The English nationalist party

The tory party, as reconstructed after 2016, is now the English nationalist party.

I like not to believe in the 'people who voted for brexit are stupid' idea. In general I find the notion that 'people who disagree with me are stupid' rather offensive in fact. One of my brothers (I suspect) voted for brexit and he's definitely not stupid. Dominic Cummings is not stupid.

So I choose to believe that the people who drove the requirement for a brexit referendum within the tories and who have since transformed the party were not simply stupid: they knew what the result would almost certainly be if they won. And that likely result is the fragmentation of the UK and in particular the independence of Scotland. I don't understand the NI situation and I certainly had not thought the consequences of it through. I do have some significant experience of the Scottish situation, being married to a Scottish person and having lived there for 23 years: and it was just blindingly obvious in 2016 and remains so today what brexit would do there. (For what it's worth, although I didn't get to vote in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 as we'd moved to England by then I would have voted against independence, as would my wife. We have semi-seriously considered moving back to Scotland so we could vote for it next time.)

So I assume that the people who who drove the brexit referendum within the tory party were both not stupid and also had a far better understanding of the dynamics of the UK than I did. In particular I assume they had studied and understood the history of Northern Ireland in much greater depth than I have. That leads me to the conclusion that they understood that the consequences of a vote for brexit would be the fragmentation of the UK into (I suspect) England-and-Wales with an independent Scotland rejoining the EU and the reunification of Ireland. And that's either what they actively wanted or the cost they were willing to bear to get what they wanted. That makes them, in my view, English nationalists.

I accept that my belief that the brexiteer faction which has now taken over the tory party is not just made of rather stupid people seems to be in conflict with some of the post-brexit-vote evidence, but I still maintain my belief that they were not just rather dim people but, well, English nationalists who knew what they wanted, which was an independent England at any cost.

Finally note that, even if we were to agree that the brexiteers within the tory party are just a little dim – which is something I might be open to persuasion about – I will not accept that brexit voters were just stupid, any more than I would accept that Trump voters were. I find that idea grossly offensive. Indeed I assume that people who voted for brexit, while they probably did not understand the NI situation, probably did understand the implications for Scottish independence, as I did, and were happy with that: they also were English nationalists, in fact.