Stay or go? Moment of reckoning for Britain finally here

Campaign leaders are guilty of treating a divided electorate — both their own supporters and those opposing them — with little more than contempt, writes Peter Apps

AS YOU drive across south-east England, you don’t even have to talk to anyone to see the depth of anger and division the EU referendum has released. In gardens, by roadsides and on farmland, huge Leave banners read: “We want our country back”.

Britain isn’t usually like this, not even during a general election. It is a country built, after all, on often messy consensus. There have been periods of polarisation before, of course — during the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, and again in the immediate run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. Never in my lifetime, however, has the population felt so fundamentally divided on such an existential issue.