Talking to people in England about Brexit

I thought of going to Iran but in the end I decided that the most interesting place to go, since I like holidaying in political hotspots, was England – with a two day stop in Nice where eighty innocent people had been mowed down by a Tunisian immigrant a few days earlier.

And, of course, England is the most astonishingly beautiful country. It has the most beautiful countryside in Europe, even more beautiful than Romania’s. It has wonderful summer weather. Meaning temperate. I speak the language, better than my compatriots. And it has so many wonderful cathedrals and churches, albeit much damaged by the Reformation. And full of such nice people, much nicer than in the 1980s.

So, my first summer holiday in England after emigrating to Romania eighteen years ago.

But I wanted to know what people thought of Brexit. I arrived a month after the referendum, when people were almost getting used to the result. It almost felt old news except people were still in shock

What did I find?

My very inscientific survey. Most (not all) nice people were Brexit. The nice people who voted Remain tended to do so mostly from fear not enthusiasm, pragmatism not ideals.

Monaco is expensively cheap - Nice is nice - Vermiglia is heaven

I spent two days in Nice on my way to England to check out the reasons for the massacre there. There were several more killings by Muslims in Europe before and after I arrived.

Nice is enchanting, even though seaside resorts usually repel me, but I missed the opportunity to go to the public housing areas or talk to enough people about the massacre that had taken place so recently. Flowers piled up at the grandstand at a memorial for the dead. My waiter at the Hotel Negresco was traumatised by seeing children killed before his eyes as he served guests in the garden beside the Promenade des Anglais

What did I expect to learn?  It seemed the France of films, books and paintings. Some women in headscarves. Not very many. I was told Muslims do not live in a specific part of town. I should have found out more but I was on holiday and it was very hot.

Nice is cheap to get to and its gracious early nineteenth century architecture is exhilarating. A great, quick and very beautiful train ride takes you along wonderful coast to Monaco, Menton and Italy.

Monaco I had been warned is awful and it is dull and ugly, slightly like Durres in Albania, but with less interesting people. A friend who grew up in Monaco told me it was ruined in the 1960s by Arab money. Arabs in Monaco are rich, while those in the South of France are poor.

A nice, elderly British couple I met on the bus, who have lived there since 1968, told me that Monaco had been spoilt, too. Their children hated the place and escaped at the first opportunity.

The husband had captained Aristotle Onassis's yacht. Just so you know, Jackie Kennedy, whom they only met once, was pleasant but the wife didn’t understood why Onassis could have been interested in her after Callas.

By accident I wandered into what is a famous hotel, the Hotel De Paris, old mahogany and very rich people, where food in the bar is reasonably priced and, I am told, is wonderful. I didn't like the ambience on a sunny afternoon. As in Dubai, the action goes on in hotels. And in the Casino.

I had assumed Monaco was a relic of the Holy Roman Empire, like the long gone principality of Orange, but in fact it is the tiny rump of an Italian princely state that got lost. 

An old bound volume of the Cornhill Magazine of 1864, that I later picked up in a charity shop in England, filled me in on her history. Atrociously misgoverned and over-taxed by the House of Grimaldi, the little country rebelled against them and they were left with only the sliver around Monte Carlo, where dependants of the princely house lived. 

The rest of what had been Monaco joined France. The little rump of Monaco, since it was separated from Italy by the time Napoleon III took Savoy, as his payment for enabling Italian unification, remained independent. The Casino became its source of income.

My great anti-hero Sir Basil Zaharoff, who rose from being a fireman and, probably, thief in Constantinople to being the richest arms dealer in the world, later bought the Casino and effectively the little country. He paid the prince a salary. In the Great War, Zaharoff owned the largest arms manufacturing firms in Britain, France, Austria and Germany and was knighted for his efforts. 

Sydney Reilly on whom Ian Fleming modelled James Bond also loitered in Monte and it figures in many Edwardian detective stories, as well as the famous song, The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. I hoped it would have some charm left, but it didn't.

The old bits of the little town are Disneyfied and the whole place seems like Benidorm for money launderers. People watching is probably the best reason to go - if you want to see rich crooks and Romanian starlets. A rich Romanian friend complains that it is teems with politically connected Romanian gypsies. She nevertheless goes back and loves the place.

