‘In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.’ So predicted Enoch Powell in 1968, a time when Harold Wilson’s party had just begun to introduce right-on luvvie liberalism alongside its rapidly dating economic socialism. Fast-forward half a century and YouGov now says age is a more reliable indicator of whether a person will vote Labour than class. In fact, if anything, you’re more likely to vote Tory these days if you’re a low-skilled or unskilled worker.

So it was probably never much of a stretch to ponder, at the Liberal Democrats’ birth in 1988, whether there could come a time when they would cease to be either liberal or democratic. If they ever were, their cover was blown on the democracy bit following a referendum they sought to deny the British people, and the result of which they vowed to overturn. On the liberal bit, they finally broke ranks in their disgraceful treatment of their former leader and evangelical Christian, Tim Farron. Hounded out of his position for failing to have the ‘correct’ opinions on abortion (which is always subject to a free vote in Parliament for the reason it is a matter of conscious which cuts across party lines) and the morality of homosexual relations (an issue unlikely ever again to grace the pages of Hansard and therefore an entirely private affair), his colleagues have shamed a party once known almost exclusively for its radical heterodoxy.

Lord Paddick, as it turned out, was not even the worst of them when, in a manner reminiscent of the innuendo of Victorian prejudice, he stuck the knife in by resigning as the party’s home affairs spokesman, citing concerns about Farron’s ‘views on various issues that were highlighted’ during the general election. No, the worst came from David Laws, a man I had always had a great deal of time for due to his classical liberalism and political bravery – most notably in calling for the NHS to be replaced by a private insurance system in the party’s fabled Orange Book. But Laws’ reaction to Farron’s resignation, which seemed to be said exclusively ‘as a gay man’, was devoid of any such liberalism. ‘Tim has propagated the dangerous myth,’ he said, ‘that our society can respect and embrace people in same-sex relationships, while believing their activities and character to be in some way immoral.’

I picked up this quote from a piece in The Times which was headlined ‘Farron was prejudiced and illiberal, says gay Lib Dem’. I don’t know whether Laws actually spoke the words in the headline, as they didn’t appear to be in the article, but what strikes me is that ‘prejudiced’ and ‘illiberal’ describe pretty well what he did say. In fact, the quote above explicitly rejects the second word of the party’s latest catchline – ‘Open, Tolerant and United’. Tolerance, if it means anything at all anymore, means just what Laws condemned; the ability to ‘respect and embrace’ people with which you have profound differences. And that’s a beautiful thing. It means you don’t have to agree with everyone – you don’t even have to like everyone – but you treat each other with respect regardless. This has essentially defined English liberalism for hundreds of years and is a modern British virtue if ever there was one.

How sad that ‘tolerance’ now means compelling people to agree on liberal dogma as the only morality. The appalling treatment of the Democratic Unionist Party since its MPs emerged as likely props to a Conservative minority government is another timely case in point, particularly regarding the party’s policies on abortion and same-sex marriage. Almost everywhere in the media, these positions were painted as somehow beyond the pale, regardless of the fact the DUP’s policies represent many voters in a highly religious region of the United Kingdom (illustrated by the fact Labour’s sister party in Northern Ireland, the Social Democratic & Labour Party, takes an even more stringent view on abortion than the DUP), or that opposition to what pro-life activists see as the wholesale murder of defenceless children is a legitimate political opinion.

There is also the insidious inference that politicians, of all people, cannot distinguish or in any way separate their personal beliefs from their politics. That Tim Farron cannot consider homosexual relations as a sin and vote for same-sex marriage. Even though he did. That men like Ron Paul in the United States and recently-appointed Brexit minister Steve Baker here at home cannot hold robust Evangelical Baptist beliefs and be leaders of a libertarian world view which essentially exists to leave people alone, whatever their lifestyle, orientation, or beliefs. Such two-dimensional thinking ought to be the preserve of Corbynista children on Twitter, not seasoned politicians.

Bizarrely, though, Farron reflected upon his political defenestration by taking aim at the ills of society. ‘I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in,’ he said, with his permanent ‘kicked puppy’ expression somehow turning even more kicked. ‘In which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.’ I don’t think your average man on the street gives a damn, to be honest. The intolerant, illiberal, culprits are Farron’s fellow travellers in ‘progressive’ politics and the media. That he will probably never see that is perhaps saddest of all.

