By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
In 30 years it will be much easier to say this, but this must be the stupidest era there has ever been in British politics.
Oh yes, some modern politicians can make classical allusions or dance nimbly about when interviewed, but they do not really know anything, or understand anything.
They live entirely in the present. They know little of other countries and less about the past.
They idolise Winston Churchill but are in fact ignorant about him or his era and the huge price in power and wealth which he rightly paid for our survival in 1940.
Worse still, they think they are clever. This has something to do with the way we pick our leaders.
I have long suspected that they have to pass an examination in stupidity before being allowed into Westminster. But in fact the selection procedures of the major parties achieve the same thing.
They demand servile conformity with the idiotic beliefs which now govern our country.
Show the slightest sign of spirit or independent thought, on any topic, and you are out.
So here we are, fresh from six months of determined self-harm and illiterate panic over the virus, on the brink of making it even worse.
Anyone who knew anything about the EU issue said years ago (as I did) that our best way out of Brussels rule was to copy Norway – stay in the Single Market and get rid of all the political and legal baggage.
Zealots, who treasure the delusions that Britain is still a major power with a thriving economy, derided this. No, they said, we must have a total breach, and then we will soar free, our Victorian greatness restored.
Few of them ever grasped what it will mean to leave the Single Market, into which our economy has been totally integrated for decades, but they will shortly have a fascinating lesson in that.
The trouble is, the rest of us will have to have that lesson too.
And it is hardly surprising that France, which has so long resented our standing in Europe and the world, sees this as an opportunity to take us down a peg or two. But before complaining, remember that we gave them this chance.