Morrissey is right – Brexit really is magnificent, by Brendan O’Neill. A typical example of how politically correct bullying works:

[A] correspondent tells me that, like me, he voted Leave for liberal, democratic reasons, not Little Englander ones, but such has been the ‘name-calling’ and ‘toxicity’ in response to his decision that he’s had to slink off social media and keep his head down. It’s awful. Loads of Brexiteers feel like this — cautious, ashamed, ‘shy’ — and it’s largely down to the increasingly nasty Brexit-bashing in much of the media and the defamation of the Leave-loving demos as ‘low information’, foreigner-hating economy-wreckers.

Morrissey!?

So thank God for Morrissey — words I never thought I would write. This week, the former Smiths frontman described Brexit as ‘magnificent’. Yes, throwing his national-treasure status into serious jeopardy, risking the ire of his one-time teenage fans who’ve gone on to get cushy jobs in the more earnest, EU-adoring bits of the broadsheet and broadcast media, Morrissey said the Brexit result was not simply interesting or even good — it was magnificent. And it was magnificent, he said, because it showed that the public aren’t actually ‘hypnotised’ by BBC ‘nonsense’, and do not buy into the ‘myth of reality’ foisted on them by their know-betters, and rather can think for themselves. Yes Moz! These comments are the best thing he’s done since The Queen is Dead.

Why “magnificent”?

It was magnificent for three reasons. First because, as Moz says, it showed that ordinary people are not the thoughtless, nodding-dog imbibers of information from on high that too many in the political class think they are. … They used their own mental and moral muscles. They acted with independence and confidence. This was democracy in action, and it was magnificent.

The second reason Brexit was magnificent is because overnight it exploded the pretensions of all those who claim to be on the side of the little people but who we now know view the little people with naked contempt. … It confirmed that Labour has virtually no connection with people who actually labour …. And it ripped the veil of progressiveness from the face of much of the political set, revealing that these supposedly caring, pro-poor, liberal-minded souls are nothing of the sort and actually view much of England — especially those dodgy northern bits — as being inhabited by the gruffest, dumbest people imaginable. It gave us clarity on where people really stand politically, and that, too, is magnificent.

And the third, most obvious reason Brexit was magnificent is because it seriously dented the EU. I know we’re meant to think of the EU as a happy-clappy internationalist outfit, but  … we know the EU is anti-democratic, illiberal, paternalistic and discriminatory … we know that it elevates the needs of the European Central Bank over the livelihoods of the Greek, Irish and other working classes …

hat-tip Stephen Neil