“The trend is starkest in the north of England and Wales – Labour heartlands in which Brexit sentiment appears to be changing.” Pro-Brexit British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won last week's election with a resounding majority. Credit:Getty A couple of paragraphs on we learned from where this world-class analysis had sprung. “The study was jointly commissioned by Best for Britain, which is campaigning against Brexit, and the anti-racist Hope Not Hate group.” This single sentence neatly sums up everything that is wrong with loud, self-basting “progressive” insiders. It was propaganda masquerading as research that should have been punted to the kerb by the Sunday sister of The Guardian, a newspaper which published some brilliant work on the seething anger growing in working class communities in the UK prior to the Brexit vote. The participation of Hope Not Hate in the exercise was a nod towards the suspicion that everyone who voted Leave was also probably a racist, because they railed against EU rules which allow the free movement of labour.

Whenever working-class outsiders complain about how an immigration or economic policy blights their lives the response of the enlightened insiders is to brand them either “racist” or “stupid”. This is the judgment of those who make or champion enlightened policies but don’t live in the frontline suburbs where they land. It is not their jobs, wages or communities that are asked to endure wrenching change. The working people of Britain roundly rejected Jeremy Corbyn. Credit:PA It is evident across the Western world that there is now a chasm dividing inner-city internationalists and the working-class nationalists who sustain their lifestyles. Many in wealthy city sanctums are now so disconnected from their sources of food, wealth and energy that they are voting against them or seeking to ban them. This is an increasingly bitter battle between the winners and losers from globalisation. The Economist has reported that Chinese import competition caused 20 per cent of the losses in manufacturing jobs in America and whole regions went into permanent decline.

Loading Most of the “creative destruction” that followed the international opening of markets was in the jobs lost by blue-collar men. That also helped destroy the lives of their wives and children. Manual workers across the West now face fewer jobs and falling real wages, so is it any wonder their anger is rising. These are not privileged white men. They were the ones that emptied your garbage, dealt with your sewerage, built your machines, dug in dangerous mines, grew your food, lived hard but proud lives and had the privilege of fighting and dying on the frontline whenever we called a war. On the other side of the divide are the city-based knowledge industry workers who are enjoying all the benefits of free-trade and the free movement of immigrants without having to bother with any of the downsides. This divide was something the British Labour Party, with its deep roots in working communities, should have been able to recognise. Its historic project is to defend working people, so it should have pitched its tent with them and sought to address their very real concerns. And at their heart was a scream of rage against imperious, unreachable EU bureaucrats and a fear that the free movement of labour was an existential threat.