It has the attraction for East European rich that it is  a symbol, like cigars and cravats, of the Communist caricature of plutocracy. And the attraction of raw, semi-legal money, without class, has a sexual vibe for some women. It is very nouveau riche, cheaply expensive.

Materialistic Romanian girls are decorative. That is the point of them. And most have fled Romania but the species can still be found in Bucharest, often grown older and married to money. And people spotting is not my thing and a night time activity. 

I looked round the hideous nineteenth century cathedral, glanced at the outside of the palace and was relieved to get back to the station, my work done.  

And took the train - again a wonderful journey - to Ventimiglia, on the advice of a friend who said that, because of migrants massing at the border, the  train station there seems like a  Mogadishu slum. 

Not so. I saw only the few African street vendors who add unexpected colour to the scene in every Italian  town these days, like the black king in paintings of the Magi. I was told they stopped massing near the frontier a years ago, were somewhere in the woods and had rarely been seen. A couple of days later though the BBC published stories about the place becoming the new Calais.

Monaco is my sixty second country, unless you count Transnistria, which I don't, or South Africa where my plane picked up passengers. Counting countries, an increasingly common hobby these days, like all collecting, is a form of madness. It's a middle aged male thing. Specifically, as Wilhelm Stekel said, it is a sublimation of the desire to possess many women.

Sybille Bedford said rightly that France and Italy are the two classics of travel. They really are and from Nice both can be enjoyed. But it is Ventimiglia that I want to revisit not the elegance of the French riviera. Ventimiglia is quite wonderful, old, beautiful, unglobalised for now, not elegant, Italian. It has style, which means it is itself. Unlike Monte Carlo.

Monaco is expensively cheap - Nice is nice - Vermiglia is heaven

I spent two days in Nice on my way to England to check out the reasons for the massacre there. There were several more killings by Muslims in Europe before and after I arrived.

Nice is enchanting, even though seaside resorts usually repel me, but I missed the opportunity to go to the public housing areas or talk to enough people about the massacre that had taken place so recently. Flowers piled up at the grandstand at a memorial for the dead. My waiter at the Hotel Negresco was traumatised by seeing children killed before his eyes as he served guests in the garden beside the Promenade des Anglais

What did I expect to learn?  It seemed the France of films, books and paintings. Some women in headscarves. Not very many. I was told Muslims do not live in a specific part of town. I should have found out more but I was on holiday and it was very hot.

Nice is cheap to get to and its gracious early nineteenth century architecture is exhilarating. A great, quick and very beautiful train ride takes you along wonderful coast to Monaco, Menton and Italy.

Monaco I had been warned was awful and it is dull and ugly, slightly like Durres in Albania, but with less interesting people. A friend who grew up in Monaco told me it was

The plan is a Europe with open borders and without nation states

Ulrike Guérot the "Founder and Director of the European Democracy Lab", at the European School of Governance in Berlin, said in an interview in Deutsche Welle that 

the existence of nation states is in itself one of the biggest problems with the European project. 

She went on to say that Angela Merkel was right to let in the migrants, but did it the wrong way. She should have consulted the other EU countries first. The second point is true. 

According to Frau Guerot, the influx of migrants into Europe is not a problem caused by the EU, but this is not quite right. Were it not for Schengen, far fewer migrants would

Brexit was the right decision, but we are treading on other people’s dreams

I had dinner last night with a wonderful, young, idealistic Romanian lawyer who has been traumatised (really) by the decision of a country she loves to abandon the European project she passionately believes in. I didnt realise some young Romanians feel this way but they do and very many good people in Britain and Europe feel the same for the sort of reasons I respect - idealistic, noble ones.

Lots more British people worry about how it will affect the economy, which I very much understand.

But a fair few people in Britain on the left feel like Ed Vulliamy in this article in The Guardian (where else?). They hate Brexit because they don't like Britain and want it to stop being so British. This is also a strong reason why they are in favour of lots of immigrants Coming to the U.K.

"For me, departure from Europe was a given: in the tea leaves at a deep and mainstream cultural level beyond the slaughter at Heysel stadium and serial record of England’s football fans, or politicians’ Eurosceptic ranting. It was in the tarot cards of those bulimic, retarded royal occasions – jubilee, wedding, babies; in the sickly nostalgia of The King’s Speech; in the Olympic Games and Boris’s parachute – like Ukip on bad acid. Above all, over the crisis of wretched refugees and migrants, it howled from the pages of newspapers like the Sun, which has never lost an election and wasn’t going to lose this one... 

