Brexit is the beginning of the end for the EU elite

“For you, Mr Cameron, the war is over.” And, realistically, for you too, Frau Merkel, Monsieur Hollande and a large cast of elitist, globalist, consensual political manipulators. The European Union was (the past tense is dictated, again, by realism) just the latest in an historical series of projects, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Joseph Stalin, to confect the New Man. Like its predecessors, it has failed.

There is a false narrative among some Eurosceptics that the European Union was initially a beneficial trade partnership that subsequently became perverted into a political federation. Not so. The EU was, from its conception, a project of supranational political union. For presentational (to put it euphemistically) reasons this fact was sedulously concealed from the public. The Europhile political class rightly believed its electorates would reject political integration, so set about absorbing them into the federalist project by the boiling frog method of stealthy osmosis.

Therein lay the fatal flaw in the EU. From the first, it was predicated on systematic deception. Political deceit is as old as human history, but so transformative a change carried out by covert means was unprecedented in a non-totalitarian society. The guiding principle from the first was: do not trust the people, do not confide in them, rather deceive and manipulate them – in their own best interests, of course.

This process was, for a surprisingly long time, spectacularly successful. That success bred arrogance, entitlement and contempt for electorates among the European elites. As resistance mounted and maverick politicians began to challenge the consensus, the establishment reacted with harsh authoritarianism. Anti-immigration sentiments were demonised, partially outlawed by Orwellian “thought crime” hate laws, and the full weight of a massive, multi-government establishment deployed to crush heretics.

But the EU was caught in the pincers of a double crisis: the failure of its synthetic euro currency to cope with the economic divergences of member states such as Germany and Greece, and the entirely self-inflicted immigration crisis. The supposed doyenne of EU statecraft, Angela Merkel, invited one million migrants to enter Germany and then percolate to other parts of the EU, including Britain. Historians will debate the German chancellor’s failure, not so much of judgement as of plain sanity.

Britain was always the most Eurosceptic member of the EU, but that sentiment was kept in check by a domestic political class, cooperating across party lines to frustrate the public will. That offered a niche market to any political party rejecting the Europhile consensus. Enter Nigel Farage and UKIP. Farage is another future subject of historical study – and a controversial one. His role deserves consideration.

Even for many Eurosceptics, Farage has become a hate figure. He has been derided, demonised, mobbed and, on a lesser scale, idolised. “Serious” politicians such as David Cameron and George Osborne, along with European leaders, mocked and dismissed him. On 23 June the British electorate mocked and dismissed those serious politicians. They lost. Farage won. He could not have done so without help from Boris Johnson, Michael Gove et al. But it is a fact of recent history that it was the rise of UKIP that provoked open rebellion on the Tory benches which David Cameron sought to quell by conceding a referendum on EU membership.

But for Nigel Farage there would have been no referendum and Britain would still be in the EU. That is the reality underlying recent dramatic events. It cannot be claimed that any single individual took Britain out of the EU, but the closest candidate is Farage who started a domino effect that, allied with David Cameron’s innate political incompetence – another reality that historians will acknowledge – produced this seismic outcome. Nobody can take that away from Farage.

David Cameron is the other pivotal figure. There are few more striking illustrations of Enoch Powell’s adage that all political careers end in failure. The roots of his downfall lay in his “modernising” project, which turned out to be a synonym for self-harm. Grassroots Conservatives were – deliberately and purposely – alienated (“lose 25 per cent to gain 50 per cent” was the lunatic mantra) and the core vote lost, just when the old patronising maxim of Tory grandees regarding their supporters “They have nowhere else to go” was rendered obsolete by the emergence of UKIP.

Now begins the Tories’ Decade of the Longknives, which could well end in the party’s permanent demise. If Cameron’s successors betray the electorate’s expectations by fudging the solution to the immigration problem – and Boris is actively pro-immigration – and this is combined with Labour’s existential crisis to create the perfect storm, UKIP could become a serious power in the land in 2020.

The revolution we are experiencing is not simply about the EU. It is about the British electorate taking back political power. There are communities in the north of England for whose condition the term devastation is inadequate. When they attempted to make their concerns known they were told by a champagne-quaffing political and financial elite to find a zero-hours contract or part-time employment and to celebrate diversity. Now the insulted and marginalized have discovered their political clout. Politicians must again become the public’s servants, not its masters.

The EU is finished; it has a shelf life of about five years at best. So is the Westminster cartel. The new rules for a political career are: listen to the public and do what they instruct you or face deselection, either by your constituency party or the electorate. The same applies in Europe. The New World Order of George H W Bush (and originally Gorbachev) has been displaced by a different precept: Davos proposes and Durham disposes. Recent events were prefigured several generations ago by G K Chesterton: “Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;/For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.”

They have spoken now.