Brexit party is now poised to destroy Tories and Labour

There is something surreal about watching Remainer politicians, seated in a television studio, seeing a pro-Brexit landslide developing before their eyes and insisting that this issue must be “taken back to the People”, even as the People’s latest reiteration of the 2016 referendum verdict is being recorded. It seems that, as in 2016, it was the wrong People who voted this time too. The only solution would seem to be Bertolt Brecht’s ironic prescription to “dissolve the people and elect another”.

The fashion for bandying around psychobabble jargon is irritating but, in the case of Britain’s political class, it is an accurate diagnosis to say it is in denial. Any normal human beings, faced by a massive insurgency in the shape of a six weeks-old political party winning a national election by a clear margin, would be chastened and alarmed. But the Remain somnambulists on television simply construct an alternative narrative as a comfort blanket to block out reality.

In this parallel universe the European elections were won by the Liberal Democrats. It is true they only secured 20 per cent of the vote compared with 32 per cent for the Brexit Party, but their vote was legitimate because they are Remainers, whereas the Brexit Party’s vote, since Leave voters have all died since 2016, must somehow have been manufactured.

Then the creative accountants took over. Whizzing the beads on the Remainer abacus they calculated that the votes for Remain parties outnumbered those for Leave parties, so this election showed a change of heart among the public, with Remain now the preferred option. Adding the Liberal Democrats’ 20 per cent vote share to the Greens’ 12 per cent equalled the Brexit Party’s 32 per cent; throw in Change UK’s derisory 3 per cent and lo! You have a Remain majority.

Er, up to a point, Lord Cooper. Change UK’s electoral widow’s mite is cancelled out by Ukip’s matching 3 per cent. And what about Labour? Since the Remainer narrative insists that the Lib Dems’ inflated vote is attributable to Labour’s Remain supporters deserting, then presumably, since Remain spin doctors cannot have it both ways, Labour’s surviving 14 per cent should largely be chalked up to the Leave camp.

It is also the case, as Ann Widdecombe pointed out, that the Liberal Democrats have a longstanding corps of supporters who cannot all automatically be credited with backing the party purely because of Brexit: the only certain Remainer element that can be identified is the 13 per cent of the Lib Dem vote that defected from Labour and Tory.

Yet the most audacious imposture is the appropriation to the Remain camp of the entire 12 per cent of Green voters. The Greens are the one party which voters very obviously have non-Brexit related reasons for supporting. We have just been subjected to the most intensive barrage of climate alarmism ever, including a visitation by the leader of the Children’s Crusade (“I agree with Greta”).

The Green surge was a Europe-wide phenomenon in this election. In Germany the Greens came second and won 21 seats. Was that motivated by a desire to “stop Brexit”? Were voters in Finland and Lithuania, where the Greens also performed well, concerned to prevent a WTO Brexit? The Greens won 70 seats in the European Parliament – almost as many as the entire UK representation. Was that a pro-Remain stance? So, why should British environmentalists automatically be conscripted into the Remain camp?

Since Remainers insist, however implausibly, that the Conservatives are a Leave party, presumably the Tories’ modest 9 per cent should also be added to the pro-Brexit score. In fact, by any objective reckoning, the pro-Remain vote in this latest poll was clearly less than the demonstrably Leave vote and inferior to the Remain turnout in the 2016 referendum.

The reality is that Nigel Farage has won a stunning victory, at a crucial political moment, which has significantly altered the dynamics of Britain’s departure from the EU. In the same way that he used Ukip as a vehicle to compel David Cameron to hold an EU referendum, he has now used the Brexit Party to force the Conservatives to recognize they must implement a clean Brexit by 31 October or perish politically.

Already contenders for the tinsel crown of the Conservative leadership are competing to insist that No Deal is “back on the table”. It is Farage who is holding their feet to the fire. The Labour Party, which suffered a mauling only slightly less vicious than the Tories, is being pressured by idiots to embrace a second referendum – a resort that was always going to be a serious affront to the electorate but which, after these election results, would be an insult to democracy calculated to bury Labour in its vital heartlands.

If there are not enough Labour MPs with the nous to recognize this, then The Party We Love (Labour) will imminently join This Great Party of Ours (the Conservatives) in the dustbin of history. There is a sense of fatality surrounding events now: an intimation that the end of the two-party system is both inevitable and somehow perversely being willed by the legacy parties themselves.

Nigel Farage very cleverly made a No Deal Brexit his avowed policy. That means the entire Brexit Party vote represents a mandate for a WTO exit from the EU. It is now by far the most strongly and identifiably supported Brexit option. The culture of “compromise” – the poisoned chalice that Theresa May even in the throes of her political demise attempted to thrust upon her party – is as dead as her “deal”.

Yet there is still no shortage of blinkered Tories trying to perpetuate the mentality that has reduced them to 9 per cent electoral support, not least the chancellor Philip Hammond with his thinly veiled threat to support a no confidence vote against a Conservative prime minister prepared to implement a WTO Brexit.

Nothing will bring the Remain campaigners to their senses. Their notion of entitlement has blinded them to the peril of their situation. Even as the results poured in – the real-life People’s Vote – they were boasting of the ability of the House of Commons to block any meaningful Brexit. They have been caned by the electorate but they are still sticking out their tongues at the public.

All the evidence suggests they will need to be punished repeatedly, in a war of attrition, until they are removed from any effectual political power. The other clever move by Farage has been to insist, from day one, that the Brexit Party is not just about extricating Britain from the European Union, but about smashing the two-party system and changing politics forever. Last Thursday he and his party took the first and very significant step along that path. We may be about to witness a moment in history as momentous as 1642 or 1688.