We got what we fought for, Nigel, so cheer up or button up

What on earth is Nigel Farage so cross about? After 44 years of being subject to Brussels, we’re finally recovering our selfgovernment. Project Fear has been exposed as a nonsense. Britain is booming. You’d think he’d be delighted. Yet his article in these pages yesterday was another sustained rant against his supposed enemies.

His rancour is at odds with the mood of most Leavers. The majority of us have been walking on air since June 24. Despite the gloomy predictions, Britain is booming. Unemployment is tumbling, stocks are soaring, old allies are jostling to sign trade deals with us and the Brexit legislation is sailing through Parliament.

So why is Nigel so tetchy? The answer, incredibly, seems to be that Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s sole MP, was not vigorous enough in demanding that he become Sir Nigel.

Quite how this is meant to be Douglas’s fault, I’m not sure: knighthoods are awarded on the recommendation of the honours committee. But Nigel has been angry about Douglas since – come to think of it, since Douglas committed the offence of winning a parliamentary seat in 2015 when Nigel failed to.

Now you can disagree with Douglas politically, but you can’t question his integrity. He gave up a comfortable majority in his Clacton seat, and had the courage to hold a by-election so that his constituents could approve or remove him. He then devoted all his energy to winning the EU referendum.

Yet Nigel won’t accept the obvious explanation. “If he didn’t like me,” he asks, in an unintentionally revealing sentence, “why on earth did he join the party in the first place?” Well, I’m just guessing, Nigel, but maybe it wasn’t about you. Maybe it was about leaving the EU.

This tension seems to have been at the root of the two men’s differences throughout. For Douglas, all that mattered was recovering our national independence. He saw Nigel’s sallies into breast-feeding mothers, HIVinfected immigrants and the like as distractions. He came to the view that Nigel was more interested in hogging the limelight than in winning the referendum. He therefore worked, successfully, to ensure that Vote Leave, the mainstream campaign, prevailed.

Yesterday, Nigel again attacked him for doing so – even though Douglas’s choice was surely vindicated by the result.

During the campaign, Nigel repeatedly attacked me, as well as Douglas. He even hilariously claimed on television that “Dan Hannan doesn’t want to leave the EU”. I didn’t respond at the time, because public rows are never helpful. Nor have I responded since, because – well, because, after all, we won, and I have been in a commensurately benign mood.

I do wish Nigel would cheer up, though. For one thing, this constant carping is like a Remain caricature of an unappeasable Eurosceptic. If you, the reader, voted Leave, you know that we won because of optimism, not rage. We carried the country because people believed in Britain and her global vocation. Had we truly fought the bitter, paranoid, nostalgic campaign that Remainers imagine, we’d never have come close.

More to the point, fury is rarely an attractive or pleasant emotion. It doesn’t convince others; and it doesn’t make you feel any better. Come on, Nigel. We did it, for heaven’s sake. All those years when you sacrificed so much have paid off. We’re on the way to a better, freer future. Let’s enjoy it.