Cameron's Demise and a Victory for the Racist Right

I could not believe the news this morning. For me, a "Leave" vote was out of the question, and it just couldn't happen. Well, it happened, and I have had to adjust to the sight of the triumphalist rantings of Brexit politicians, all of whom are right of centre. What a crew! There is the effervescently gloating Nigel Farrage, as well as Boris Johnson, Chris Grayling, and other stars in the Tory firmament. Interestingly, all the smiling faces are either UKIP or Tory pundits - I have seen no Labour Brexiters as of yet. This political imbalance, as well as the fact that Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen have welcomed the referendum result, is highly significant.
As for David Cameron's falling on his sword, he reminds me of the "upper class twit of the year" in the famous Monty Python sketch who ran himself over with his own car. As Owen Jones says in today's "Guardian": "He called a referendum not because he thought it was in the national interest, but because it was useful to manage internal Conservative divisions. The referendum was inevitably framed as a struggle between two Conservative factions."
Cameron miscalculated disastrously, for himself as well as those of us who did not buy into the Brexit side's "case". I would have been delighted to see him leave his post after losing a General Election, but I am not happy to watch his departure from office in this way. As I said yesterday (it seems a different world today!),he should have shown some personal steel (and common sense) in resisting the pressure to hold the referendum in the first place. In actual fact, the referendum result is not legally binding, and if Cameron had been braver, he could have disregarded it. As Haroon Siddique has written:
"The simple answer to the question as to whether the EU referendum is legally binding is “no”. In theory, in the event of a vote to leave the EU, David Cameron, who opposes Brexit, could decide to ignore the will of the people and put the question to MPs banking on a majority deciding to remain.
This is because parliament is sovereign and referendums are generally not binding in the UK."
Some hopes of that...
So, where are we now? Well, we all know about the run on the pound, the unrest in the Stock market and rumblings of nationalist discontent in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We know, also, that  Nigel Farage has disowned a pledge to spend £350 million of European Union cash on the NHS after Brexit. As Jon Stone says in "The Independent":
"Nigel Farage has disowned a pledge to spend £350 million of European Union cash on the NHS after Brexit."
In fact, "Barrage" denies having made such a pledge. For a man who has condemned so many other politicians for being slippery and evasive, Nigel seems to have learned from them.
Like I said yesterday, so long ago now, this referendum has created divisions across the political spectrum. The result has caused turmoil in our political life, having already led to the removal of David Cameron from office, and the possible sacking of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. But of particular concern, to me at least, is the nasty racist undercurrent that has accompanied the Brexit campaign. As one young Spanish lady said in a TV debate to Michael Gove:
"You are talking about us (EC migrants) as if we are enemies. I love this country".
Now, I accept that not all Brexit supporters are racists, but, as others besides me have pointed out, all racists are Brexit supporters. London voted to Remain yesterday, and some media pundits have given the misleading impression that the rest of the country voted to Leave. This is not the case, as many constituencies elsewhere in Britain (all in Scotland) voted Remain. The problem is that there was not enough of them. In many areas, including traditional Labour Party areas, the vote appears to have been swung by an antipathy to immigration. I do not believe that Nigel Farrage and his ilk are all racists, but they have shown that they know how to manipulate the racist vote. Brexit did particularly well in some depressed and disadvantaged areas, where there is a feeling that the native population (whoever they are) have been passed over in favour of immigrants.
This is a Europe-wide problem, and the Europe's far-right parties have been delighted at the victory for the Leave campaign. French National Front (FN) leader, Marine Le Pen tweeted: “Victory for freedom! As I have been asking for years, now we need to have the same referendum in France and in the countries of the EU.”
Presumably, the French equivalent will be called "Frexit". The FN's equivalents in the Netherlands, Germany (Alternative für Deutschland), the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People's Party and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece are equally jubilant. The dogs of Europe are beginning to bark in unison. Donald Trump, who arrived in the UK today, the Daily Telegraph says:
 "Asked if he took heart from the result for his own campaign, Mr Trump said: “We're doing very well in the United States and essentially the same thing is happening in the United States."
We have been warned. Labour politicians who were misguided enough to support the Leave campaign should take note: they have helped the cause of the Right, in the USA, Europe and Britain immeasurably.
I conclude by looking at the impact this result is having upon the people that the Brexit campaign has targeted: EU migrants. This morning on TV, I saw a Polish couple who run a shop in Peterborough looking distinctly apprehensive about the fact that the town where they had lived for so long had voted decisively for Brexit. And not just EC migrants have cause to feel apprehensive. Joseph Harker, in the Guardian, says:
"Yes, the immigration issue has been about numbers coming from eastern Europe, and about people who don’t have English as their first language. But as anyone with a black or brown face knows, our nationality is regularly questioned, even when we’re born here: we are spoken about in phrases such as “immigrant communities”, and immigration stories carried in the media are commonly accompanied by images of black or Asian people, implicitly assuming they arrived from overseas."
The Brexit campaign, then, has potentially turned the clock back several decades to the days when Enoch Powell was the darling of the racist right, and the National Front (NF) appeared on our streets. That is David Cameron's final contribution to British politics. Thanks, Dave.