Peter Stafford-Bow's Blog: Corkscrewed

As a successful international businessman, a lucid observer of politics and a wine consultant at the top of his game, I feel I am well qualified to comment on the current state of the British nation, great country that it is. Better, certainly, than the tawdry ranks of hand-wringing commentators and hapless politicians currently bleating from our TV screens and social media feeds.

The parallels with an episode I experienced in the 1980s are remarkable. It was morning assembly at my prestigious private school and the deputy head strode into the hall, face like thunder. Someone, he intoned, voice hushed but venomous, had fouled the sanctity of the dining hall. He elaborated, with incredulity, on how a member of the kitchen staff had discovered a carrier bag full of faeces – extruded from a yet-to-be-identified mammal, though their freshness and size implied a schoolboy aged between twelve and fifteen – that had been left in full view atop a dining table.

We howled with laughter, of course. Whatever one’s age or gender, there is nothing funnier than an inappropriately positioned turd, and placing such an object within the hallowed walls of the school dinner hall was a sign that a comic genius sat amongst us. Oh, how the deputy head raged at our cackling! He spat and fulminated, declaring our reaction to be worse than the act itself and condemning the crowd before him for their immaturity and their unsuitability for integration into civilised society. His diagnosis of the problem was swift, we were a writhing miasma of foulness and the act was typical of what happens when one gives a feckless rabble any kind of responsibility.

The result was that each dining table was to be supervised closely for future lunchtimes, to prevent a reoccurrence, and the chocolate vending machine would be removed for the foreseeable future.

And so we return to 2016, the seismic events of the Brexit referendum an echo of that pungent incident from my tender early years.

I am not, of course, comparing the vote of 52% of the dear adopted country of my youth with a plastic bag of artfully abandoned, recently excreted poop. Such a comparison would be crass and offensive, however accurate it might be.

My main point is the reaction of the sensible media, mainstream politicians, the technocratic class, the ranks of do-gooders and continuous improvers. To a man and woman, they have decried the result, declaring it was built upon lies and ignorance. But they are wrong, as any primary school teacher could tell you.

The act was the thing. It was the beauty of a turd on the dining table and the inevitable, priceless reaction of one’s elders and betters. The angry tears of Bob Geldof. The kitchen-top banging of Jamie Oliver. The soft, sad, frustrated faces of the leaders of our political parties. All the people who knew what was best for us, who insisted the dining tables be correctly laid, serviettes on knees and no swinging back on two legs of the chair, it’s dangerous, stop doing it, don’t you know any better?

The lesson from this epoch-defining dirty protest has yet to be learned by our overlords. And it may never be – because it will require a revolution in attitude from the ruling class, a complete rejection of the goody-goody consensus. The message is loud and clear. The children must be permitted to reject their greens, place their elbows on the table and eat with their fingers. A ruling class that continues to dish up sprouts can expect only more turds...