Forget Brexit. What really matters is rubbish

Pardon the heresy, but I have a suggestion to make about the general election, and politics in general: Brexit isn’t as important as you think it is.

The fact that you, dear reader, are reading this, a Spectator article, says many things about you. Obviously, it denotes good taste, since this is a fine publication, notwithstanding the Editor’s peculiar accent, absurd hair and questionable choices in hiring old colleagues to write for him.

But more importantly, it says you’re interested in the stuff that The Spectator is interested in, and almost certainly in politics. That, politely put, means you’re a bit weird. Most people aren’t interested in politics; they don’t spend their valuable time reading things like this.

They may glance at some headlines now and then, but mostly their exposure to what we grandly call ‘political debate’ comes from BBC bulletins and – perhaps – a bit of chatter on Facebook. (Maybe one day Westminster will accept that Facebook is infinitely more important than Twitter, but I’m not holding my breath; I suspect it’ll take Twitter’s inevitable corporate demise/capture to pop the SW1A Twitter bubble).

I know this is a statement of the obvious, but its implications still need to be thought through a bit more.