On the slipstream of empire, I’ve always thought – to the point of treason – of my British passport as a “burden of shame” as UB40 so eloquently put it, “a British subject, not proud of it”. Now, trying to cling on in “the continent”, it is just a downright embarrassment – not only a badge of shame, but also, worse in a way, of pointless, bellicose imbecility."

He is right about one thing - Brexit now feels like it was inevitable, although unlike him I did not expect it.

Some Romanians think our leaving the EU is 'selfish' and we should stay to make the EU a better institution, particularly for Romania's sake. Many (most?) Romanians seem to think Brexit is about racism directed towards East Europeans. The Romanian executive I had lunch with today thinks that, though he said he thought racism was normal. A few admire Britain's courage in leaving. 

In the late nineteenth century Romanian intellectuals looked to France as a source of ideals on which to model themselves, as Lucian Boia pointed out, whereas most Romanians liked the EU because it spends money spent on the country and because they prefer to be ruled by Westerners rather than their own politicians (they are right to do so). However things are changing and a number of Romanians in their twenties believe in European unity. Which makes good sense viewed from Bucharest.


It is not only British freedom that is a romantic idea. The EU has its poetry too. Unfortunately those beautiful ideals segue into ideas like this, expressed by a German Professor of International Relations who moulds the minds of young people at a British university.

I understand the term foreigner but I reject it as retrograde. I don't perceive myself as a foreigner, or any of the people I know. I reject the idea of countries and boundaries should be transcended as much as possible. The very nature of states or countries has changed dramatically. Borders limit human freedom, they are social constructs that need to change. From an IR point of view, the purpose of international institutions is to alter the behaviour of states so that they cooperate rather than purely pursue national interest because the latter results in conflict.....I see the EU as a vanguard promoting freedom of movement which in the future should encompass the world.

This is Romantic with a vengeance - the kind of ideas that the French Revolution produced in the minds of the sillier readers of Romantic poetry.

Just Eton boys, grown heavy

I've always loved these lines by Praed, although I did not go to Eton. I wonder if David Cameron does and find them consoling now.

In Parliament I fill my seat,
With many other noodles;
And lay my head in Jermyn Street,
And sip my hock at Boodles.
But often, when the cares of life
Have set my temples aching,
When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking ...
I wish that I could run away
From House, and Court, and Levee,
Where bearded men appear today
Just Eton boys, grown heavy;
That I could bask in childhood’s sun,
And dance o’er childhood’s roses,
And find huge wealth in one pound one,
Vast wit in broken noses;
And play Sir Giles at Datchet Lane,
And call the milk-maids Houris;
That I could be a boy again,
A happy boy, at Drury’s.

Praed evidently enjoyed Eton despite the floggings. I tend more to side with Philip Larkin who said, 'When I was a child I thought I hated the human race, but when I grew up I realised it was only children I couldn't stand.' 

Of course I love children now that I am no longer at their mercy.

Does Nice massacre mean Trump has won? Probably

84 people have been killed in Nice by a lorry that late last night ploughed through crowds gathered for the Bastille Day celebrations. The killer is said, unsurprisingly, to have shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before being shot dead by police. It means Trump will probably win.


Will Marine Le Pen win too? I doubt that, because the other parties will combine to prevent it.

Who knew Nice and the South of France is (so said the BBC's Justin Webb on Radio 4) "a hotbed"? He paused and didn't say a hotbed of what, but it was clear from what he went on to say that he meant of Muslim extremism.

What terrible mistakes France and Europe have made.

Kissing hands - Theresa May becomes the Queen's 13th Prime Minister

Mrs. May kissed hands yesterday and undertook to form a ministry. I wonder what the Queen thinks of her.

The Queen couldn't bear Mrs. Thatcher and I very much doubt she liked Mr. Brown - he has no small talk. She beamed when Cameron kissed hands. Churchill was her favourite. 

At the audience after Mr. Reagan invaded Grenada Mrs Thatcher was not invited to sit down.

