Am I nervous? Absolutely, but I always knew what I was signing up to when I voted Leave. Self-government comes with massive potential upsides as well as huge potential downsides. Being able to choose a different path implies the possibility of doing better as well as that of doing worse.

I have been saddened beyond words by the fact that so many Remainers, including many close friends, not only cannot see any of this but are actually still refusing to accept the outcome. Such people are now explicitly post-democratic: they no longer believe in majority rule, just as they no longer accept the idea that there should be no taxation without representation or even, in the case of many younger people, that speech should be free. Their rejection of liberal democratic culture extends to no longer feeling able to give their political opponents the benefit of the doubt. They believe themselves to be part of the forces for good, and that their opponents are not just wrong but also obviously, unarguably evil. Many lead relatively gilded lives yet have allowed themselves to embrace a shameful snobbery that was supposed to have died out last century. 

Apart from insulting working-class and non-urban voters, their analysis of the referendum, which pins the responsibility for Leave entirely on northern Labour voters, is deeply faulty: 61 per cent of Tories, including in the shires, voted leave, as did 40 per cent of Londoners, far more in absolute numbers than voted for Sadiq Khan.

I hope that this poison at the heart of our democratic culture hasn’t spread too far, and that political pluralism will still be able to thrive in Britain. We cannot become like America where Democrats and Republicans can no longer even be friends.

The magnitude of the challenge is the real reason why Johnson and Gove looked so sombre on Friday morning: with victory comes huge, almost unbearable responsibility. Only the greatest of men and women will be up to the task ahead. We need determination, discipline, cool under extreme pressure, grit and seriousness; we also need a national leader who can inspire the country and hopefully reunite the centre‑Right political family. Above all we need a speedy decision so that our next prime minister can begin to execute the voters’ instructions in a way that maximises our economic opportunities.

David Fuller's view

Wise words.  I wish more people could see them, and not just in the UK.

Here is a PDF of Allister Heath’s article.