Brexit: the triumph of the right

The only arguments that matter in politics today are the arguments on the right. The only futures that are possible to imagine are those offered by the different strands of right-wing thought.

The right’s arguments are not good to my mind. Nor are the futures it offers desirable. It is just that the right’s opponents are all but absent from the debate. The future of the country is up for grabs, but only the right hand of England is reaching up to seize it.

The journalist in me almost hopes that the ‘leave’ campaign wins. The lies it has told will then be clear, and the liberal press will have years of fun tearing into Johnson, Gove and Farage.

They promised a bright economic future, and we will make sure that they are held personally liable for every disruption of trade and fall in tax revenues. They promised extraordinary sums of money for the NHS, to keep the subsidies for farmers, to cut taxes, to cut fuel duty, so that we will have the paradise the British have always dreamed of: Scandinavian levels of public service and American levels of tax.