Of course Mr. Gladstone never was, not even when 80. As a special favour Dizzy was as he grew frailer. I wonder whether King Edward VII started asking his prime ministers to sit. His first Lord Salisbury, was 71 when Edward VII ascended the throne.

What a shame Prime Ministers now sit down. It's important to keep them in their place.

By the way Andrew Schrader tell me that "Privy Council meetings are still conducted with everyone standing, allegedly because Her Majesty likes them to be quick and businesslike and doesn't want all those privy counsellors lounging around thinking they have all the time in the world.."

The royal family mocked Mrs. Thatcher's deep curtseys but Churchill's bows were deep.

When Clare Short went to kiss hands on becoming a cabinet minister, her mobile telephone rang and she rummaged through her large bag, spewing the contents on the floor, before finding the telephone. As she did so it rang off. The Queen, in what Matthew Parris called the greatest moment in her reign, said sweetly, "I do hope it wasn't anyone important."

The middle class were not prepared

Overheard in the Athénée half an hour ago. (I hate calling it the Hilton.) 

'How are things in Britain?' 

'The middle classes are still in shock.' 

It is a pleasure to think most of the right of centre and left-wing middle classes have been defeated but in fact it is a bit illusory. 43% of graduates voted Leave. What saddens me is that the FCO will give us EU-lite, because the EU project is their life's mission. I increasingly feel that leaving the single market altogether might be best thing we could do. I also think it is increasingly obvious that leaving the EU is exactly what the British always wanted and the right thing to do. 'Let freedom ring'. 

And a victory for rootedness over citizens of the world. And a victory for people like Roger Scruton, Charles Moore, Douglas Murray and the people of England. We are many, they are not few but slightly fewer than us. It was a glorious victory.

How gracefully Farage conceded defeat a few minutes after 10 p.m. on referendum night after hearing the opinion poll results. Compare and contrast the behaviour of very many vocal Remain supporters, who want Parliament to ignore the result.

I sincerely hope I do not take pleasure in others' misfortunes but the agony of the Remain supporters has it's funny side. 

The world before 23rd June has gone forever

The world before 23rd June has gone forever.

Peter Oborne likens the referendum result to the Arab Spring. Curiously he means that in a good way.

What we do know is that the referendum will not be held again, despite the march in London today seeking exactly that. Two thirds of the population think it would be wrong, apart from any other consideration.

The FTSE 100 index of the UK's 100 largest public companies closed at a ten month high yesterday, while, strange to say, European stock markets were down. Early days, of course, but we are not yet eating grass and burning sticks for fire.

I recommend sociologist Frank Furedi's very good analysis here of what has been a culture war. It is very true that very many Remain voters simply do not know anyone who voted Leave. But it is a mistake to see the divide as a class one. (Not very many fewer graduates voted Leave as Remain, after all.) The divide is a cultural one. As Frank Furedi says:

Over the past 40 years, the political establishment and cultural elites have successfully dispossessed the others. They assumed a monopoly over what could and could not be said and stigmatised the norms and values associated with working-class culture as masculinist, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, backward, irredeemably outdated, and so on. The one area where the conflict of values remained unresolved was that of national sovereignty. And the rejection of the EU indicates that at least on the question of national sovereignty and democratic representation, the influence of elite cosmopolitan culture is insecure; indeed, it now stands exposed.

I see this in the Remainers I talk to. Some dislike a lot of things about Britain and Brexit summarises the things they don't like. It was this culture war which made me suppress my doubts and decide I wanted us to leave.

It is a cultural revolution. Also a political one and an economic one.

This is the mother of all crises, but is a equally a crisis for the whole EU. After the Austrian court's decision to rerun the Austrian presidential election I start to think this is like 1989. I can see the EU falling apart. Unless they rethink things fundamentally - but they just cannot do that, any more than the USSR could.

Clearly the UK needs a new leader. I didn't blog about the Shakespearean events of Thursday, but they started with Gove stabbing Boris in the front and continued with Boris falling on his sword. Gove is accused of betrayal. 

I am sure he is not Machiavellian, even though he certainly did for Boris and Cameron. People standing next to Gove do seem often to end up dead, but this is a qualification for the premiership.

If Gove destroyed Cameron and Boris what chance does Juncker stand with him.

