Scientists are so smart these days they can tell how someone voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum by asking how they like their steak prepared.
Those who voted to Remain prefer their sirloin cooked “medium-rare.” Brexiteers like theirs charred. Some of these culinary arsonists also insist on slatherings of ketchup. Like President Trump.
Leave voters are also more conscientious and emotionally stable than Remainers. Given the last two years of roiling histrionics, the wailing, the demands for another vote, the nastiness, the sneering, this caveat is impervious to dispute.
But the mewling continues incessantly. Brexiteers—17.4 million of them—got it wrong. They “didn’t know what they were voting for,” whirr the self-satisfied soy polloi. They’re still not over it. Or reconciled to the fact Donald Trump sits gleefully in the White House.
Of course, his vanquished opponent hasn’t quite stumbled upon the acceptance stage of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle.
Hillary Clinton lectured at the University of Oxford this week. Though admirably resisting a narcotic temptation to attack the president, Hillary did manage to slither a little Brexit-bashing past her teeth.
“Today in the UK, where nearly three quarters of 18- to 24-year-olds voted to remain in the European Union, one has to ask: could more have done the same, enough to turn the tide?” she told the Sheldonian Theatre audience. “Because after the vote, young people spoke out expressing fear, disgust and a feeling of being let down by the older generations.”
Perhaps they did. But they weren’t so bothered until the likes racked up on their Remain-framed profile pictures. At least one-third didn’t vote.
Hillary, of course, didn’t explore why a majority voted to leave the EU. Nor why similarly minded movements are sweeping the power centres of Europe. If she did, Clinton would realize she and her ilk’s bankrupt politics fueled the great upheaval they so testily deplore.
Perhaps Brexit stokes such animation because permanent political victories are rare. A referendum is do or die. But Remainers did this to themselves. Rejecting all compromise with the majority, the allegedly progressive and forward-thinking reverted into a feudalistic public-shaming of those who think they should govern themselves.
Take Richard Dawkins, of off-brand atheism and blue-ticked Twitter boorishness. Dawkins marched across London’s Pall Mall last weekend alongside a fancifully claimed 100,000-strong throng of Remainers demanding a “People’s Vote” on the final Brexit deal.
Of course, even more luridly galling than prefixing the populist “People” before a vote to run roughshod over said people, was Dawkins’ characteristically sneering tweet:
Yes of COURSE there are people who voted Leave for reasons other than xenophobic bigotry or fading imperial jingoism. I’ve met at least four.
But it felt good to be marching through London with the hundred thousand yesterday. And to be reminded of the decent half of Britain. pic.twitter.com/2rFX3mErE0
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) June 24, 2018
The decent half of Britain. That sums it up nicely. Those driven utterly barmy by what is actually a fairly rudimentary concept of democracy, have lathered into delirium.
Half a million people have joined the dole queue; each British household is worse off by £4,300 ($5,674). We are mulching under the molars of a biting recession, while the banks and blue-chippers have fled for Paris. The Scottish have deserted Great Britain, breaking a 311-year marriage. There’s no food left; no medicine. And war rages across Europe.
Of course, none of the above has actually happened. But the Ultra-Remain expert class predicted all of this and worse ahead of June 2016’s sulphurous referendum. Yes, those “decent” people to whom Dawkins extends his ebullient grace.
Despite the narrative not congealing with reality, such bloodless musings have become social media currency among the virtuous class.
In private, they’re not so confident. “Why are they like this?” they ask mutedly gleeful and note-riffling therapists. “Why can’t I just get over it?” they cry. The problem lies with them. Rather than confront head-on the troubling revelation that one’s worldview isn’t as secure as one thought, cognitive dissonance offers a warming palliative.
A comfort blanket. Hence why liberals resort to canned tropes like Hillary Clinton’s popular vote “win.”
It’s also why Remainers often question the validity of the Brexit vote, insisting it was merely “advisory,” before calling for a People’s Vote—deeming that legitimate—provided the “correct” answer is delivered.
Because that is what all this is really about. The wrong people had a say. The rubes dared pelt the bovarists with their own farmers-market avocados. And won. Victory eluded people like us.
And they are correct. Most people aren’t like them. A study released just months after Brexit found Britons occupied themselves within eight tribes of differing political views.
Unsurprisingly to those fortunate enough to dwell outside of progressive London, half of all polled found themselves firmly on the right, lapping happily within the “Common Sense,” and the “Our Britain” tribes. Researchers deemed this lot to hold “traditionally conservative views” imbued with Euroskeptic principles and a desire for strong controls on immigration.
That study also radiated the numerical paltriness of those with the pro-EU, open-borders, internationalist worldview espoused in blanket fashion by our cultural and economic elites. This tribe, “New Britain,” secured just six percent of the entire country.
Other Remain-minded tribes, like the “Progressives” (11 percent), “Community” (5 percent), and “Democratic Socialists” (8 percent) made up less than a quarter of all Britons.
This cultural apartheid underlines the twilight of our elites, in Great Britain and the United States. It explains why our newspapers and television screens are teeming with political opinions beggared of main street sensibility.
But, like Democrats still burned by President Trump’s election, Remainers will probably never understand why they lost. Or why they continue to lose. How they like a steak is the least of their worries.
Photo credit: Steve Parsons/PA Images via Getty Images