Paul is Creative Editor for Conservatives for Liberty. Follow him on Twitter: @Whiggery

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Well this is all very familiar. I’m in a bar in Democrat Washington, DC at 10.30pm and everyone’s shitting themselves. It’s a similar mood to the East of England count I attended during the EU referendum vote once the North East started coming in. And don’t get them started about Virginia.

Trump is currently leading 167 to 109 electoral votes, but that doesn’t take into account the 55 votes Hillary is almost guaranteed to get in California, not to mention the rest of the west coast.

But the guys on CNN are already reacting with complete surprise at districts which were expected to come out for Hillary which have come out for Trump. What I’ve been warning Americans my entire time here appears to be happening; the Trump campaign appears to be bringing out people who do not usually vote.

This is exactly what happened during the Brexit vote and is exactly what the Canadian Tories did to win a surprise majority some years ago. There is an anti-majority mood in the country, which has galvanised citizens which never usually vote.

I and other British conservatives have reasons to fear a Trump presidency, but if it happens, the message must be clear; this would have happened because politics as usual has neglected the common man for so long, the Republican Party has degenerated to such a degree, that people grasp for extremes.

Whether Trump wins or Trump loses, there will follow a period of reflection for the Republican Party from tomorrow, to decide just what it has done wrong over the last decade to lead to this point. I only hope people of the same ilk as Conservatives for Liberty are part of that process.

Paul is Creative Director for Conservatives for Liberty. Follow him on Twitter: @Whiggery

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Our Creative Director Paul Nizinskyj reports on the US Presidential Election from Washington, DC.

The fate of the Great Republic hangs in the balance on Tuesday, if the President of the United States is to be believed. But you wouldn’t know looking around Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. In fact, despite being only an hour outside DC, you’d be hard pressed to know there was a presidential election going on at all.

Trump and Hillary lawn signs litter much of the highway from Washington Dulles Airport into Maryland, but not in this corner of Calvert County. Save for a Trump sign outside a rather worn-looking bungalow (complemented by a pick-up truck with a gun rack), there’s only one election people are interested in around here: who’s going to be the next mayor of Chesapeake Beach.

Given in the UK we can’t even decide whether to elect mayors to our greatest provincial cities, it seemed quaintly odd to this old Redcoat that a redneck town of only 5,000 Marylanders should do so. But then, this is smalltown America, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they elected their bin-men around here. So, struggling to battle sleep after being awake a good 20 hours, I was treated on my first night in the US to the showdown between candidates Jeff Krahling and Pat ‘Irish’ Mahoney.

Mahoney, who I hear committed the cardinal faux-pas of inventing his own nickname, is an incumbent councillor and former Acting Mayor who is widely expected to win the mayoralty on Tuesday. Krahling, on the other hand, is a property developer who looks not entirely unlike Tony Soprano and has a habit of using the same vague and evasive responses to questioning as Donald Trump.

Not that the line of questioning was that taxing. While Trump and Hillary locked horns over everything from Syria to healthcare, the stately Dixie of the League of Women Voters read questions from the audience asking candidates whether the ban on rearing chickens in the town centre ought to be lifted, and whether residents on the south-west side should be forcibly dragged into the mid-20th century and abandon their septic tanks and well-water. I was just glad I’d managed to fit in a drink beforehand.

Next came questions for candidates to the council itself which, after the standard set by the mayoral debate, fell a little flat. As sleep deprivation began to creep up on me, I could only keep myself awake by trying to figure out who four-term councillor Stewart Cumbo reminded me of. Then it hit me. If you crossed actor Frank McRae (who played LAPD Lieutenant Dekker in Last Action Hero) with a terrapin, that’s what you’d get. Which was ironic, really, as Cumbo was a former Assistant Barrack Commander for Maryland State Police, and the University of Maryland’s mascot is a terrapin.

I really needed that sleep.

Paul is Creative Director for Conservatives for Liberty. Follow him on Twitter: @Whiggery

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In October 2013, Conservatives for Liberty entered the political arena with a launch event at The Barley Mow in Westminster. Daniel Hannan, recently inaugurated as our Honorary President, was our speaker for the night. We were overjoyed that we managed to attract 100 activists to our first event and were optimistic about how this boded for the future.