However, his humility in not deciding to stand a week ago, but instead becoming Boris's adjutant will mean MPs and party members think him treacherous. 

"I did almost everything not be a candidate for the leadership of this party", he said in his speech announcing he was a candidate and I believe him. The Tory party doesn't.

I think both Boris and Gove come out of all this well. I think Gove converted Boris to Leave at a dinner party on February 16,  at which they and their wives sat down with the newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev to discuss politics. By the end of the night Mr Gove had persuaded Boris, who like many people was undecided, to Leave.

I am perhaps naive but think neither have been Machiavellian and I love both, but Boris is not Prime Minister material.  Gove, by sabotaging him, did the country a great service. If his wife persuaded him to stand she did well. 

Some people fear we might end up ruled by Mrs. Gove, if her husband becomes Prime Minister. We could do worse, I suppose. Sam Cam destroyed Libya and made us accept 20,000 migrants. Some say Hillary persuaded Bill not to buy Osama from the Taliban. Time was when wives organised dinner parties and Fridays to Mondays at Chequers. 

Gove is, and it is vital that the next Prime Minister is, a Brexiter and has principles. 

I like him very much for saying “people in this country have had enough of experts”. We want to be ruled by elected politicians not experts. Experts created the EU, the Euro, tower blocks, comprehensive schools, the financial crisis of 2008 onwards.

Gove would make a fine Prime Minister. He believes in Brexit and in public service - and he cares more about class inequality than anyone on the Labour benches. But I think he may have lost the chance, which is tragic. 

Perhaps Andrea Leadsom is the Brexiter with the best chance, but though she had a great career in the City she does not have much political experience and has none of Gove's or Boris's eloquence.

Talking about elites, City types, professional men and CEOs are only a part of it. I imagine most hereditary peers voted Out, though, as few now sit in the House of Lords, there's no way of knowing.  I bet the Queen, who "purred down the phone" when David Cameron told her the Scots had voted to stay in the UK is purring once more.

A perfect storm on Facebook and Twitter continues into its eighth day without abating - her's a sample

David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen):

ESTRAGON: Well, shall we Leave?
VLADIMIR: Yes, let's Leave.

(They do not send the Article 50 Notification.)

UKIP needs to be exposed for what it is at base. A vicious racist and terrorist organisation.

EU leaders are worried about the Brexit "contagion" - when you describe democracy as a contagion, something has gone seriously wrong with your system of government.



Let me be clear on something. If you voted for Brexit, you're not my friend. You don't get to treat this as if it was just a difference of opinion. I don't care about your special snowflake reasons for ruining my homeland and believing a pack of transparently obvious liars like Farage and Johnson. You killed jobs. You killed young people's hope in their future. You heartened the far-right. You've made families and kids afraid. You've started a wave of racial abuse and assault across the country, from the schoolyard to the pub. You're a f-king idiot, and I hate you.


Feeling sickened to the point of nausea by the postings by Remnants about how tewwibly sad their own special snowflake spawn feel in the wake of our glorious victory yesterday. Give them a f-ing clip around the ear, then they'll have something to cry about!



I don't have a TV but I wonder if the BBC are shouting about how the FTSE higher now, a mere week post Brexit, than it has been for 10 months.
Could it be we were right, that the EU, BBC and the rest of the establishment and media have been lying to us all this time about the consequences of Brexit?



It's not racist or bigoted to want to know that when you elect a government, that government will do the governing, and not be answerable to Brussels. It's not wrong to think that if you live in a country, that country should be able to manage its own borders.


The EU has been rejected, in some form, by voters, in five of the last seven times the European public had a chance to have a say. The two times it won were basically by holding the population who had dared to say "no" over a barrel. Not one of the previous four rejections has been taken heed of, and nothing has changed in Brussels. That - and that alone - explains what happened in the UK. It's going to keep happening until they get the message. They show no signs of doing so, and that, in the end, will be the EU's undoing.





A lot of comments here about the culpability of the 'right-wing'. This was a result which turned on Labour voters in the north, who had no direction from their party and a burning resentment of immigration. The days of left/right politics are fast disappearing in our rear view mirror. We run with new rules...


