The racists have successfully articulated a broad antiestablishment sentiment — originating in class injuries, regional decline, postindustrial devastation, generational anxieties, etc. — along bigoted, national chauvinist lines.

The Leave vote cannot be reduced to racism and nationalism — but that is the primary way in which it has been organized and recruited and directed, and that is the primary way in which the outcome will be experienced.

That this was achieved so soon after the fascist murder of a center-left, pro-immigrant member of parliament, is stunning in a way. It says something about the truculence of some of the chauvinism on display. It says something about the profound sense of loss which a reasserted “Britishness” is supposed to compensate for.