By Mick Garratt, CC BY-SA 2.0.
And so it begins. First, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth and then, the reproaches and the recriminations. It was an act of self-sabotage, a feat of blinding ignorance, a classic case of those unwashed masses not quite knowing what’s good for them. Unfortunately, it’s also a load of nonsense. By and large those who voted leave knew exactly what they were doing. Participants in an unfair fight, this was the chance to finally land a punch that actually drew blood. Disdained by a political circus that barely even bothered to acknowledge the crowd anymore, this was a chance to (really) send in the clowns. Ignore us for long enough, they said, and we’re going to do exactly the same to you, and damn the consequences, because in places like Sunderland we already feel pretty much damned.
In the lead up to the vote, there were very few who actually got what this was about. John Harris of the Guardian was one of them because he actually bothered to tour the country and talk to people in unglamorous places like Nuneaton (66% Leave), Barking (62% Leave) and Hartlepool (70% Leave). On Wednesday he wrote:
