Ed West

Happy Independence Day everyone (groan). One year on from that momentous day, here are 13 things we've learnt from the Brexit vote. Most people will take any argument that suits them. They will swap ideological clothing if needs be - note how many on the Left suddenly care deeply about the pound and the City, while many on the Right seem keen on huge economic risks. Most voters are ignorant. This applies to both sides, although on average Remainers are better educated. But as Dominic Cummings has pointed out, the average Remainer didn't know that much about how the EU actually works; they just looked at Nigel Farage and knew they were against that.

I'm not sure I've ever been so pessimistic about this country's future, and I'm not usually a barrel of laughs to start with. Aside from the terrorism, and the recent tragedy in North Kensington, there are real black clouds in the distance. Investors are being put off Britain, a problem that pre-dates Brexit but is surely aggravated by it. There seems little hope that the Tories will follow Philip Hammond in pursuing a more moderate line in Europe. (Would the catchphrase 'Stop, Hammondtime', galvanise the public, I wonder? Kids still like MC Hammer right?). Meanwhile the opposition - even moderate members - are now calling for people's private property to be 'requisitioned', using heightened anger and emotion in order to trample over the most fundamental of rights.

When I was in my early 20s and quite conservative I assumed I was just an anomaly, someone who develops these traits earlier than normal, and conservatism was like baldness or impotence or the other bad things that get you in middle age; most of my friends and contemporaries would catch up at some point, because these things just develop at different speeds. Now in my late 30s I realise it's worse than that and almost none of my friends and acquaintances are going to become more conservative; if anything, they've become more left-wing than they were 20 years ago, as the barometer of what is progressive and therefore acceptable has shifted. Many of them would have been among the 40 per cent of the population who voted for Corbyn last week, and the 50 per cent aged 35-44.

From a very early age I've been put off by sanctimoniousness; it's why, I think, I've never been attracted to the political Left, which when I was growing up was heavy on the finger-wagging, and why I find a certain style of newspaper column irritating. They remind me of the sour-faced old guys we used to see at church all in competition to see who could look the most serious and disapproving. This whole idea that if you don't support Labour and the Left you're not just wrong or misguided but a bad person is what puts me off; this Daily Mash article is depressingly close to reality in my experience. Yet this election has made me feel the same, for the first time; my area is flooded with Labour posters outside front doors and when I look at them I find myself shaking my head.

Steve Hilton has called for Theresa May to resign as Prime Minister, blaming her for the security failures that lead to the three recent terror attacks. Without intimate knowledge of the workings of the Cameron administration it's hard to know where blame does lie. And there certainly has been a large increase in the number of terror plots for the authorities to deal with this year. The security services have an awesome job in keeping track of as many as 23,000 individuals, and so we may now be facing a sort of Israelification of British life, with barriers going up on London's bridges this morning. Already we now have bag searches around London museums and the occasional appearance of armed policemen outside cathedrals.

Are Leavers thicker than Remainers? The short answer is: yes. At least, on average. That's according to a paper analysing voters on both sides of the godawful Brexit referendum, which says that: 'When compared with Remain voters, Leave voters displayed significantly lower levels of numeracy, reasoning and appeared more reliant on impulsive ‘System 1’ thinking.' Now obviously I voted Leave and I'm super-duper clever, but this is not remotely surprising; June 23 was effectively a vote on globalisation, which favours the more intelligent and educated at the expense of the less gifted. When rising sea levels turn our little ponds into great lakes, the big fish are going to benefit a great deal more.

Twenty years ago this week Tony Blair came to power with a thumping majority, claiming Labour to be 'the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole'. As a phrase it sounds mildly deranged but it wasn't totally cut off from reality. New Labour had claimed support among a cross-section of the public, including over 60 per cent of DE voters and a clear majority of those in the C2D category. Today, the Conservatives have a 17-point lead among working-class voters, despite there being a squeeze on health and education spending, and the party offering not much in the way of optimism or charisma. What went right, then?

Whatever happens in the forthcoming general election, no day of social media can ever compete with the dizzying heights of May 2015. I think I laughed more on the day of the result than I had in the previous decade; sure, it was the twisted and cruel laughter of someone whose dreams are slowly fading, but aren't those the most genuine and heartfelt? This time it won't be quite as funny because everyone expects Labour to be slaughtered, aside from one or two Comical Ali-like figures who continue to maintain steadfast confidence despite all evidence to the contrary.

I always thought leaving the EU would be a cause for celebration, but the sight of Donald Tusk accepting the Article 50 letter this week just made me feel a bit sad, and that we had let down our friends and neighbours. One of the things Brexit has done is made me realise how European I feel, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I always found Vote Leave's whole Commonwealth shtick a bit disingenuous, because we have far more in common with the Dutch and the Germans than with most non-European countries, even those we did forcibly make part of our empire against their will.

Happy Brexit Day everyone. I guess we'll be okay in the long term. March 29th is the bloodiest day in English history, a day on which a London-dominated clique funded by the City defeated an army raised from the north and Midlands; history has since come to know it as the War of the Roses although it barely affected people who weren't directly involved. (Historian John Gillingham even states that direct taxes went down and housebuilding continued, which is more than can be said for the past few years). On that date in 1461, in a snowstorm in Towton, north Yorkshire, the young usurper Edward IV - only 18 years old - beat Lancastrian forces loyal to the insane Henry VI and his French wife Margaret of Anjou.

As many people have remarked, a terror attack in the centre of London was expected at some point, although it is no less shocking for that. Aside from St Peter's Basilica or perhaps the Eiffel Tower, there is probably no other European building as recognisable to Europe's enemies as the Palace of Westminster. Theresa May wasn't quite correct when she referred to it as the oldest Parliament - both Iceland and the Isle of Man have more ancient bodies, being descended from those egalitarian Vikings - but it's certainly fair to call Westminster the Mother of Parliaments, a powerful symbol of representative government.

Tottenham MP David Lammy has been writing in the Evening Standard about how it makes sense now for London to become a 'city-state', following Brexit: Over the course of the next two years as the reality of Brexit begins to bite, the economic, social and political cleavages between London and other parts of the country will become more pronounced. London’s status as a de facto city-state will become clearer and the arguments for a London city-state to forge a more independent path will become stronger. I've argued before that there is an increasingly strong case for London leaving the union because the aspirations of Londoners and the people of England are diverging so much.

I'm very sceptical of the idea that the younger generation are more conservative than their elders, and that this makes conservatism somehow cool, which it isn't. There have been times where the kids are more reactionary than their parents but generally only as a result of religious movements - and Britain is as atheistic as can be. Young Brits are very liberal and cosmopolitan, even compared to their peers in other European countries. In polls they express low levels of pride in their country and an unwillingness to fight in any theoretical war. The Brexit vote, and the big gap between old and young, showed just how liberal the young are.