To be recognised in the new New Zealand, citizens had to be appropriately credentialed. Educational qualifications, and the political correctness absorbed while acquiring them, were the new model citizen’s indispensable passports to the neoliberal age of globalisation. Those without either were fit only for exploitation and impoverishment. The “dignity of labour” joined words like “solidarity” and “equality” in the dustbin at the end of history.

The punishment awaiting Britain’s uncredentialed will be no less savage than that meted out to the “Rug-bee!” chanters of New Zealand. Indeed, it is likely to be even more brutal. The vote to leave the EU poses a direct threat to the futures of Neoliberalism’s expensively credentialed children. Like no other use of the ballot box in their lifetimes, it has frightened the Tops. It’s as if the yobs and the chavs have turned the world upside down, which, in a way, they have.

The retribution of the Tops will be swift and unforgiving.

Already there is speculation that the ouster of Corbyn is just the opening gambit in a sequence of political moves designed to overturn the referendum result. Labour’s new leader will mobilise the professional middle-class around the party’s demand for an early election. Having secured it, Labour’s will frame the forthcoming vote as a second referendum on Europe. Those who want to stay out of the EU will be invited to vote for Boris Johnson’s Tories. Those wishing to stay in will have only one viable option. The yobs and the chavs will be bought off with a handful of policy sweeteners. A neo-Blairite Labour Party will secure the Tops’ “Remain” mandate, and Britain will be awakened from her Brexit fever dream by the EU’s forgiving kiss.

And then the nightmare of the British working-class will begin in earnest.

14 COMMENTS

  1. FFS I commented here on this topic two days ago, and NADA, shit!

    It looks like TDB had a major crash, losing it all.

    • Yes. It makes one wonder.

      All I know for sure is that the world is going crazier by the week, and systems and people are breaking down all over the place.

  2. So because they didn’t vote for your “progressive” way, they’re reactionary?

    I don’t see Britain’s departure as the catastrophe the media are trying to make out it is: A minor rearrangement of trade agreements and then it’s pretty much business as usual.

    • “Business as usual”
      Now where have we heard that before?
      Oh yes, that’s the reaction from the National Party when they get caught practising dirty politics.
      Polly wanna cracker?

    • “A minor rearrangement of trade agreements”

      Yeah bro, no worries.
      Should have that knocked out in a few weeks.

  3. The Springbok Tour supporters’ 1981 vote of appreciation to Rob “Muldoon’s National Government was the New Zealand Bottom’s last hurrah. Three years later, Rogernomics was unleashed upon New Zealand. To be recognised in the new New Zealand, citizens had to be appropriately credentialed. Educational qualifications, and the political correctness absorbed while acquiring them, were the new model citizen’s indispensable passports to the neoliberal age of globalisation. Those without either were fit only for exploitation and impoverishment. The “dignity of labour” joined words like “solidarity” and “equality” in the dustbin at the end of history.”

    This is exactly the challenge the left faces, they have had their “values” sold out, by the neoliberals taking up what they saw useful and fit, and hence we had the ACT Party go on about equality, about equal treatment, and a flat tax rate and cunning stuff like that, and hence we have National adopt muliti-culturalism and liberal immigration, thus feeding their vested interest holding employers with willing workers from overseas, which also keeps wages here down.

    They now have no problems with “socially liberal” views and indeed laws like same sex marriage, as long as this does not challenge the core of the system, that is that “the market does best” and that “capitalism rules”. Their ideology needed some tweaking, so they did, to appear “modern”, to get the votes of many, who used to only see “progress” coming from the left liberal set of politicians.

    Indeed, the EU will survive for some time, as the small scale model of globalisation, and the powers that there are, they will within the UK also see to it that nothing much will change, even if the UK leaves the EU, hence the back stabbing and leadership challenges in both major parties, there are powers behind the scene that do the string pulling.

    As for the alleged lies the leave it camp told, the ones that are wanting the UK to stay also told many lies. And the EU keeps telling lies, or pretending things, with claiming that “freedom of movement” is some holy minimum expectation the UK will have to meet, in order to get good, free trading terms once it leaves the UK.