New Statesman thinks you are reptiles: "[P]rejudice, propaganda, naked xenophobia and callous fear-mongering have won out over the common sense we British like to pride ourselves on.... the frightened, parochial lizard-brain of Britain voted out, out, out."






If you genuinely think the majority of people voted 'leave' because they're 1) idiots or 2) were lied to, then you're probably yourself not quite smart enough to be allowed a vote.


The nastiness of the Remain camp, their disgust with the electorate, is even worse than I was expecting. It can be summed up as "you greedy, old, ill-informed,brainwashed, overemotional, xenophobic idiots, look at what you have done". They've dispensed with the PC veneer to their elitism. They've parked the polite euphemisms they normally use to express their concerns about the throng. It's all out in the open now. Hell hath no fury like a Guardianista spurned by the masses. bon




OK. So we lost. Enough of the self-pity. The important thing is to mobilise and bring all pressure to bear on our new fascist overlords for a second Referendum, this time with a quadruple democratic lock: (1) Only people who voted Remain in the first Referendum allowed to vote; (2) A "Logan's Run" clause whereby as soon as a potential voter reaches 30 they fly up into the air and explode; (3) Only people who live in Gibraltar allowed to vote; (4) Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to be replaced by an open letter from David Beckham. The right kind of democracy CAN and WILL prevail.'

Creating a European demos means restricting immigration into Europe

There can never be a democratic EU unless there is a demos and creating a demos out of 28 (27 now) disparate nations is extremely hard, probably impossible. But Europeans do have very much in common. The Greco-Roman tradition and a Christian culture being the most important things.

Shouldn't EU have a very restrictive  policy on immigration INTO the EU if it wants to create a common European identity? Perhaps even the Fortress Europe policy that Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel have said Europe must avoid.

Had Mrs. Merkel and the EU followed this policy Europeans would be very much happier, the UK would not be leaving and Marine Le Pen would not be a strong contender in the next French presidential election.

Like him or not, Nigel Farage is responsible for Brexit

Brexit is the biggest shock in my lifetime.

I said to the Portuguese ambassador last week, talking about I forget what EU policy, 'It's up to you, of course. We're off on Thursday". 

He gave me the smile a corpse gives the undertaker. But I didn't think for one moment that we really would be off. I went to bed at 3 yesterday morning unhappy, thinking Remain had won and was frozen in amazement at 6.45 the next day to open my browser and see the BBC call it for Leave.

I admit my feelings were mixed. Astonishment, pleasure but some fear too.

The electorate have let down the politicians very badly.

When the revolution finally came most (not all) of the left-wing middle class found they were on the side of the rich and the banks. Funny how things turn out.

It's a bit like when the crisis of capitalism finally occurred in 2008, as Stalin had predicted, and the far left was not there to take advantage. The centre-right not the left benefited. The old party divisions that we have had since the 1920s increasingly make less sense.

Nigel Farage is the man who did this. But poor David Cameron and Angela Merkel played equal parts. 

Whatever you think of him and you might loathe him, Nigel Farage, who is the reason this referendum was called, is one of the two politicians in post-1945 British history who changed the country the most. The other, of course, being Edward Heath.

The story of how an amateur, home-made, Ealing comedy party like UKIP, widely despised, directly or indirectly took Britain out of the EU is extraordinary. If it were a novel people would throw it away in disgust as absurdly far-fetched.

The same is true of the stories of Trump, Corbyn, the million migrants crossing Europe, the bizarre American row over transgender lavatories, ISIS, September 11th and so much else. God is not obliged to consider probabilities.

Mr Farage's referendum was hijacked by others and it's good that it was. I am reminded of what Reagan said, that there is no limit to what a man can do if he is content for others to take the credit.

He was not allowed to be part of the official Leave campaign, who were frightened he would make their brand toxic. in the eyes of many he would have done, but he had the wisdom to push immigration into the forefront of the campaign, knowing it was a much better issue for Leave than the economy. 

On the economy, Leave could not stand up to David Cameron's carefully choreographed Project Fear, but immigration let the Leave side instil its own share of fear. Making a major issue of Britain's support for Turkish membership of the EU must have won Leave many votes. It boxed David Cameron into a corner and showed him to have been very economical with the truth. It also enabled Leave to elide concerns about European and non-European immigration, although Brexit will not reduce and may increase non-European immigration.