Just under three years later we held our largest-ever event at Conservative Party Conference, with more than 400 delegates turning up to hear Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young speak – and sip prosecco – at our third annual Freedom Fizz reception. I am unashamed in calling this the best event of the Conference, and it gives me a great sense of satisfaction to know everyone there had a great night, but its timing also reminded me of why I co-founded CfL in the first place.

As I commented over at The Spectator, the following morning came with the hangover of Theresa May singling out ‘the libertarianism of the right’ as inimical to her vision of a more statist, more interventionist, and more intrusive Conservative Party in government. After a promising start, it very suddenly confirmed all we had feared about a May-led Conservative government, and in times gone by that may have resulted in an exodus of liberty-minded Conservatives from the Party.

Three years ago, one of my motivations for starting CfL was seeing this very phenomenon; talented people giving up on the Party over differences in attitudes exposed during the Equal Marriage Bill debate, a Cameron leadership which was increasingly moving away from where they thought the Party should be, and the frustrations of coalition government. But I didn’t see that happening this time. In fact, almost the exact opposite.

In the three weeks following Theresa May’s keynote Conference speech, we attracted  more paid-up CfL members than we had in the preceding three months. Objective One of my reasons for starting CfL appeared to have been achieved: keeping libertarian and free market Conservatives in the Party by providing an internal opposition which represented their views and offered constructive criticism (and praise, where appropriate) to the Party leadership.

Conservatives for Liberty has grown enormously over the last three years, not least in the size and shape of our team. From a nucleus of three directors, we now have about a dozen committed volunteers, including an Executive team composed of our Chairman Emily Barley, Campaigns Director Neil Wilson, Online Director Ben Kelly, and myself as Creative Director.

With these milestones passed, we are very excited about where this has placed us to grow further. But we have not come this far without your help. Furthermore, with the current leadership seemingly moving further than ever before from our ideas and with so much at stake in the form Brexit will take, we need you more than ever. If you believe in our mission to change the Conservative Party and the United Kingdom for the better but have not yet joined us, you can do so here. Or, if you are already a member, you can find out how you can get more involved here.

This is an exciting time to be a Briton, a Conservative, and a member of the liberty movement. Be part of it and join us today.

Paul is Creative Director for Conservatives for Liberty. Follow him on Twitter: @Whiggery

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Theresa May becomes our prime minister today, once David Cameron has handed over the seals of office, and she is invited to kiss hands with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

It is particularly galling for liberty-minded members like ourselves that Theresa May is not only not the leader we would have chosen, but because of the ridiculous selection process this party operates, she is not the leader anyone chose – save for the 199 Conservatives MPs who voted for her in the House of Commons.

But, because it is only fair to do so, we are giving Mrs May the benefit of the doubt despite our serious misgivings about her conduct in the Home Office over the last six years. Like with Mr Cameron, with whom we frequently disagreed, we will support policies we feel are consistent with civil and economic liberty, and will be relentlessly critical where we feel they are not. She has been called “collegiate” and one area we stand beside her with is her commitment that “Brexit means Brexit”. We will, of course, hold her to this but her respect for the will of the people, when so many have sought to ignore it, is admirable.

But let’s not beat around the bush here – the early signs are not looking good and, in all likelihood, Mrs May is going to keep us very busy over the next four years.

It is already being reported that her first act as prime minister will likely be to appoint an almost 50 per cent female Cabinet. It is simply astonishing that a woman who became, by a long way, the frontrunner in the leadership race purely on the basis of merit should now seek to appoint a Cabinet purely on the basis of genitalia. Our chairman Emily Barley has made her feelings on this very clear on this blog.

We must also, loudly and forcefully, oppose any further attempts by the former Home Secretary to push forward with the so-called Snoopers’ Charter and increase Government surveillance of British citizens in a manner this organisation believes is disproportionate, unnecessary, and immoral.

We must fiercely oppose any further attempts by Mrs May to curb freedom of expression and outlaw certain political points of view under the smokescreen of Government-mandated “British values”. This country has a proud history of tolerance and a “no ifs, no buts” respect for freedom of speech which, in the nineteenth century, even extended to us harbouring Karl Marx – a man who wanted to overthrow state and property – from the tyrants of Europe. Bad ideas must be crushed by reasoned argument, not by arbitrary force.

