It is well known that one of the most reliable markers for distinguishing between Brexiters and Remainers in 2016 was their levels of education. That’s a more diplomatic way of putting it, than by referring to levels of ‘intelligence’. The better (or longer) educated you were – unless it was at Eton – the more likely you were to have voted to stay in the EU. It was mainly the un- and public school-educated who voted the other way. (Not all, of course.) 

Which had a crucial effect on Britain’s politics in the months thereafter. In brief, it meant that when Johnson came to form his new government in 2019, with only Brexiters or turncoats to choose from, most of the more highly-educated and experienced members of the Conservative Party were lost to him, driven out by him in many cases; leaving only youngish, unprincipled and probably stupid Brexit-loyalists to choose from. Which is why we got Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson, Priti Patel and the rest of that ‘fucking useless’ crew (Johnson’s words, applied to Hancock, according to Cummings), plus of course Boris himself, to bugger just about everything up in the last year or so; including Brexit itself and the pandemic.   

But of course that thought merely makes me an ‘élitist’.