    This BS about “freedom of movement” is unbelievable, it is not what it sounds like, not at all, as there is NO freedom of movement of significance within the EU. If you are an outsider, or even a refugees, you have to either get and pay for a visa to enter, or you will not get in at all, certainly not via those new barbed wire fences. If you are within the EU, you are also lied to, as you can only easily move to another country if you can afford to rent a place there to call home, and if the law there allows you to do so. Both are no easy feats, as few that look for work can simply move and rent a home of sorts, even a room, and the laws in many EU countries are restrictive, as to what you need to have or do to rent, e.g. a job, and there we go, catch 22, without a job no flat or room.

    Then there are rules about welfare, each country has rules, and some will not pay you any welfare if you come from another EU country, unless you have been there at least two years and first worked in a job, and in one country at least, they are working on extending such a rule to 4 or 5 years, before you get any welfare.

    Hence it is impossible to simply move, and set foot, unless you have a job offer, and like here and in most places, to get a job, you have to please an employer, who will pick and choose, and they get away with paying a low wage, there are as many social issues in most EU countries as here in NZ.

    The EU has assisted big business to get bigger and more powerful, and governments there dance to the tune of big business, same as here, that is the global play 2016 as it has been for many years. The governments are also rather dependent on business to provide jobs and pay taxes, so they rather look after big business than the citizens that vote for them. That is the reality in the EU, same as in the US and in the UK, still part of the EU.

    I am not surprised so many in the UK voted to leave, as they started to realise all this BS that goes on, and they are sick of others from other EU countries AND outside, to come and work for next to nothing, while the locals cannot find a decent job and pay.

    Sadly all this benefits the UKIP and the likes, but what the hell do Labour and Conservatives or Liberals offer them, but the same neoliberalism in various shades, or social liberal stuff the urban socially liberal, privileged, better educated believe in. But they fail to believe they are now by many considered the same part of a lecturing elite, that the others with less education have no time for, as they are sick of being patronised and lectured about PC stuff, they simply want a share of the cake, which they get denied. Let the liberal urbans moan and complain about the future, not being able to move freely to seek jobs in elite positions for corporates or the EU administration, this is stuff the poor and downtrodden outside of London will never have and get.

    Hence the huge kick up the arse, also the arse of liberal, urban left and not so left professionals, who better watch their back, as fewer believe in what they preach. Need any more explanation why fewer voter Labour ? There you are.

  4. Brexit: the English and Welsh Enlightenment

    “No one really knows what happens now: the collective imagination leads to dark places.”

    The International New York Times, June 25-26 2016

    Dublin.

    By voting for Brexit the English and Welsh have switched on the light. And, as usual, when the light suddenly conquers the dark the cracks become obvious and the cockroaches scatter. It’s a beautiful sight.

    The speculators and the hoarders are running for cover. And their liberal apologists are blinded. At the same time their global gunmen feel naked. And what once felt like a palace now looks like a filthy dungeon. However it is a dungeon with a well marked exit.

    It is an English and Welsh enlightenment rather than a British one because the British elite in London and their Celtic counterparts in Edinburgh and Belfast voted to remain in the dark.

    The critics of Brexit think that switching on the light is an act of madness. It is far better in their eyes to see nothing and to continuously walk into the wars.

    Martin Wolf, the main man in the Financial Times, calls Brexit “irrational” and immune to “cold calculations”. And a Die Ziet editor, Jochen Bittner, writing in the New York Times thinks that Brexit is something an “Arab” would do rather than a “rational” European. Ireland’s leading liberal, Fintan O’Toole, in the Irish Times likens the voters for Brexit to a “drunk”. And the King of the liberals, Tony Blair, again in the New York Times, opinions that those who voted for exit are controlled by “dangerous impulses”.

    This is class war in words – a stab in the dark at the working class who actually decided the outcome of the referendum.

    Despite this liberal attempt to assassinate the working class character; despite the accusation of irrationalism, and indeed the racism, directed at the English and Welsh workers: the vote for Brexit was an act of pure reason.