I saw very few speeches during this campaign and none by Mr Farage, but this one, which i watched today, is remarkably good. He is a better speaker even than Messrs. Gove or Johnson. Why do many people in the UK dislike him so much? He predicted that "this will be a turnout referendum" and he was right. They were queuing round the block to vote. 

I am lost in admiration for the courage of the British people. It took a lot of courage to vote Leave. People thought very hard and in many cases changed and unchanged their minds.

It was absolutely not a result made on a whim, or from prejudice or knee-jerk reactions or to punish the government or taken unthinkingly. It was made very thoughtfully and there was an amazingly high turnout. No-one knows exactly what issues were in the minds of Brexit voters but they were surely many. 

It was not a plebiscite on immigration, though that was important. I think people didn't like being ruled by foreigners.

Had the referendum been held in a couple of years' time Brexit would have lost, because older voters were inclined to Leave and younger ones, educated in the pieties of internationalism and EU idealism, inclined to Remain. 

I am convinced that it will be hugely helpful to the rest of the EU. We might just have saved Europe from a totalitarian future once more.


I want to quote (again) these lines by Philip Larkin.

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,

As epitaph:

He chucked up everything

And just cleared off,

And always the voice will sound

Certain you approve

This audacious, purifying,

Elemental move.

It's still the masses against the classes, but the liberals have swapped sides

Gladstone said that all the world over he backed the masses against the classes (proof, incidentally, that he had a Northern accent). Nowadays liberals take exactly the opposite view. This referendum has done many valuable things. One of the most important is to show that liberals these days really do fear and despise the masses. If you don't believe me just read the Guardian or the stuff some of the In people are posting on Facebook.

Three last thoughts (not mine) on Brexit

I am assuming that, should Remain triumph, there will be complaints from those who voted for it, within about six months along the lines of "that's not what I voted for". Let me enlighten you: if you vote Remain you vote for whatever the EU decides to throw at you and whatever happens in the EU next. No complaints, please.

Helen Szamuely 



I'm feeling so much solidarity today with those old people, poor people, working-class people, Old Labourites, Shire Tories, blue-rinse ladies, nurses and tradeunionists who, despite being defamed as bigots, despite having the entire establishment lined up against them, despite being smeared as thick and overemotional and dangerous by the political class, the media and celebrities, and despite being told by hysterical officialdom that they are bringing about the end of Western civilisation, will nonetheless go out today and say a polite, cool and radical "No thanks" to the EU. That takes guts. To stand by what you believe in against the capitalist class, the political class, the media class and the Brussels bureaucracy -- that takes bottle. To me, these people represent the best of democracy.


Brendan O'Neill

To the best of my knowledge not one of the commissioners, and it should have been Junker, have made any comment not even along the lines of 'may the best man win'. They remain faceless, arrogant and apparently disinterested, evidently disconnected from the turmoil of the Demos,for why should they not? they have their plan, their predestined path, they are untouchable. Unless you vote OUT to make them understand that it is our world and we have a say in who runs it.

Nick Ward 

My two killer arguments for voting to leave the EU

My sister just called me - to discuss the referendum. Like many people she hasn't made up her mind though I know her heart is Brexit.

My (I hope) killer argument was: it won't be decided by your one vote. If we leave and it goes wrong you can share the blame with 20 million people.

But if In wins - as they almost certainly will - you will spend decades when you watch the news regretting voting In.

Another argument, not the best reason to vote Leave, perhaps, but a persuasive one is that the Remain people are so very annoying. The Out people, by contrast, are mostly terribly nice.

Remaining in the EU is signing a blank cheque

The EU has, on balance, done much good in Eastern Europe, though harm too. Elsewhere since 1999 it has been on the whole a big disaster. The Euro has destroyed the economies of Southern Europe, Schengen has failed to protect countries from invasion, the EU has shown that it cannot be a player in foreign affairs and it is clear now, as should always have been clear, that it can never be democratic because it has no demos.

Immigration is not a key issue - Brexit might not affect immigration at all - except that people who want a million or three million migrants to enter Europe without papers in a single year are very dangerous people - mad, bad and dangerous to know. The one strong argument for our staying is that Scotland might secede in ten years time. If we do vote for Brexit expect the EU to come up with a counter-offer. And more referendums till we get the answer right. 

