Farage, Trump, and the new fault-lines in our very divided kingdom

Old people said they wanted their country back. So they took it back. From their children

Vote leave supporters wave Union flags, following the result of the EU referendum, outside Downing Street in London (Reuters)

Fancy a terrifying political fault-line with your breakfast? Here, I’ve got plenty.

There’s age. You know, young people versus old. The older you are, the more inclined you’ll have been to vote Leave. So among 18-24 year olds, 75 per cent voted Remain; among 25-49 year olds, 56 per cent voted Remain, among 50-64 year-olds, 44 per cent voted Remain, and among those over 65, just 39 per cent voted Remain. Old people said they wanted their country back. So they took it back. From their children.

How about geography? Fancy a geographic dividing line? I can give you some. Just take a look at our graphic breakdown of how the different regions voted in today’s news run. The colour code is remarkable. London and Scotland vote In, oases of Remainians surrounded by Leavers. Or to put it another way: Wales and England voted Leave, while Northern Ireland and Scotland voted Remain. Whither the misnamed United Kingdom now?

And as for the correlation between wealth and which way people voted, we await the specific data. But there is not a shred of doubt that poor people generally voted to leave the EU, and richer people generally voted to stay. A bad education is also a reliable predictor of voting out.

All these add up to an extremely divided nation, led by an extremely divided parliament, in which sits an extremely divided governing party. In becoming the third successive Tory Prime Minister to resign over Europe (though John Major’s resignation was short-lived), David Cameron has bequeathed his successor a toxic legacy. Boris Johnson is phenomenally charismatic, but healing the wounds on our body politic will stretch his Herculean talent to limits hitherto unknown. Of course, his life is made infinitely easier by the diabolical ineffectiveness of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

Strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride. It’s passed a few people by that we are now entering a very, very complex renegotiation, which will be conducted on our behalf largely by members of the civil and diplomatic services who were implacably opposed to Brexit. Trust me, they won’t be relishing fighting in defence of a position they disagree with.

The fiendish complexity of it all is where we come in. Over the coming pages of your Daily Edition, you’ll find the best analysis and writing in one coherent, classy package – even if I do say so myself. Our aim, as ever, is to replace heat with light, in the service of that lovely old idea called democracy. We really believe in it – as, going by the turnout, do the British people. Though with Donald Trump on our shores, and a nasty whiff in the air, right now the proximity of democracy and demagoguery seems to me more than just semantic.