    No matter the perspective (political, economic, military or moral) Brexit makes perfect sense for the working class. Has there ever been in the history of England or Wales a better example of rationalism? Probably not.

    According to the mainstream media the determining issue in the referendum was immigration. The mainstream however is Murdoch: a man who has built an empire on lies and insults directed at the working class. And contrary to what the “quality” liberal press think: Murdoch doesn’t speak for the working class. And neither do the right-wingers, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, who were and are presented as being the leaders of Brexit.

    The vote for Brexit was based on solid ground rather than on a fog of emotion. There was nothing alcoholic about it, nothing fearful nor fantastical nor dangerous. In fact the vote was raw rationalism. And the fact that it was based on “uneducated” workers is brilliantly hopeful.

    The empirical reasons for voting for Brexit were as clear as day. The obvious one is that there is no “European Union” to belong to. Germany rules the roost. The “Union” doesn’t exist. But the “Apartheid” does.

    The facts have being piling up for all to see in recent years. Only an educated fool could miss them. The financial crisis of 2008 crystallised everything. The subsequent rape of Greece and the generalised attack on workers throughout the EU (Austerity) made the EU feel more like a Banana Republic than a Super State.

    And the 2014 coup in Ukraine made this banana feeling unbearable. The USA was doing to Europe what it did to Honduras in 2009. To paraphrase the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, the US was “fucking” Europe. And the response of the EU? Silence. Not a word of complaint. So why would anyone want to belong to an organisation that is being “fucked”?

    The fact that damns the EU the most however, in the eyes of “cold calculation”, is the EU’s death wish. The EU’s push for World War III in the East is truly mad. And makes a mockery of the “peaceful” portrayal of the EU.

    By allowing NATO to goose-step the EU into the Middle East and up to the borders of Russia completely discredits the EU. Even more so if you’re an English or Welsh worker. Because it is they who are expected to kill and die on the frontline. The fact is that the English and Welsh working class are the EU’s best canon fodder. And in a time of permanent war: why should they continue to be so?

    The vote for Brexit was not a vote against immigration but was a vote against the wars of the ruling class – those stemming from neoliberalism and imperialism (class and world war). That is why the ruling class are now panicking.

    This is the hard factual ground upon which Brexit stands. But you will not see or feel this in the gutter liberal press and the gutter liberal education that dominates the European mind.

    Therefore to grasp EU reality despite EU propaganda is a triumph of human reason. To understand the class hatred that is dressed up as the “educated” liberal norm and to rebel against it is rationalism at work. And to see the real race hatred that is presented as sophisticated EU foreign policy and to reject it is rational logic at it’s best.

    In short: to identify the disunity beneath the rhetoric of European unity is today straightforward common sense. And this is what the common people have in abundance. The English and the Welsh have just tapped into it. And by doing so they may have just kicked started another enlightenment.

    And what about the darkness? The New York Times, the leading liberal daily, is trapped inside it. Read it’s June 27 International editorial:

    “Compounding the problem [of Brexit] is Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Ruthlessly playing a weak hand, he has worked hard to undermine NATO and challenge the post-cold War order by invading Ukraine, funding right-wing groups in France and elsewhere and recklessly brandishing his military power from the Baltics to Syria. European countries have struggled to remain united on issues ranging from NATO’s budget to how best to respond to Mr. Putin.”

    Have you ever read anything more sinister and stupid? This no doubt is what the US and EU “elite” see in their dark “places”. Thanks for switching on the light England and Wales.
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/brexit-the-english-and-welsh-enlightenment/

  5. I wouldn’t look to Josie Pagani for insight here (or in general). She’s a Blairite, and it is the ‘third-way’ failures from UK Labour that disenfranchised the poor and led them to Brexit.

    You say “The bare statistics back up Josie’s observation”. But what you mean is Pagani has given a simplistic description of the statistics. There’s no insight there, nothing useful, nor anything productive.

    To understand Brexit we need to critique centre-left politics in the UK and throughout the West. And to do that we must critique Blarities like Pagani. They offer no insight.

