The eurosceptic right are copying the SNP’s sinister playbook

If democracy is government by the people and meritocracy by the most able, Brexitocracy is rule by charlatans. Anyone who doubts that should survey the limp justifications, weaker than the Labour vetting process, for Chris Heaton-Harris’s letter to vice-chancellors. The Eurosceptic MP wrote to universities and asked if they wouldn’t mind drawing up a list of names for him. Nothing fancy, just everyone involved in teaching about Brexit and copies of their teaching materials. Now, the normal procedure when an MP – a government whip no less – does something completely deranged and massively embarrassing is to cordon them off with yellow hazard tape and hose down the crime scene. Instead, Andrea Leadsom — still, dizzyingly, Leader of the Commons — came to his defence on the grounds that the letter was ‘very courteous and not at all threatening’. That’s where Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel, went wrong. He should have sent a friendly note and a fruit basket to the Rosenbergs.