Britain is in danger of losing control

No wonder so many voters are disillusioned and angry. The winning slogan in the Brexit referendum was “take back control”, but it feels as if Britain and the electorate are still losing control. Last week, Theresa May was humiliated yet again in Brussels, issuing embarrassing clarifications that were suspiciously evasive. To most voters, extending the transition period or pondering a backstop sounds like a government begging for more time – either because it is incompetent or because it wants to delay a proper exit indefinitely. Yesterday’s Remainer march in London will have further bemused the millions who voted for change. The march claimed to be for people power, but its implicit goal is to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum – a dangerously anti-democratic act that would confirm that the people, indeed, aren’t in control.

It’s not just the Brexit agenda that is tone deaf to public opinion. The hate preacher Anjem Choudary has been let out of prison halfway through his sentence, at an enormous cost to the public purse. Police recorded crime figures for the year ending in June show robbery is up by 22 per cent and knife crime by 12 per cent – and yet the Government is investigating whether ageism and misogyny should be treated as hate crimes, as if the police didn’t have enough to do. And while it used to be the case that when public servants made mistakes they paid for it, the rules have changed. Sir Nick Clegg U-turned as deputy prime minister, lost his seat and drove the Lib Dems to near extinction, yet Facebook – a company he once accused of paying too little tax – has offered him a lobbying job.

The state of the nation was well-summarised by Tory MP Johnny Mercer. To paraphrase him, everything is broken. Being an Army man, he is presumably used to sensible priorities being set, orders given and goals accomplished. But it feels more and more as if the elite doesn’t understand what voters want and may even have contempt for them. Is it any wonder that populism is rising here and across the continent, where the EU’s leadership is even more divorced from the popular will? It never ends well for any British government that persists in ignoring Middle Britain.