  6. The People of the UK have stood up against globalization
    and now the trendy liberals want to the overturn democratic process.
    they lost – get over it!

  7. “All these high-minded liberals who for years have pontificated about freedom and openness have overnight been exposed as snobs of the foulest variety who despise “the crowd” and think politics should be left to cliques of the well-informed. “

  8. BREXIT – A New Dimension – New Hope for Europe
    By Peter Koenig
    Global Research, June 26, 2016
    Region: Europe

    BREXIT is the best thing that has happened not only for the Brits – but for all of Europe – and potentially for the world in the last 30-some years – which were beset by Washington Consensus demagoguery, by ever more flagrant globalization towards a New World Order, under which the elite knows no scruples in decimating countries and continents – enslaving entire people – to get what they want, striving for Full Spectrum Dominance. The current inflexible and un-solidary EU is a direct result of this drive.

    The BREXIT vote may break the stranglehold of Washington on Europe. The BREXIT vote may be the first step in a new dynamic of a EUREXIT from Washington’s dominance, from NATO, from the wars and conflicts sustaining the US corporate profit bulldozer, from the threat of a corporate enslavement by the looming TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), from sanctions against Russia – from the sheer prohibition of building up what makes most sense for the future of Europe – a relationship with Russia and the east, including China.

    The BREXIT vote may – just may – be that pebble that puts in motion a landslide for freedom seekers from the fangs of Washington. This ‘MAY’ depends on the perseverance of the people, of recognizing and assimilating what long-term benefits will be associated by cracking the western corporate-finance fist.

    Immediately after the unexpected result, the western presstitute media went into overdrive spreading fear about what this ‘revolting and unwise’ decision may mean not just for Britain, but for the rest of Europe. What will ‘The Markets’ do? What will become of the world financial center, London – and how will it affect the rest of Europe, the British Pound, the euro, the stock market throughout the world? According to the brainwashing mainstream media (MSM), Brexit will for sure affect jobs in and outside the UK – an assertion without substance.

    These are warning signals for the Greek and especially the Spaniards in view of their crucial elections on 26 June. Will they dare voting anti-establishment? And instead be voting for the Unidos-Podemos alliance, in view of ending the deadlock on austerity that brought hunger, unemployment, poverty and despair? – Would they dare becoming the second stumbling block after the UK for the corrupt US-vassal, the European Union?

    The presstitute barrage against Brexit is meant to warn others not to stand up against the plague of Brussels, lest you may be punished with more debt and austerity. Indeed, the first reaction of Mr. Tsipras, Greece’s PM, was to blame European leaders (sic), who were responsible for destructive belt-tightening programs. He pleaded for reforming the EU. Unfortunately, this top-heavy technocracy and servant of Washington’s is not reformable. The EU as it stands today cannot be reformed. Let’s remind ourselves, the EU was not the idea of Europeans, but the creation of the US, when after WWII the reigning elite in Washington wanted a rebuilt Europe (reconstructed with their money – the Marshall Plan), a loose and submissive trading union of European nations, with eventually a common currency modelled after the dollar – fiat money – but never ever a political federation that could become a competitor to the ‘exceptional people’s’ empire. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-collapse-of-the-european-union-return-to-national-sovereignty-and-to-happy-europeans/5524555).

    The British vote expressed discontent and frustration across party lines with the Brussels’ ever increasing control over countries’ internal affairs, thereby abolishing national sovereignty – and, yes, also their incapacity to handle refugees – millions made homeless and miserable through wars and conflicts instigated by the US and supported by the very EU, directly and through NATO. Brexit represents the culmination of the British malaise vis-à-vis the EU ever since the UK became a member in 1973. The ‘exceptional’ island nation, still longing for her empire’s glories of the past, understandably has a hard time being told what to do by a bunch of unelected and unscrupulous bureaucrats in Brussels.

