For decades there was something close to a political consensus that the most important metric was economic prosperity. A wealthy nation was essential both to the aspirations of individual households and the funding of public services. The Tories might give greater weight to the former. […]

Brexit is both symptom and cause of a breakdown in this consensus. It can no longer be taken for granted that senior politicians, or the voters themselves, will automatically and reflexively put national wealth first.

As long ago as January 2014, Nigel Farage was explicit about this: “If you said to me, would I like to see over the next 10 years a further 5 million people come into Britain and if that happened we’d all be slightly richer, I’d say, I’d rather we weren't slightly richer.” […]

We have reached the point where, to an extraordinary extent, the implementation of the 2016 referendum result trumps all else. Why so? Because, as Farage declared with more candour than most mainstream politicians can yet muster, culture is nudging old- fashioned political economy out of its prime spot. Immigration is now the gravitational centre of the whole debate: a debate much less about national wealth or national sovereignty than national identity.

Beneath all the talk of “control” and “global Britain,” there is the germ of an extremely unpleasant nativism. Again, we pesky centrists are told to be quiet and to heed the concerns of those who have been “left behind.” But since there is not a shred of respectable evidence that immigration has had more than a marginal impact upon public service capacity, wage levels or net welfare costs, I am forced to conclude that there is now a sufficiency of Britons who just don't much like people of foreign extraction, and certainly don't want many more of them around the place. […]