I hate to break it to you, John, but the Kremlin meddles in everything, just as the CIA meddles and MI6 meddles. All nations are meddling in each other’s affairs, even when they’re allies. Especially when they’re allies. The Kremlin might be better at meddling than we are, but all the spook agencies are all a-meddling. It’s hardly a stunning exclusive. What this ‘Russia swung the Brexit vote’ BS really smacks of is a desperate desire to believe that the British people would never have voted to leave the sacred institution of the EU had it not been for Vladimir Putin’s mendacious meddling. Because that’s how stupid and gullible the British public are in the eyes of our progressive metropolitan elites. The Sun-reading plebs are just ignorant pigs who will gobble down any old rancid swill that piques their prejudices. They don’t have the capacity to think for themselves, unlike the enlightened, Observer-reading metropolitan set. They spend their days chain-vaping, chugging Monster energy drinks and doom-scrolling social media, foaming at the mouth about immigrants. Obviously these fools voted for Brexit - they’re all stupid and racist after all! Except that isn’t true, or what happened. For decades, the British people were denied any meaningful democratic input into the UK’s gradual absorption into an increasingly integrated European political project that was steadily chipping away at national sovereignty. They noticed. They didn’t like it. And when they were finally given a referendum, they said, ‘No, thank you. Our democracy matters.’ It was a genuinely British act of quiet rebellion. Of course there have been consequences. But the lesson ought to be that MPs should do more than pay lip service to British democracy. It’s not for sale to the highest bidder, or tradable for market access. It’s ours, and we’re keeping it. And I say this as somebody who voted Remain. Looking back, I realise I didn’t vote Remain because I believed the EU was particularly democratic, or even an especially good idea. I voted Remain because, at the time, it happened to chime with my political worldview. But when I began to realise that much of the supposedly progressive establishment wasn’t particularly progressive at all, and had rather more authoritarian instincts than I’d appreciated, the EU suddenly looked a lot less appealing. And here’s the thing. I suspect much of the Rejoin lobby would rapidly lose its enthusiasm for European integration if the EU became even moderately centre-right, never mind genuinely right-wing. Imagine Brussels suddenly embracing such outrageous ideas as the immutability of biological sex, the absurdity of gender self-identification, and the principle that women’s rights should take precedence over those of cross-dressing blokes. The same people currently demanding that we rejoin would be running around with their hair on fire, screaming that we must leave this dreadful, reactionary institution immediately. Well, we’ve left. Democracy has spoken. And apparently the BBC’s woke octogenarian still can’t come to terms with it.