The reason is that the establishment has become an oligarchy in which the ideological convictions of the educated class are being imposed by law upon a majority of the country, and that majority in turn is being nervously understood as incubating the prejudices of the less savoury members of a football audience. The basic belief juxtaposes the old Enlightenment contrast between Reason and the Passions. The oligarchs think they are rational and decent, while despising a population it finds constantly falling into xenophobia, racism and a variety of phobias. Language reveals a lot, and the sneering word "tabloid" summarises the oligarchic view of the classes that must be kept under control. The UKIP triumph is in part the working class fighting back against a hostile caricature of what they actually feel and support. It is a remarkable kind of class struggle going on.  

What then is this oligarchic political vision that is being imposed upon us. The most obvious tenet of oligarchic doctrine is our membership of the European Union. Almost the entire political class has been inducted into this club, and few have much stomach for reclaiming the national independence that we have lost in the process. Challenged, they talk of "isolation", and conjure up absurd statistics about trade dependence. Had they had the opportunity, many, particularly the Liberal Democrats, would have had us in the horrors of the eurozone by now, yet they too have joined in abusing the Eurosceptics as unworldly. The lies told at the 1975 referendum have been erased from memory. The opponents of EU membership, almost certainly a majority of Britons, long had no party with which to associate. Only with UKIP pressure has the question been able to return to political life, and as yet only by some in the Conservative Party.

Our rulers, furthermore, are all devout multiculturalists. Until recently when the demos began to growl UKIP attitudes, there seemed no limit to its readiness to absorb people of any culture from all over the world. Britain has always been a country of immigrants, they cried, and many of the Left thought it a smart move, since immigrants, with their close concern with governmental welfare, strongly tend to support left-wing parties. Labour's 13 years of easy entry have rather transformed the voting structure in the country. It is only recently that politicians have begun to concern themselves with "white flight" or the tendency of the natives to move out of dominantly immigrant areas leaving ghettos behind. They are abandoning a world they can no longer recognise.  The "shocking level" of concentrated ethnicity, as David Goodhart the director of the think tank Demos has observed, "means there is less opportunity for interaction with the white mainstream". In the not too distant future, the Oligarchy will start to encourage us to recognise a duty to have a certain proportion of ethnic-minority friends. One is reminded of the oligarch's view of state schools - preferable for everybody, except perhaps their own children.