Every day is protest day

Gina Miller is calling for yet another march against democracy. As if it is not enough that every single week since the referendum there has been some form of whiny protest that the big boys voted for Brexit and ran away. Writing in the Independent she says “I can't imagine that Brexit – a dogma that is so obviously against the national interest – would ever have been allowed to get as far as it has by the gutsy, morally robust wartime generation. Why can't we pull together again?” We did, love, we did; and the vote didn’t go your way.

She’s not alone, though. Every such commentator – Alastair Campbell, Anna Soubry, Jolyon Maugham, AC Grayling, et al – adopts the position that they are entirely reasonable and that the 17.4 million haters who voted for such national self-harm are childish, gullible, naïve and propagandised by clever and manipulative intellects to vote against their own interests. Oh but wait, if the leave legions are so damned clever how come they didn’t win the argument in the first place and how come they didn’t spot all the Russian interference and the stomping Nazi jackboots ahead of their big humiliation?

They, the anti-Brexit bullies, are the antagonists here. They have insulted, derided, belittled and berated Leave voters with every sneer they can summon at every conceivable opportunity The punditry is pungent with pejorative as night after night the newsrooms, the chat shows, the political platforms are packed with a parade of the great and the good, all of whom imagine that their groupthink is unassailably right and the illiterate rabble of populist malcontents must be put back in their place. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

We used to say ‘the students are revolting’ because such perpetual protest used to be seen as very much the province of the young, the foolish, the self-absorbed and it was an unedifying sight. But that was back in the days when the grown-ups knew that eventually the children would grow up, take on responsibilities of their own and discover that if you want something you have to go out and earn it; demanding somebody else do it for you only cuts it until the aprons strings go twang.

But with the advent of kidults this notion that the world owes you seems never to have left some, especially those who are employed in the many non-productive industries that have replaced the traditional sources of our former wealth. The only people who ‘profit’ from the human rights industry, diversity proliferation and ‘vibrant’ multiculturalism are the parasites who self-define and aggrandise their roles. My bet? The overall national happiness and equality quotients would increase if we could rid ourselves of the freeloaders who promote antipathy in order to pretend to themselves they are fighting against it.

Some things you have to figure out for yourself

Maybe if they had real problems in their lives they would get on with solving them. Maybe if they spent less time worrying about what other people thought of them they could spend more time improving what other people thought of them. Maybe if they took responsibility for their personal welfare, the welfare of their local communities would also improve? And maybe, if they really cared about any of this, if they really cared about the future of the UK, they would have vote for Brexit.