Those who fronted the campaign—people like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage—were human smoke bombs, generating a camouflaging cloud of xenophobia and culture wars. They pitted “us” against “them.” Leavers were “true patriots” who claimed to be “taking back control”—reasserting state sovereignty and limiting immigration—against “elitist” cosmopolitan liberals happy to surrender national autonomy to faceless Eurocrats.
