TBC

It is easy to mock the longest queue in the history of Waitrose, but over the last two and half years those people have Taken Back Control.

They were shaken to the core when the international money markets were shaken by the votes cast in such places as Sunderland. It felt as if the defeat of the miners, and with it of the defeat of the working class and the defeat of the North, was on the brink of being undone.

So, as the faces of the "unexpectedly" victorious Leave campaign that everyone up here had always known was going to win, they set up people who had in reality lost as heavily as they had. 

The old pit villages and steel towns had not voted to become Singapore, or to hand over what remained of our sovereignty to the global financial institutions while cutting out the EU middle man.

On the contrary, the Leave vote had been precisely a rejection of all of that, by the people and places that had already endured 39 years of it under all three parties, beginning with the Callaghan Government's turn to monetarism in 1977.

Yet there they all were, the likes of Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg, for all the world as if they had been vindicated. But people like that are not hard to beat. Look at every Conservative Leader of the last 30 years.

The first of those was peremptorily dismissed for having grown too close to them. Another was peremptorily dismissed for having accidentally become Leader despite being more or less one of them. All of the others have been adept at swatting them like flies. 

Indeed, the present one became Leader, and thus Prime Minister, without even so much as a Leadership Election. Even after their supposed referendum glory, they could not so much get onto the ballot paper against her, meaning that there ended up being no ballot paper at all.

Not very far off three years later, here we are, facing the choice between Remain and Return. Theresa May's deal would have Britain begging, begging, to be let back into the European Union well within 10 years, and probably well within five.

But it is either that, or simply not leaving the EU at all. Initially, that would in fact be better than this deal. The struggle would then simply begin anew, as in 1973, as in 1975, and as in 1983.

The people who really run Britain have Taken Back Control, and they positively revel in the paucity of their numbers on the streets of London as I write. By definition, elites are small. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.