In youth we learn..In old Age we understand.

I thought I might take some time to lay before the assembled ranks of Whittledom an interesting (and worrying) aspect of the tangled and frustrating story of the UK’s attempt to re-establish independence from the EU, or in the vile, degraded shorthand of modern journalists “Brexit”.

Although the Leave vote won the referendum, at 52% vs 48% it was closer than I, or any Leave voter, would have liked. Like the 2016 US election though, these figures bear some closer scrutiny. Across the UK, only Greater London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain. Wales and every English region outside London voted Leave. Even the affluent, cosmopolitan South East mirrored the UK vote closely at 51.8% Leave vs 48.2% Remain. At a more local level the result is an even bigger success for Leave. The four hundred voting areas used in the referendum split 260/140 Leave/Remain. If this had been a parliamentary election a Leave government would have had a majority most politicians can only dream of. So, the sense of the country as whole was far more Leave than the popular vote would suggest, just as Trump won in many more voting districts than Clinton did. Lots of pearl clutching, city dwelling Guardian readers worried about losing their cheap nannies and maybe having to get a visa (oh the horror!) to go to their “little place in Tuscany” were more than outweighed by ordinary folk across the country who just want to have the final say on how their country is governed rather than a part share in a convoluted pseudo-democracy owned and run by technocrats.

However, there is another split, even more stark and much, much more worrying. The age split. The age group 18-24 voted Leave 27%, Remain 73%. 65 and up voted Leave 60%, remain 40%. Every age group in between is on a sliding scale, the older folk are, the more likely they are to have voted Leave. The mid forties is the crux point, over that you’re more likely to be a Leaver, under it, a Remainer.

It’s not that everyone under certain age voted Remain and over a certain age voted Leave, but it is a very clear divide. It doesn’t take a political genius to see why the Remainers want a second referendum and why the political establishment has been havering and dithering, teasing out the process of leaving the EU like a Zen master making tea. If there were a second vote tomorrow, without any campaign, it’s quite possible that simple demographics would give a victory to Remain, not inevitable, but possible. The longer the delay, the more Leave voters simply die, and the more Remain voters become eligible to vote.

The conventional explanation for this split is simple and oft repeated in various forms and varying degrees by Remainers and the mainstream media. Old people are basically grumpy racists who resent youth, hate multicultural Britain and are willing to destroy their children’s and grandchildren’s futures in order to return to a sort of 1950s fantasy land. In fact, it’s very common these days on British TV shows to hear the word “grandparents” and “racist” tied together in sitcoms and stand-up, all part of the good old progressive pro-EU kulturkampf. Meanwhile, young people are of course, optimistic, cosmopolitan and tomorrow belongs to them…

No doubt, there are plenty of older folk who have a hard time keeping up with the latest officially sanction words to describe people of a different colour than them, and there are some (but far, far fewer than the media want us to think) that really are racists, but I don’t buy the official line on why the oldest and the youngest Britons voted so differently in 2016. Let’s look at some alternative reasons.

The older people are the more they have seen of the story of the UK’s involvement with “the European Project”. It’s often stated that “we’ve been in the EU for more than forty years.” This is, at best, being disingenuous, as the EU didn’t exist in the 1970s. In 1973 the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC), usually referred to as the Common Market. In 1975 there was a referendum on whether we should remain members and the UK voted to stay. At the time those politicians, from both the left and right, that warned that there was an agenda behind the EEC, that national sovereignty would be sacrificed, and a European super state created were shouted down as paranoid lunatics. During the campaign the Prime Minister, and committed “European” Edward Heath, stated.

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty, even that we shall begin to lose our national identity. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified and exaggerated.”

Since then the EEC has morphed into something wider and deeper, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty established the European Union, further treaties have continued the process of forming a federal state from sovereign nations. The EU now has a currency, a flag, an anthem, a diplomatic corps, a fledgling intelligence service and is moving on with plans for armed forces.

