The Brexit charlatans are getting away with it

Opponents of demagogues from Donald Trump to Nigel Farage have suffered from a huge political disadvantage. They were either politicians who were or had been in power, and had to take responsibility for all the failures and compromises power brings as inevitably as blisters on weary feet. Or they were voters, who thought that mainstream politicians were preferable to the leaders of the far right and left. Demagogues could dismiss them as establishment lackeys, Blairites, liberal elitists, Republicans in name only, and so on. And the dismissals could work. For how many wised-up 21st century voters wants to think him or herself as some establishment drone, some dupe of a failed status quo?

Until the Brexit vote no one could turn round and throw the demagogues’ own record in their faces. They had never been in power. They could claim the purity of the outsider, fighting the elites on behalf of ‘the people’.