    The BREXIT vote is, however, not a guarantee for exit. According to Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, it may take up to two years to negotiate exit terms. In his own words, David Cameron will ‘steer the ship’ for the next three months, until a new Prime Minister is put in place through elections he announced for October 2016. A lot can happen in these three months and even more in the coming twenty-four months. This period can even be extended through mutual UK-EU agreement. Mr. Cameron should call for immediate elections, step down now, and leave preparation for engaging in the exit procedure to his successor.

    There are other potential hindrances or delays for exit. The result of the vote is not binding and needs to be ratified by the British Parliament. Though unlikely at this point, the Parliament could decide for the good of the British people to stay in the EU. As reported by BBC, there is a movement for a repeat of the Brexit referendum that has already collected 2.3 million signatures. A new vote could be sufficiently manipulated to reverse the result. The EU itself is divided in how they want the exit to take place. While Donald Tusk, President of the European Commission, tends to hasten Cameron to start the process ‘tomorrow’, Madame Merkel says there is no hurry.

    Brexit Britain

    Brexit-Brits, please do not relent, be not persuaded that you chose wrongly to leave the monster EU; be steadfast! Europeans – wake up! This is the chance of a lifetime to break up with the Washington led-dominance, with NATO, the eternal wars on terror, the destruction and balkanization of the Middle East and ‘regime change’ throughout the world. Become compassionate again with your fellow citizens! – Retake your sovereignty, with your own independent currencies, free from the FED- Wall Street dollar-euro dictate.

    The populaces’ silence to the Washington empire’s murderous advances gave it apparent leeway to become ever bolder. In the case of Brexit (or no Brexit), the criminal gang on top of the pyramid, didn’t shy from sacrificing a young British Labor Party MP, Jo Cox, who was campaigning for ‘Remain’. Her murder, by an apparent lunatic, who ‘they say’ yelled ‘Brexit’ before he shot and stabbed her to death, seemed to have turned around public opinion in the last couple of days before the vote – or so the mainstream-bought pollsters would have liked their voters to believe. Indeed, pollsters’ reversal of last minute ‘survey’ results in favor of the ‘Remain’, were expected to influence the electorate. This was the plan. But it failed.

    David Cameron’s BREXIT acceptance and announcement of his resignation in the wake of the vote, was giving the Brexit majority a euphoric sense of ‘Yes we can’. Although coming back on the people’s decision appears unlikely now, it is not impossible. Just look at Greece. A year ago, the Greek voted overwhelmingly against the austerity packages imposed by the infamous troika (EC, ECB and IMF). Had the referendum result been accepted by the ruling left-wing (sic) Syriza party, it would have meant exit from the Eurozone. Yet, Mr. Tsipras, his cabinet and a (bought) majority of Parliament opted for ignoring the wish of the people, continuing instead accepting living under the destructive yoke of Brussels and Washington, thereby plunging Greece’s population into indescribable poverty and misery with no end in sight.

    Here lays just one of the absurdities in comparing Brexit with Grexit. In the case of a Grexit, the ‘markets’ would have hardly blinked. Grexit was not really on the radar screen of big investors. To the contrary, Greece was steadily, but falsely, threatened with expulsion from the Eurozone, if they would not behave according to the ECB (Goldman Sachs) imposed European economic policy. For the European elite seeing the British Empire leaving the rotten-to-the-core European Union, is like betraying their values of treachery and corruption – see also http://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-vs-grexit-the-true-face-of-europe/5531764

    The Brexit vote divided the country, but not along party lines which shows that the party doctrine is rapidly becoming a myth of the past. People voted from their heart. Judging from interviews with real people in the streets, they voted for fear of losing jobs in a steady increase of globalization; for fear of being flooded by refugees, but also out of anger against the Brussels strong-arming their lives, the impunity and secrecy by which the non-transparent EC negotiates uncanny deals, for example, was mentioned the TTIP, under which the rules for our lives would be imposed by a US-led corporate empire, whose jurisdiction would be above that of our nations.

    Brexit will bring a new dimension, a new perspective to all peoples of Europe, of which according to different surveys, a clear majority are against the EU.

