We have all lost

How very thin the crust of civilisation is. There we were, patronising the mediaevalism of other cultures, confident that we had progressed beyond all that nonsense.

Then along comes another false messiah, denying every inconvenient fact and promising a naively simplistic road to (earthly) paradise. Lo and behold, masses of our fellow citizens (on both sides) promptly revert to tribalism. The English backlash is no prettier than the Anglophobia that provoked it.

Perhaps someone will remind me when was the last time an arbitrary line drawn on a map, leaving minorities numbering hundreds of thousands on each 'wrong' side, helped solve rather than create problems?

Or the last time that emphasising what divides people rather than what unites them led to peace and prosperity?

Whoever wins on Thursday, we have all lost already.