We must decry any further attempts by the Prime Minister to outlaw consensual sexual acts by adults and the recording and distribution of said sexual acts. It is simply outrageous that the state feels it has any role in policing morality in this way, and the fact something as “vanilla” as face-sitting ended up on the blacklist is a damning indictment of the ridiculousness of this positively Victorian policy. So much for being a “moderniser”, eh?

Then there is the depressing reality that, on economics, Theresa May is essentially Ed Miliband in kitten heels. It is the sincere hope of this organisation that she picks an economic liberal as her Chancellor because she is simply economically illiterate. The fact she has, with a straight face, proposed curbs on chief executive pay would be hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying. This is a woman, who in being called out by Jacob Rees-Mogg on her attempt to push through the European Arrest Warrant without a vote in 2014, has shown she has no respect for due process. She does not understand property or individual liberty and she does not care.

Our conclusion? Theresa May is not only an authoritarian with no respect for civil and economic liberty, she is not only most definitely not a libertarian, she is in no way even a conservative. But Conservatives for Liberty was founded with the expressed purpose of giving people like us a voice in just these circumstances and the worst thing any liberty-minded Conservative can do now is leave the party. This is YOUR party. Make your voice heard and take it back!

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A week is a long time in politics, as they say, and my gosh what we’ve managed to fit into the last two. The continuing political earthquakes and aftershocks have demonstrated in a rather practical manner the meaning behind that well worn phrase, that a lot can happen in seven days because the nature of politics – power – is about as shaky as the foundations of the Palace of Westminster itself. Any outward semblance of stability masks a daily battle to maintain, and overthrow, the status quo. A house of cards, you might say.

So that the entire edifice ought to come crashing down in the wake of the Brexit earthquake should not really surprise anyone, nor that its aftershocks – the prime minister’s resignation, the evaporation of the shadow cabinet, the political assassination of Boris Johnson, the departure of Nigel Farage, the unlikely rise of Andrea Leadsom and Angela Eagle, and even the splintering of the Labour and Conservative parties – will continue to be felt for months, possibly years, on end.

The Brexit vote and what it has unleashed is nothing short of a revolution. It was, in some instances implicitly and in others explicitly, a revolt against the Establishment and a ruling class. And, like all revolutions, it has opened up a power vacuum into which some of the most unlikely elements are seeking to fill – among them crafty members of the losing side who have hidden their past associations well, and idealistic amateurs from the ranks of the revolutionaries.

I won’t lie. After the euphoria of the vote itself (I cried the entire journey home from the East of England count), I took immense pleasure in watching the political tremors I and 17 million others had helped create. I had, as Boris Johnson described his tenure as the Telegraph‘s Brussels correspondent, thrown a rock over a fence and listened with glee as it smashed through the greenhouse windows. I watched heads roll and was animated with a sense of schadenfreude. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, Wordsworth wrote in 1789, and to be young was very heaven.

But how quickly the great poet’s heaven descended into the deepest mouth of hell. As Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservative philosophy, wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France the following year, “Good order is the foundation of all good things.” Oh, but how fragile those foundations are, and what terrible depths they expose when broken. Whatever disagreements this group has had with David Cameron – and they have been legion – there was never any doubt he was a steady pair of hands, a collegiate manager, and a well-rounded individual who will probably not miss the trappings of power too much.

But, in the vacuum of revolution, his departure has presented us with an unsavoury choice of Theresa May, an authoritarian of the old guard who does not believe in the revolution and may well betray it, and Andrea Leadsom, an inexperienced, idealistic revolutionary who could just as easily betray it through incompetence if not by design. Not for nothing did Burke, writing on the Glorious Revolution of 1688, note that “it shows the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.” Burke believed the same of the Americans’ founding fathers, which was why he supported their revolution against his own king in the 1770s.

I fear we do not have such great men today. What have they done in the wake of our own glorious revolution? Schemed, intrigued, and stabbed each other in the back. “Follow every twist of the knife”, the Spectator has taken to encouraging us. How sordid. Yes, like the French in 1789 we have won our liberty with a revolutionary act, but are facing up to finding ourselves with a set of immediate rulers even worse than the ones we had before – even putting the very gains of the revolution themselves at risk.

