Still picking holes: Ukip’s leader, Paul Nuttall, sets out his ‘six key tests’ for Brexit [Image: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images].

Paul Nuttall, UKIP’s (current) leader, has set out six key tests for Brexit that he’ll definitely be able to say aren’t met, as Mr Mitchell says. And Kippers across the country are clamouring for the UK to just go, rather than wade through any long-drawn-out Article 50 process.

So one is inexorably led to the belief that UKIP has not been about leaving the European Union at all.

It was about persuading the British people to support a totally unreasonable demand.

And it succeeded.

So, now, the sky’s the limit! For what other unreasonable demands can the voter be made to volunteer? And will it be easier to persuade the majority now that they’ve already supported one huge howler?

Watch this space – and live in fear.

It wasn’t for this that all those elderly Leave supporters dragged themselves out to vote! This isn’t what they fought a war for! Though not many of them actually did that. Those guys are mainly dead. The Few are now the Fewer, soon to be the None. So I should say: this isn’t what they, in many cases, lived through a bit of the war for (but often as infants so they can’t really remember it)!

If they can’t remember it, perhaps that explains why they’re so sanguine about renouncing an institution that’s done more than any other in history to preserve peace between the major nations of Europe. I wonder if their parents would have been so hasty. The demobbed Tommies who voted for Attlee over Churchill might not have been as easily convinced as their children have been that youngsters with foreign accents working in coffee shops is such a diabolical threat to Britain’s values and existence. They’d probably seen worse.

Anyway, this kind of remoaning isn’t what members of the luckiest generation ever born betrayed the sacrifices of their parents for! I’m sure that’s a form of words we can all agree on. What it feels like they actually did it for, and the clamour against remoaning has contributed hugely to this feeling, is for the Remainers to shut up. That seems to have been an outcome that was confidently expected among Leavers, and nobody even painted it on a bus.

Leading Ukippers have spent decades convinced that the anger and dissatisfaction they felt, with which their lives were infused, was caused by one thing. And now the thing has gone. What if they feel the same? A crushing realisation for them, but also for the rest of us. Their misdirected zeal could easily have tipped the balance in the referendum.

Source: Unhappy Ukippers? Maybe Europe wasn’t the issue… | David Mitchell | Opinion | The Guardian

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here: