…to northern working-class Old Labour voters who’d switched to Ukip in the years before Brexit and then decided on Thursday that, after victory in the referendum, it was safe to return to the Labour fold. If you’re wondering about the electoral impact of the deaths of 29 Britons in two Islamic terror attacks in the remaining days of the campaign, this would traditionally benefit the “law-and-order party”, “tough on immigration”, etc. Why didn’t it? Well, just as the Champs-Élysées attack a few days before the French election didn’t benefit Marine Le Pen, it may be that fatalistic voters are taking the advice of their leaders and “getting used to it”. Or it could be that no one under 35, 40, 50 can now remember back to when incendiary Mohammedans weren’t self-detonating hither and yon, and that England was once upon a time a peaceable kingdom whose bridge spans knew not bollards.
Yet even that doesn’t fully explain the debacle.