    Brexit may, therefore, be the first step in a series of similar referenda, ranging from France, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy – and more. That alone would be the death-knell of the EU and the destructive Euro. But it would also bring new dynamism, new hope, as newly sovereign countries would be free to make their own monetary policies, according to local needs of their economies. They could seek their own trading partners without being afraid of sanctions. They could reinstate their stolen social safety nets, health services, education, pensions; they could work towards full employment, according to local production for local markets, with local money and local banks, fully detached from the globalized FED-Wall Street financial sledgehammer.

    The writing is on the wall is bold and clear – the future for Europe, socially and economically, lays with the East, Russia, Central Asia and China as natural partners. The West, dominated by a US-led corporatocracy is decaying fast. Unfortunately, much of Europe is still part of the war and greed driven western system. It is inherent in the hundreds of years of Europe’s slave-driving colonial past. Yet, a closer association with the East could bring new values to Europe; values of honesty, respect for each other and solidarity.

    Fear-mongering by the western media will be a given. But why would you fear? What could be worse than the artificially induced 2007/8 ‘crisis’ – which is made to linger on, seemingly forever – and which so-far has killed tens of thousands of mostly southern Europeans, reduced life expectancy, and according to the British Lancet, astronomically increased suicide and cancer rates from despair, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, malnutrition – from sheer help- and hopelessness?

    Can you imagine, what it means for the Greek to stand in humiliating lines for EU ‘donated’ food packages, after the same EU has put these people mercilessly and miserably into the gutters?

    Good riddance of such an EU, an unreformable criminal monster. It should disappear as fast as possible, to give people again space to breathe, to live out their dreams. And if one of their dreams is to unite as a group of likeminded sovereign nations into a political and economic federation – not driven from outside, but solely from within – then why not, a new form of a European Union of solidarity and common values may be attempted.

    BREXIT may become a positive agent of change, an induction of awareness, a great sigh of relief and hope – Yes, We Can ‘EUREXIT’. Imagine, a de-globalized world, the backbone of the New World Order broken – peace would break out and, We, the Peoples of the world would move towards harmony and understanding of each other, with dialogues instead of conflicts — I’m dreaming, of course. Sometimes, though, dreams are the engines towards reaching the impossible.

  9. The UK working class has given a bloody nose to an elite that views them with contempt
    I quiite liked this from the Tory Sopectar magazine

    Brexit voters are not thick, not racist: just poor
    By forcing Britain to quit the EU they have given a bloody nose to an elite that views them with contempt

    the Spectator,
    2 July, 2016

    The most striking thing about Britain’s break with the EU is this: it’s the poor wot done it. Council-estate dwellers, Sun readers, people who didn’t get good GCSE results (which is primarily an indicator of class, not stupidity): they rose up, they tramped to the polling station, and they said no to the EU.

    It was like a second peasants’ revolt, though no pitchforks this time. The statistics are extraordinary. The well-to-do voted Remain, the down-at-heel demanded to Leave. The Brexiteer/Remainer divide splits almost perfectly, and beautifully, along class lines. Of local authorities that have a high number of manufacturing jobs, a whopping 86 per cent voted Leave. Of those bits of Britain with low manufacturing, only 42 per cent did so. Of local authorities with average house prices of less than £282,000, 79 per cent voted Leave; where house prices are above that figure, just 28 per cent did so. Of the 240 local authorities that have low education levels — i.e. more than a quarter of adults do not have five A to Cs at GCSE — 83 per cent voted Leave. Then there’s pay, the basic gauge of one’s place in the pecking order: 77 per cent of local authorities in which lots of people earn a low wage (of less than £23,000) voted Leave, compared with only 35 per cent of areas with decent pay packets.

    It’s this stark: if you do physical labour, live in a modest home and have never darkened the door of a university, you’re far more likely to have said ‘screw you’ to the EU than the bloke in the leafier neighbouring borough who has a nicer existence. Of course there are discrepancies. The 16 local authorities in Scotland that have high manufacturing levels voted Remain rather than Leave. But for the most part, class was the deciding factor in the vote. This, for me, is the most breathtaking fact: of the 50 areas of Britain that have the highest number of people in social classes D and E — semi-skilled and unskilled workers and unemployed people — only three voted Remain. Three. That means 47 very poor areas, in unison, said no to the thing the establishment insisted they should say yes to.

