Hardline Brexiteers are the UK’S NRA – and we can’t let them take control of the country

They are well funded. They are deeply entrenched in their respective countries’ establishments. They wield enormous influence, despite their views being minority ones

Lord Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, is the most prominent supporter of Leave Means Leave (Getty)

In a sensible world, Leave Means Leave (“the campaign for a clean Brexit”) could be safely be dismissed as a bunch of kooks and ignored as a result.

Made up of people subscribing to an extreme Brexit – which during the referendum, the Leave campaign claimed would never happen – they are a of coalition fundamentalists. The group is a bit like the dog that you don’t need to tell the children to steer clear of, because of it can be counted on to produce a baleful-sounding growl if they’re unwise enough to get within a metre or two of where it lays.

Unfortunately we don’t live in a sensible world, nor anything like it.

Arguably its most prominent supporter is Lord Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has a line into the Today programme by dint of that status. He therefore has an influential platform from with which to vent his spleen, as he did this morning.

He has also secured for himself the status of “grandee”. This means that when he steps up to the microphone, his past deeds don't enter the discussion – even though this man’s record in office, as plain old Nigel Lawson, is very relevant whenever he talks about the “economic opportunities” of sailing off into the Atlantic to trade on WTO rules (which would see UK exports hobbled by substantial tariffs) and waving two fingers to the continent.

The economic fallout from the “Lawson boom” he engineered in the late Eighties was brutal. It led to a deep (and entirely avoidable) recession, with unemployment jumping above 10 per cent – that’s more than 3 million people by the way – as the Government battled to bring down inflation that topped out at just below that figure.

Millennials will probably find figures like that hard to contemplate, because they are. It wasn’t a fun time to be around.

As such, this is a dog that should really have been muzzled long ago. Unfortunately for the future prosperity of those millennials, not to mention the life chances of Generation Z that is following them, it still has bite.

Consider the success of Leave Means Leave and its fellow travellers.

The Leave campaign held that Britain’s transition out of the EU would be seamless. As recently as July, Liam Fox was talking about a post-Brexit free trade deal as “the easiest in human history”. Don’t you worry your sweet little heads, we got this, and afterwards on to the restoration of Pax Britannica!

Yet now we’re talking seriously about no deal, and people like Lord Lawson are getting pulpits from which to preach its virtues.

It really is remarkable how quickly the debate has shifted. Even the Farage creature used to talk about the UK following Norway’s example by remaining in the single market, but outside the EU.

Since the result of the referendum, however, we’ve gone from that to hard Brexit, to shall we see if Iceland would like a cuddle.

That’s quite a coup for the crazies. But perhaps it shouldn't come as such a surprise.

Leave Means Leave and its ilk are, in many ways, the British equivalent of America’s National Rifle Association. And they have both succeeded through similar means.

They are well funded. They are deeply entrenched in their respective countries’ establishments. They wield enormous influence, despite their views being minority ones: polls have shown a large majority of Americans favour gun control, just as a large majority of Britons would prefer staying in the single market – including those who want out of the EU.

Both view anything that smacks of compromise as the thin end of the wedge – that’s despite the destructive places it will lead them to travel down. Both succeed because of the cowardice of moderates on their own side, who quail in the face of their onslaught. Don't upset that dog, children!

In the US, this has led to a situation where even people placed on its terrorist “no fly” list, for fear of what they might do if they’re allowed on a plane, need have little cause for concern over their ability to indulge in blood-soaked mayhem. They can walk into any gun fair and buy military grade weaponry with which to shoot up shopping centres or schools instead.

In the UK, the mayhem will be economic in character, and will thus take longer to be realised.

But if Lord Lawson and his friends are allowed to continue to dictate the agenda, if their furious devotion to the purity of their madness is rewarded, Britain will be left with a mess that positively pales by comparison to the one he left his successor, John Major, to sort out. It’ll make that look like a gentle summertime shower.

It was hero of Conservatism, Edmund Burke, who was responsible for the famous quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Some of Lord Lawson’s colleagues in the Conservative Party might care to meditate on that at this juncture.