Matthew Parris

I am worried about the mental state of many Brexiteers. The author of The Spectator’s weekly Notes, Charles Moore, always a sharp observer of the passing scene, noticed my worry almost before I noticed it myself. He complained here a few weeks ago that I’m citing among my reasons for distrusting the Leave case the fact that so many of its adherents strike me as headbangers. He went on to suggest I’ve become psychologically incapable of even listening to their argument. Personality traits displayed by Brexit-eers do indeed worry me and help inform my response to their case. To help me weigh an argument, I’m in the habit of taking a long and careful look at the person making it.

When were you last in a game reserve? Perhaps most Spectator readers will be familiar with the experience and if you’re anything like me it’s a happy one. Where would I rather be than in an open-topped Land Rover as the sun rises over the African bush, wandering on wheels through the savannah, pausing unhurried to look around: switching off the engine, listening, watching, drinking it all in? But do I care if I spot a hyena to tick off on my list? Do I seriously fret about whether that graceful creature is an oryx or an eland, whether that glittering and iridescent bird is a greater blue-eared starling or a red-tufted malachite, or whether this giraffe we’ve just startled is reticulated or Rothschild’s?

‘Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers,’ remarked the journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht, ‘is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.’ He was right, but the fault lies not with the newspapers. The problem arises from the idea of news. ‘News’ cannot see so much of what’s happening that matters. As the new year begins I’d ask you to consider a small example: the most visible change to the built environment in Britain. I’ve yet to read anything you could call a ‘splash’ on the subject, but gradually, steadily, and in time no doubt universally, we’re losing our yellow-orange ‘sodium’ streetlights, in favour of blue-white LED ones.

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 3: Matthew Parris's article from July, where he says the fallout from the referendum has left him feeling ashamed to be British for the first time. Before even writing this I know what response it will meet. Some who fought for Leave on 23 June will be contemptuous. ‘Bad loser’, ‘diddums’, ‘suck it up’, ‘go and live somewhere else’. From the online Leave brigade who stalk the readers’ comments section beneath media columns I’m already familiar with the attitudes of the angry brigade; but aware that there were also plenty of perfectly sane and nice people who took a considered decision to vote for our exit from the EU.

On the London Underground last week the carriage was crowded. No seat. No problem. I’m only 67 and content to stand. But a younger man offered his seat, and, having some way to travel and a book to read, I accepted with the appropriate grunt and nod of gratitude. Later, approaching my station, I noticed he was still there. Should I thank him properly before alighting? But he was in another part of the carriage. It might look silly to elbow my way over. Let it pass. Then a voice in my head spoke, a voice that over the decades has become so familiar. Don’t misunderstand me: this was not my conscience. My conscience was clear. It was definitely not necessary to thank this chap again.

How does one join the Liberal Metro-politan Elite? What should be the qualifications? I must be an LME member because literally thousands of my readers have (over the years) told me so. They don’t mean it kindly, but I take it kindly. ‘Elite’ means ‘the best’, I should hate to be called illiberal, and I have a nice flat near central London. How, though, do we LMEs maintain the exclusivity of our club? The 48 per cent of voters who voted Remain will soon be hammering on our door for admission, plus (I’ll bet) a fair few repentant former Leavers too.

‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.’ This comes from Robert Browning’s ‘Epilogue’. It is quoted (though not of himself) in a staggering book by an author who in my eyes holds as good a claim to exemplify its spirit as anyone in the 20th-century history of Africa. Yes, anyone, including the many brave black freedom fighters, from Nelson Mandela down, who kept their heads held high when the odds seemed all against them. Even on Robben Island, even in the winter of his discomfort, -Mandela knew that history was on his side.

There are no roads from the Peruvian river port of Iquitos, but the rich take aeroplanes. Those who cannot pay to fly may pay the premium for the 40ft motorised express canoes that take only a day to roar to and from the upriver port of Yurimaguas with its bus station. But losers in the global race cannot afford speed. For them there are only the big, slow, hot, lumbering cargo boats: nearly four days’ journey from Iquitos to Yurimaguas. So the moment a passenger walks up the gangplank and strings their hammock between the iron rafters of the open--sided deck, we can guess he or she is not one of life’s winners. Anyone who was wouldn’t travel this way. No less than among the rich there is social stratification among the poor, and the river fast shakes people down.