Ukip Leader Nigel Farage leaves by his Brexit Bus from Clacton-on-Sea in Essex after campaigning ahead of the EU referendum vote. PAimages/Nick Ansell. All rights reserved.
In the early 2000s, researching my first book, I interviewed groups of taxi-drivers in various regional cities of Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic to get a sense of their views on political Europe. What might these people, away from the centres of political and economic power, have to say about the problems of public life, the workings of institutions, and by extension the European Union?
If there was one overriding theme to emerge, it was a sense of impotence before socio-economic forces. With an air of fatalism, though not with indifference, participants evoked a world of problems without solutions, of politicians unable or unwilling to make a difference, and of institutions that were symptoms rather than sources of address, detached from ordinary concerns. Such views were most pronounced on matters of economics, and the EU stood as their emblem.
