If ever there was a nation-sized demonstration of the Pauline Kael intellectual bubble on the part of a national elite being caught with their metaphorical trousers down and their pale pasty behinds glowing radioactively for all to see … then the vote this last week for Britain to depart the EU at speed would be it. Here all the movers and shakers, the intellectual, social and political set were so certain in their own rectitude and equally convinced of the stupidity, backwardness and flat-out racism of their fellow citizens … well, of course, I can almost hear the wailing from the Remainders all the way in Texas. Because all the right-thinking people agreed with them; membership in the EU was a Positive Good, and the Way Forward, and the Wave of the Future, and such membership showered nothing but good things upon them ….
Well, it showered good things on the right-thinking people, but everyone else living outside the privilege bubble saw disadvantages up the whazoo, including the fact that basically, there was no appeal. Everything from the sugar content in jam to the proper curvature of bananas and that was just the petty, annoying stuff was all in rules written by some faraway bureaucrat who could never be sacked for cause, or voted out of office.