    Let’s make no bones about this: Britain’s poor and workless have risen up. And in doing so they didn’t just give the EU and its British backers the bloodiest of bloody noses. They also brought crashing down the Blairite myth of a post-class, Third Way Blighty, where the old ideological divide between rich and poor did not exist, since we were all supposed to be ‘stakeholders’ in society. Post-referendum, we know society is still cut in two, not only by economics but by politics too. This isn’t just about the haves and have-nots: it’s a war of views. The wealthier sections of society like it when politics involves detached cosmopolitan institutions and the poorer people don’t. The less well-off have just asserted their stake in society and the chattering classes — who peddled all the nonsense about a ‘stakeholder society’ in the first place — aren’t happy about it.

    This peasants’ revolt has sent shockwaves through the elite and, like anthropologists investigating some mysterious tribe, they’re now frantically trying to work out why it happened. They’ve come up with two answers — one fuelled by rage, the other by something worse: pity. The ragers say the plebs voted Leave because they’re a bit racist and got hoodwinked by the shiny, xenophobic demagoguery of the likes of Nigel Farage.

    This idea — that the poor are easy prey for demagogues — is the same claptrap the Chartists had to put up with in the 1840s. Their snooty critics frequently told them that, since the poor do not have a ‘ripened wisdom’ they are ‘more exposed than any other class… to be converted to the vicious ends of faction’. Now, the metropolitan set once again accuse the little people of exactly the same thing.

    Surveys, however, dent this claim that the anti-EU throng was driven by disdain for foreigners. In a post-vote ComRes poll, only 34 per cent of Leave voters cited concern about immigration as their main reason for voting out (and concern about immigration isn’t necessarily racism). A majority, 53 per cent, said they rejected the EU because they think Britain should make its own laws. So this swath of the country, defamed as a brainless pogrom-in-waiting, was actually voting for democracy.

    Then came the pitiers. Their diagnosis was a therapeutic one: that the less well-off suffered a spasm of anger. That they felt so ignored they decided to lash out crazily, but understandably. Don’t be sucked in by this seemingly caring, Oprah-esque analysis of the masses, for it is also a way of demeaning their democratic choice by treating it as a primal scream rather than a political statement. It turns a conscious rebellion against the establishment outlook into a soppy plea for more listening exercises.

    But my take, from talking to numerous Leave voters, is not that they feel slighted by the political class but that they oppose it. Their concern isn’t that the elite is ignoring them but rather that it is interfering too much. They are sick of being castigated for their way of life. People have a strong sense of being ruled over by institutions that fundamentally loathe them, or at least consider them to be in dire need of moral and social correction.

    In Burnt Oak, the tiny working-class suburb in north-west London where I grew up, it wasn’t hard to find Leave voters, even though the borough, Barnet, voted Remain by 100,000 to 61,000 votes. All said a similar thing: ‘They look down on us.’ Everyone I spoke to said they’d had a gutful of being branded racist simply because they feel British. To prove that foreigner-bashing isn’t their thing, many of them point out that they work and socialise with Romanians (of whom there are huge numbers in Burnt Oak).

    They feel patronised, slandered and distrusted, not ignored. They feel their working-class culture and attitudes are viewed with contempt. These are the kind of people looked upon by officialdom as unhealthy and un-PC, too rowdy at the football, too keen to procreate, too fond of booze, too sweary: too attached to the idea of England.

    This rebellion wasn’t caused by racism or a paroxysm of infantile anger. It was considered. The workers spied an opportunity to take the elite that despises them down a peg or two — and they seized it. They asserted their power, and in the process, blimey: they changed the world.

  10. The referendum is not binding, nothing will change. Britain will still wage wars around the globe, the bottom feeding proles will stay downtrodden and oppressed whilst the political elite get away with what they want,the rules are for us to obey and follow not them. Its all another fucking political pantomime, charading as democracy. Stop falling for this shit.

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