Yesterday’s vote to leave the EU is a leap into the unknown. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the winning side hasn’t a clue what happens next.  No exit strategy, no negotiating brief.  Only a vague perception that “we have taken our country back”, and a lot of noise and fury about immigration;  a vote distinguished by its virulent anti-intellectualism and an apparent belief that actually to know about a subject somehow disqualifies one from having a legitimate opinion on it.

What actually happened?  What appears to have happened is that those areas hit hardest by nearly a decade of austerity voted by the biggest margins to leave the EU, on a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment; and in doing so they have placed the direction of the Brexit negotiations in the hands of the most enthusiastic proponents of that austerity.  The “sovereignty” issue has been expressed in terms of stopping people…