We saw this for years in the way that those daring to question the euro, or the onward march of the EU to political integration, were dismissed with contempt – by politicians, the BBC and every variety of the great and the good – as “fruitcakes”, “xenophobes” and “Little Englanders”. We saw it in spades as the promoters of “consensus” on global warming took over the commanding heights of the scientific world – such as the Royal Society, Nature, the universities (on a sea of climate-change related funding). Supported again by politicians and the BBC, they were determined to show the maximum intolerance to those who challenged their orthodoxy, however rationally: these were “deniers”, “flat-earthers”, “anti-science nutters”, who must be “in the pay of Big Oil”.