Kelly’s Eye

IF you’re hoping for a little escapism going back to the “golden age” of crime thrillers as you settle down to watch the latest BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders at Christmas, think again.

According to its screenplay writer Sarah Phelps, the drama set in the 1930s is all about drawing parallels with the rise then of the British Union of Fascists and, you guessed it, Brexit today.

Those of us 17.4 million people who voted Leave have long become used to accusations of xenophobia, and being too thick to understand the issues etc.

But the thinly-veiled implication that we are encouraging fascism, or “savage bunches of filth just waiting to erupt into our consciousness all over again” as Phelps puts it, is a particularly charmless variation on the theme.

Never mind that Britain boasts the most distinguished record of fighting fascism. Or that Oswald Mosley’s thugs never won a single seat in Parliament even at their brief height and were instead lampooned and ridiculed by the vast majority of the population.

Or that this country remains today one of the very few in Europe in which no far-right party comes remotely close to winning any elected position.

The contempt in which Brexit is held, by as many in our cultural establishment as our political and academic ones, is impervious to all such evidence. There’s certainly no mystery about that.