But does this make me a remorseful Brexiteer? Absolutely not. Yes Brexit, like all challenges to established authority, has created uncertainty and division – but like the American revolutionaries, I consider these trifling sacrifices where our liberties as freeborn Britons are at stake, because they cannot be maintained at too high a price. The troubles we find ourselves in should also serve to remind us of why we are conservatives in the first place – because a cornerstone of our philosophy is that order, society, and civilisation are intrinsically yet deceptively fragile things which, like the parliamentarians of the 1640s, the architects of the Glorious Revolution, and the founding fathers of the United States, we dare upset only with the greatest apprehension, the heaviest of hearts, and the most noble of principles.

I wrote immediately before this referendum that, whatever the result, the best thing about it was it had finally emboldened large swathes of the Left and the establishment to go public about something we had always suspected – their contempt for democracy and their loathing of the working class.

However, even having written that only four days ago, I am still shocked and appalled by just how brazen these people have been in expressing that sentiment since it became clear the people had decisively voted to leave the European Union. Never mind the armies of cyber-crybullies having mental breakdowns publicly on Twitter and Facebook and calling everyone who voted Leave stupid, ignorant, racist, and xenophobic – that’s what people who live on social media do when they’re upset, sadly.

But in truly shocking scenes, we have this weekend seen Labour MP David Lammy publicly call for the referendum result to be ignored by Parliament on the basis it was “advisory” and “non-binding”; later softening his stance to the need for a second referendum because  “the consequences of Brexit are too grave” – by which he means, wrong answer, try again!

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, finally dropping the pretence of being either liberal or democratic, announced his party would campaign on a platform of stopping Brexit in the 2020 general election. SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has also said she will ask MSPs in Holyrood to derail the process. Arguably most shocking of all, though in a sense least surprising, United Nations special representative of the Secretary-General for international migration Peter Sutherland, himself an Irishman, tweeted “somehow this result must be overturned.”

The younger generation in UK has been sacrificed all because of distortion of facts & consequences. Somehow this result must be overturned.

— Peter Sutherland (@PDSutherlandUN) June 25, 2016

For many people, this referendum was literally the first time they have ever felt powerful, the first time they ever felt they could actually change anything. Politicians have spent decades trying to figure out why engagement in politics was so low, particularly amongst the poorest in society. But, like most people who are the cause of their own problems, they couldn’t see the answer was staring at them in the face – that no matter how often they voted, no matter who they voted for, nothing ever changed. Because they wouldn’t let it.

In this referendum, working class people voted in overwhelming numbers, decisively swinging the result even in areas which were expected to vote Remain. With only two options on the ballot paper, they finally saw an opportunity to register their views in a way in which they could not possibly be interpreted, invalidated, or ignored. Yet that is exactly what the Left and large swathes of the establishment are now clamouring to do. They just. Don’t. Get it.

The arguments are all the same. People are too stupid to know what they were voting for. There were lies told on the winning and/or losing side which invalidates the result. We only went to the proles for advice, haha, we still know better. This is too important an issue to put in the hands of idiot people. They didn’t mean to vote Leave, really, they were just angry at the Tories and globalisation. The Left are entirely right in saying this referendum has exposed a crisis in our democracy, but not in the way they think. It has exposed a political elite and left wing establishment which only pretends to believe in democracy when it goes their way.

I hope the voters have been taking notes through all this. I certainly have.

I’ve been getting horrible déjà vu these last few weeks. The moment I’ve spent almost ten years of my life waiting for is upon me…and I can’t wait for the godforsaken thing to be over with. The last time I found myself balls deep in a debate as ugly and ridiculous in equal measure as this, a debate which managed to bring out the worst in almost all of us, was when the Equal Marriage Act was being discussed in Parliament.

Many of my friends and colleagues were so disgusted by some of the opinions and arguments expressed by their fellow Conservatives in that emotionally charged debate that they decided the party was no longer a place they felt comfortable. Amusingly, some went over to Ukip, only to leave shortly thereafter upon realising they had jumped from a relatively salubrious frying pan into the fires of Hades. Most simply left party politics altogether. Neither group returned.