I don't think we shall ever escape. And young people are educated in the pieties of internationalism, so this is our last chance.

Let's enjoy the next week while Berlin and Brussels fear we might leave the EU

I firmly expect Great Britain to vote to stay in the EU next Thursday, but let's all enjoy every single blissful moment of these halcyon days when our German and other European rulers think we might leave. This is the last moment when Great Britain roused herself to become a free country. After we vote to stay in, it will probably resemble what Claude Cockburn's tutor told him life was like after Oxford: just a long slow slope to the grave.

Bertrand Russell said ‘Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd’. I see a lot of this coming from the In camp who seem almost to hate or despise the Outs. Especially they seem to hate UKIP and despise the working classes. The viciousness is born of fear. I find it disgusting but it is what politics and democracy are about. 

Whatever your views on Brexit what a great argument this referendum is for lots more referendums. Though of course there is not really very much room in the EU for referendums.

The opinion polls today show Leave up to 7% ahead of Remain and the bookmakers, who are  always the best place to look, to find out what's going on  today give Leave an astonishingly high 30% chance. I give it a lot less (5-10%?) but what does impress me is that the polls are swinging towards Leave despite the attempts of the government the IMF and most of the establishment to terrify electors with stories of economic Armageddon.

And could we really leave?

I suppose yes!

And then?

Who knows?

The Germans could want to punish us very hard pour encourager les autres but this would do huge damage to the EU economy and especially Germany’s. The German Finance Minister says we will be booted out of the single market (the same Finance Minister who thinks if Germans do not take immigrants they will start committing incest – he really did say that recently). But I was more interested in what Juergen Hardt, senior CDU foreign policy spokesman, told Der Spiegel. If the UK votes to leave, he said the EU should gauge possible action to prevent a British exit from becoming a reality. “Brussels shouldn't close the door right away.”

I had dinner last night with a very Europhile British friend, 60, public school educated and well off, who is anguished that 'Literally ALL my British friends without exception want us to leave'. More than half his British friends live on the Continent, by the way.  

He made a number of weak arguments for staying in the EU. He said that all economists think we should stay (which is, of course, certainly not true) and that no former party leader thinks we should leave. I mentioned Michael Howard, Ian Duncan Smith, David Owen, Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot. 

I could have mentioned Jeremy Corbyn who probably does not really want us to stay, but Corbyn is a name even less likely to persuade anyone than Foot's. Instead, I surprised him by mentioning Nigel Lawson. He had no idea that very experienced intelligent people like Howard and Lawson wanted us to leave.

Then he said that he thought nationals of other EU countries who live in the UK should have had a vote in the referendum. This was like the thirteenth stroke of the clock, that not only was not convincing in itself but cast doubt on the other twelve. I don't think he gets the idea of nationhood.

A revolutionary moment in Britain

The support in the opinion polls for Britain leaving the E.U. (exactly 50-50 these days) is the nearest the British have come to a revolution since 1848 - and that includes the General Strike of 1926 and the strange revolutionary moment when Diana died. The people (half of them) are battling against the political parties, big business, the banks, the Americans, the Europeans and even the Archbishop of Canterbury. How interesting that the left these days (including Jeremy Corbyn) is always opposed to revolutions.

Donald Trump, of course, is a revolutionary too.

More EU referendum quotations

England has never been more little than it is now, a subject province of someone else’s empire.

Peter Hitchens


The price of true freedom is uncertainty.

Kate Hoey

We’re getting killed, it’s madness. We’re being asked to argue with our voters, telling them that they’re wrong about immigration and the EU. And then at the end we’re supposed to turn around and say vote Labour. It’s like putting up a sign saying vote UKIP.

Anonymous senior Labour MP quoted in Politico

Unfortunately British Muslims have no choice. They need to ask whether it is safe for them to remain part of a European Union which is being steadily captured by anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred.

The latest example of this dangerous trend concerns the dreadful remarks made two weeks ago by the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. "Islam" declared Fico, "has no place in Slovakia".

Fico made clear that he was not calling for a secular Slovakia. He wants to keep Muslims out as part of what looks and sounds very much like a crusade for a Christian Slovakia - and by extension a Christian Europe.

Peter Oborne in Middle East Eye