On the day the world fell in / democracy returned to Britain (you choose), I found myself sitting next to a friend who had voted Remain. It took her a while to register that I hadn't, but, when she did, the explosion of anger and incredulity was immediate.
"So I suppose you're pleased that the financial markets have crashed and that the pound's hit its lowest level since the 1980s?", she spluttered.
"I think the markets closed down at about the level they were in June", I said. "And the pound fell a lot at first, but recovered to about the level it was in May. Something like that".
"Only. Only. Only because", she said, clearly struggling, "because Mark Carney spent loads of our money propping things up".
"Did the Bank of England actually intervene then?", I asked, genuinely surprised: I follow the news pretty closely, and I hadn't heard of this (48 hours later there have been no news reports to this effect).
"Well I don't know", she said. "They might have done".
"I don't think they did", I said. "And anyway, the Bank of England doesn't buy equities. The price of equities is just what the markets think they're worth. You've got to bear in mind that there's bound to be a bit of turbulence because a lot of what goes on at times like this is simply betting on a grand scale".
My friend was discomfited at meeting someone who knew more about this kind of thing than she did, but I could see her lining up for another go and was part grateful, part frustrated when my wife, who hates this kind of thing, intervened to stop it. I extracted an agreement to the effect that it was possible to vote Leave without being a racist baby-eater, and that was that.
During the meal though, eaten in an atmosphere of awkward truce, I wanted to ask, Did you really think the Bank of England had propped up the pound? Did you really think the pound had closed at its lowest level since the 80s? If not, why did you say it? Did you really think the Bank had spent "our money" buying equities to support the stock market? Did you really think a fall in the pound would have been an unequivocal disaster, helping as it would manufacturers, savers and Britain's balance of trade? Did you really think you were well enough informed to be able to criticise someone whose view differed from yours?
Since the referendum many on the losing side have sought refuge in the statistic that those most likely to vote Remain were the best educated people in the country. Leavers, goes the unattractive inference, are stupid. But ignorance is not confined to Remain voters. Neither was education the only predictor of which way a person was likely to vote. So was affluence.
It's probably not surprising that the better off were more likely to want to stay in the EU. As I've pointed out before, we (because I am one of them) are the people most likely to benefit from cheaper access to the service industries. We're on the housing ladder, we're well established in our careers and if push comes to shove we can get health insurance and send our kids to private schools to avoid logjams in the NHS and education. The EU works for us. We can pay our way round many of the problems uncontrolled migration causes the poor.
My friend is an intelligent, able, likeable and successful person. She'd probably describe herself as living a modest lifestyle, although as well as a house in a pleasant Manchester suburb, she and her husband have property interests in two other countries and send their child to a fee paying school.
Their lives have about as little in common - and as little contact - with those of fellow Labour voters in Sunderland, Stoke or Whitehaven as theirs does with Donald Trump. No wonder the referendum result was a shock.
The ignorance of the Left's haut bourgeoisie regarding the circumstances in which ordinary people live outside the glitzier parts of our big cities is almost total. It has reacted with comical surprise to the discovery that large parts of the UK do not share its views or its affluence. Most people in Britain will never buy second homes in two countries, but they know we're doing it and they know we're content with an expansion in the labour force which undercuts their own living standards. Wages in some semi-skilled sectors (building for example) are believed to be actually falling.
The Hampstead Left generally has reached a pitch of self delusion so total that it imagines a petition for a second referendum, thus far reaching three million signatures, carries with it a shred of moral authority. Faced with the realisation that - gosh! - ordinary working class people feel that membership of the EU does not actually benefit them that much, it has fallen back into a cloistered echo chamber, now reverberating with cries that the underclass voted Leave because it was too ignorant to see that the bien-pensant were right. Urgent re-education must take place at once, they Tweet.
Yes. They certainly need it.