On the BBC’s political discussion show Question Time in 1990, the host, respected news anchor Peter Sissons asked Heath to clarify something.

Peter Sissons: The single currency, a United States of Europe, was all that in your mind when you took Britain in?

Edward Heath: Of course, yes.

Sissons was visibly taken aback.

I was involved in campaigning for a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty back in the day. I was in my twenties then and active in the Conservative Party. We knew that the treaty was very important, not just tinkering with details but changing a trade group into a state in embryo. Our efforts were in vain and we were not given a vote then, or on any other of the various changes down the years. Some other countries did get to vote, the Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty and were told “sorry, wrong answer”. They accepted it in a second referendum. We’ve seen this become a pattern, the popular vote is only legitimate when it ratifies the EU’s will, other results are either overturned or circumvented. Is it any wonder that older people who have witnessed this disregard for democracy are more sceptical about the EU?

At the other end of the matter, the younger people are the less they’ve seen of this story, and the more pro-EU material they’ve been exposed to. In our schools, the EU spends millions on teaching materials to make sure children are “well informed”. This includes such stimulating materials as The Mystery of the Golden Stars, a story book aimed at nine to ten-year olds. The EU Commission’s website says:

The primary aim of this resource is to introduce some aspects of the European Union in a child-friendly way to upper junior school-aged children in the UK. It allows children to discover what the EU is; how it works and how it may be relevant to them, in a fun and stimulating way.

I’m quite sure all this stuff is balanced, telling our children that some people think the EU is good, but on the other hand, some people think it’s double plus good. Another school book was simply titled My Country: Europe, ‘nuff said.

Then there’s the Erasmus programme. Superficially it’s a student exchange programme that encourages and allows young students to travel and study across the EU. It has a budget of € 2.1 billion and has, as of 2015, had some 678,000 young people (or should I say Young Pioneers?) pass through it. More EU kulturkampf, hundreds of thousands of young people being taught that the EU is a good thing and, moreover, that money grows on trees and is handed out by the government.

Add to this the constant drip drip drip in the media. I’m not talking here about bias in news reporting and political coverage, we expect that, it’s part of the political landscape we live with. I’m referring to the sly way it’s inserted into comedy, soaps and other theoretically non-political shows. I’ve lost count of the nasty little digs on game shows, the digs at “racist” Leave voters, the angst voiced by characters in soaps about whether they’ll be able to go on holiday to Spain after Brexit, or if their business will fold. Bill Whittle has spoken often and eloquently on how this works in the States, it’s the same here in dear old Blighty and it all adds up. I don’t think there’s a concerted conspiracy at work, there doesn’t need to be. The world in which the people who produce our TV live in is very different from that of most British people. They write what they know, and they barely know any Leave voters.

So, which explanation do you find more convincing? Older Brits voted Leave because they’re bigoted morons who hate their children and grandchildren while younger Brits voted remain because they’re full of hope and want to march on into the shining uplands of the EU future? Or, do you think it just possible that older Brits know more about this while younger you are the more EU propaganda you’ve been exposed to?

When the British people were given a chance to vote on leaving or remaining in the EU, my parents, my sister and myself all voted Leave, my sister’s kids voted Remain. My mum and dad voted Leave to make amends for what they saw as their mistake in voting to stay back in 1975. I voted leave more in hope than expectation. We certainly didn’t vote Leave because we care nothing for my niece and nephew’s future.

I try to keep personal animosity out of my political life. Many people voted Remain with the best of intentions and I have good, dear friends that did so. That said, I find it hard not to hate the Remaniac campaigners who characterise Leavers as callous, racist old bigots that don’t care about our nation’s youth, who smugly talk of the Leave vote “dying off” and who rejoice, albeit impersonally, at that prospect. My father died the year after the referendum. If we are forced to have a second referendum, I won’t just be voting Leave, I’ll be out campaigning, and campaigning hard, not just for me, but for my niece, my nephew and for my dad.