My concern at this scandalous loss of talent, over the very same issue which led natural Thatcherites like David Laws to make a beeline for the Liberal Democrats, was one of the motivating factors in my co-founding Conservatives for Liberty in March 2013. So at least something positive to came out of it, other than the law itself, of course. This time it’s us rather than the MPs making the big decision, which if anything has made the discourse worse, but whatever the result I’ve managed to draw something from this too.

Just as the Equal Marriage Bill drew the bigots out from under their rocks, so the EU referendum campaign has emboldened the Left, the Europhiles, and our metropolitan elites in something they had previously been very careful to hide – their utter contempt for the working classes and of democracy itself. They all nailed their colours to the mast by not even wanting to give us this referendum, of course (well, except Nick Clegg momentarily), but I have been truly staggered by the brazenness with which these people, particularly on the Left, have argued against democracy on the basis it has a habit of throwing up results you don’t like.

Many of them, like Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, seem to have forgotten there is a general election booked for 2020. To her, Brexit is “a bid for a right-wing Tory takeover of the reins of power in the UK and to dismantle the hard-worn social gains of the last few decades.” This is revealing for a number of reasons, firstly because she correctly identifies the reins of power as residing in Brussels, but also because it demonstrates why the Left is so pro-EU these days – they see it as protecting legislation they either know or believe could never be passed by a national Parliament. Not for nothing did Roy Jenkins say in 1992 “Labour has converted to Europe because Europe has converted to socialism.”

But it gets worse. Two pro-Remain Conservatives managed to epitomise in the most patronising way possible another antidemocratic argument doing the rounds during this debate – namely that the proles should defer all decisions to their betters in the political class. Harriett Baldwin MP’s sage advice on Twitter was at least tempered with the language of someone vaguely aware her job will be on the line in four years, but Baroness Altman’s tweet on June 9 was staggering in its outward contempt for an electorate she herself has never had to bother for votes. Unsurprisingly she has since deleted this ill-advised outburst but of course, in Internet Land, nothing ever dies.

But back to our friends on the Left. The Canary, that oh-so on fleek leftie “news” site, thought former Channel Four economics editor Paul Mason “summed up left-wing fears over Brexit brilliantly” when he said that, actually, he’d rather like to leave the European Union – but he’s worried about what a post-Cameron Conservative Party might look like and doesn’t trust the electorate to hold them to account. “I am very unlikely to vote for Brexit”, Mason said, “because I do not want to hand power to a bunch of crazed right-wing Conservatives.” That any post-Cameron Tory Government would most likely continue the programme on which it was elected and create a ‘unity government’ with moderates and Remainers to patch up the divisions of the referendum campaign is probably not something he has considered, which is a shame for him, really.

Then pity poor, poor, Polly Toynbee. It must be a terrible burden to be a Tribune of the People when you have nothing but loathing for them and their uncouth working class ignorance. Imagine spending a week – a week, dammit! – trying to convince northern, working class, Labour voters “in crap jobs” why they should vote Remain when, “impervious to love letters from Der Spiegel,” “No fact, no persuader penetrates their certainty” that they will vote Leave. Unguided by Toynbee and her army of “eager young London graduates” and unshackled by Brussels’ break on democracy, she even suggests these childlike proles would turn to National Socialism in the event of Brexit. Give me strength.

I tired of this tedious and childish referendum debate some time ago, but one thing I never tire of is the Left making themselves look foolish, so at least it has provided some amusement – not to mention ammunition for the armoury. Janet Daley asked in The Spectator how the Remain campaign managed to get the British character so wrong. My question is, with people like these, what chance did they have?

UPDATE (1100, June 22)

With the polls coming down to wire, luvvies from the Remain campaign have made some last-minute interventions to berate “thick people” and “idiots” voting Leave. As reported by Guido, millionaire comedian and Labour supporter Robert Webb took to Twitter to scorn the “thick people” applauding Boris’s Brexit speech, before clarifying he meant they were “stupid.”

Not to be outdone, and just to make sure the polls go the right way, Guardian columnist and Bad Science celebrity scientist Ben Goldacre published his reasons for voting Remain with the words “It’s boring, there’s nothing awesome about it, but sometimes you have to take a break from useful productive work to stop idiots breaking things.” Keep it coming, lads.

Paul is Conservatives for Liberty’s creative director. Follow him on Twitter: @whiggery

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