In this revolution, our smug ruling class has shown itself as the enemy
No matter what happens next with Brexit, I’ll always be grateful that I was alive during the past three years – ever since, on February 20 2016, David Cameron announced the date of the EU referendum. This is probably the last truly momentous event in the long and fascinating history of my country that I’ll experience, and it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to witness my countrymen coming nearer to becoming actual revolutionaries than anyone ever dreamed they could be.
The vote for Brexit being a revolutionary act, of course the establishment would fight it tooth and nail – not least in devising the “deal” that Theresa May has spent the past few months flogging. But since the morning of June 24 2016, I’ve been an incorrigible Pollyanna, believing that some essential decency would make the nestfeathering pen-pushers – who have tried so hard to keep us as good little easily managed euro-portions – give way to the voice of the people in the end. Even now, at high noon, despite the increasingly deranged and desperate measures being taken by the Project Fear mob to maintain the status quo, a part of me still believes that an everyday miracle could happen and that, with one bound, we could be free at last.
But even if we Leavers are denied Brexit, we won’t be forgiven for an achievement that can never be taken away from us; the way the ordinary people of this country have shown the Great and the Good (who found in the European Dream their ultimate feelgood, do-nothing playpen politics) to be a bunch of smallminded, mediocre bullies who would rather defy democracy itself than risk any adjustment to their own sense of entitlement.
Yes, something nasty in the woodshed has been revealed about a sizeable section of British society – and that thing is not the alleged racism of my fellow Brexiteers, as Remainers would have you believe. No, it is the long-concealed contempt of the Remainers for most of their fellow citizens. They have felt free to indulge in the forbidden taste-thrill of bigotry for once in their self-censoring lives. The parasexual kick derived from hating the old and the working class has energised a supine and smug ruling class, who have outed themselves as the true enemy within.
We Brexiteers, by contrast, were rebels sick of treading water in the shallow end of history and in 2016 we spoke as surely as we did in 1945 when we voted for a Labour government. If we are thwarted, I fully expect it to poison the political life of this country for ever. If you think you’ve seen extremism and thought you could stifle it, you’ve seen nothing yet.
What was a good-natured nationalism stands every chance of becoming a poisoned chalice, and you can expect this country to follow the fate of other European nations as diverse as Italy and Hungary, perhaps electing leaders who make Nigel Farage look like Clement Attlee.
Coincidentally, June 23 is Midsummer’s Eve, when pagans and then Christians from Cornwall to Croatia lit bonfires to drive out the evil spirits that were thought to roam freely on that night. In the morning, the sun would regenerate and good would triumph. One thing that we can all agree on, no matter which side we deem good, is that no one will triumph if Brexit is stopped. And one thing we should all take very seriously is that these bonfires will keep burning for many years to come.