Long life | 27 October 2016

I may have made the odd disparaging remark about Brexiteers during the heat of the referendum campaign, but I have been the perfect gentleman since. Although a Remainer, I have accepted the referendum result with good grace and treated the winners with courtesy and respect. I’ve never called them swivel-eyed, or xenophobic, or racist (or ‘deplorable’, as Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump’s supporters). I regard them as normal human beings.

I don’t even dismiss them as angry working-class rebels, driven by resentment of a heartless ruling elite. They come from every part of society. If there is a class war, it is going on in America, not here. I have American friends who say they have never met a Trump supporter. Here, however, I have constantly bumped into Brexiteers; and I don’t only mean Nikki, my cleaning woman in Northamptonshire, and Gary, the man who mends the television, whose grandchildren have lost school places to Polish immigrants.