Meanwhile, at the Asylum...

In 2016 we had a vote. The question was simple: did we want to remain in the European Union or did we want to leave? David Cameron’s government caved into decades of pressure to hold such a ballot. He went to Brussels and came away with nothing, even with this threat in the air, because none of the analysts believed the outcome would be as it turned out. To be clear about what was at stake the government spent a lot of money on a leaflet which told us how awful it would be if we left, but that whatever the result the government would implement it.

Waking up on June 24^th it was clear that things had changed forever. Despite a relentless Project Fear, predicting the end times, it seemed we were too stupid to grasp what we had done. But true to that leaflet we would henceforth make preparations to leave the union in accordance with the considered wish of the electorate... or would we? The trouble was, it was the wrong electorate; they had asked the wrong people. And just to underscore the point, Cameron promptly fled the stage.

Right from the time the result was known the motley alliance of remain voters began to behave like very bad losers. Leavers had been misled, they had been lied to and were thick enough to believe those lies. They had thoughtlessly sold their own children’s futures down the river and had voted to diminish the United Kingdom and its influence in the world. Most of all they had not-known-what-they-were-voting-for, the poor, uneducated, ignorant, old fools.

The madness took hold. As Remainers tried to rationalise the result they began to concoct conspiracy theories and imagine themselves as brave resistance fighters, saving the country from some fictional fifth column. Democracy was relabelled ‘populism’ and branded bad. Patriotism became nationalism and nationalists meant Nazis... in actual name! Remain zealots began to campaign and recruit and they told themselves that they were the righteous and thus they could only have lost because of some malign power, doing its evil in the background.

They invented reasons which denied Leavers their agency. They were some sub-class of citizen; they were selfish; they wanted to destroy all that was good. They were angry – oh, that’s good. Yes, that’s it, the poor fools were angry and helpless and were lashing out. The fact that none of this made sense, the fact that most Leavers were far from angry, didn’t matter; the denial ran deep and delusions arose to fill the cognitive void. I’m worried about Remainers because from this, calm and largely happy side of the fence they look very much like a rabid zombie horde.

As time has passed those of us who voted Leave have watched and seen much of what we expected to see; a political class in turmoil, an EU in turn cajoling and chastising, occasionally threatening and a concerted effort to thwart our departure from the bloc. All of this has just served to reinforce our long-held belief that our island nation is better governed from within, by people whose sole interest is that of Britain and its people and not in thrall to the possibilities of furthering their own ambitions on a supposedly higher stage. We have in mind more than just usurping the EU; we want government that knows it is a servant, not a ruler.

Sane in comparison...

But they can’t let it go. Some Leavers, yes, are a bit tin-hat; a bit swivel-eyed. But listening to Anna Soubry in the Commons yesterday and reading the increasingly hysterical pronouncements from A C Grayling, Alastair Campbell et al they look decidedly level-headed. We are not witnessing measured, reasoned debate from the Remain camp. I offer this beauty from unelected Remoaner-in-Chief, the ironically monickered Andrew Adonis: “We don't 'accept' that the 'war is over' because IT IS NOT OVER! The fall of Singapore was not the end of the war: when the Brits emerged from the bushes, they went on to win. Thank God. BBC has been captured by Brexiters & is in breach of its charter in its reporting.” If that isn’t somebody awaiting the men in white coats I don’t know what is.

Madness

Well the male feminists in EU-blue pussy hats were out in what they saw as a show of force in a pointless march on the capital at the weekend. And a lovely weekend it was for it. What were they marching for and did they achieve it? Don’t know and nope are the obvious answers, but one thing is for sure, it’s the same tired old turnout they get for anti-war marches, save the NHS marches and don’t you go blaming islam marches. While some are genuinely moved enough to demonstrate their opposition to the issue of the day, the hard-left core is made up of a resolute bunch of malcontents who could find fault with oxygen.

The natural age for pratting about with placards is late teens through to early twenties – the students are revolting we’d josh - and although there are some crusties out there, singing the slogans and re-living their similarly pointless CND heydays the thing that ties them all together is another preserve of youthful folly; trusting gullibility. Trusting in a narrative being fed to them by that same hard core of activists who are so convinced of their own righteousness they can actually ignore outright the self-evident realities of the world.

Realities such as who pays for all this freedom you enjoy? Who protects you when the exercise of your free speech forces on society pressures it didn’t ask for? And when it all comes down to it, what, really, are you protesting about? How many of the marchers were super-informed, high-intellect voters, in contrast to the ignorant racists you insist were the only people to vote to leave? I ask because from odd snippets of reportage I saw and heard, the arguments to remain in the EU seem to revolve around unrealistic (and unrealised) bounty within and hyped-up fears of what lies beyond.

Without irony the same old platitudes were trotted out about better together and how the EU, not NATO and national military expertise has kept peace. (Oh, except for Bosnia and now the skirmishes breaking out all over the battle-unready union.) For over forty years we have been a thorn in the side of the EU due to our uneasy aversion to being ruled over from afar; touché you may well reply. But on that basis the marchers ought to welcome Brexit; it will let the EU get on with arriving at its end goal all the sooner. Oh, except with one major net contributor down and an ever accelerating immigration-centred population crisis to fund that is unlikely to happen. So, what, they want to keep us shackled to the doomed hulk?

The truth is they don’t know what they want. And ironically, having accused we merry band of Brexiteers of being in thrall to a global conspiracy to lessen the significance of this island that they deem to be so insignificant already as to have no influence anyway it is nevertheless our departure that is causing the remainers on both sides of the Channel to lose their collective minds. As well as Juncker, Tusk, Verhofstadt and co doing their best pre-fight trash talk we had the unedifying spectacle of Alastair Campbell close to a full on breakdown on air on Good Morning Britain yesterday. It was joyous to behold.

You talkin' to me? I'm the only one here...

And Gina Miller’s veil has slipped as she revealed, as we all really knew, that blocking Brexit is her true motive. Add to this the collective wailings of Tim Farron, Anna Soubry, Michael Heseltine and the demented A C Grayling and it’s hard not to class them all as swivel-eyed loons. Not since the Tony Blackburn/Tessa Wyatt debacle have I witnessed such a public display of self-harm. But look out for tomorrow. We are in the throes of a mental health crisis according to, well, everybody on the radio this morning. Expect that crisis to deepen; if anything is going over a cliff it is the sanity of the Remoaners.