The case for Brexit has been politically lost, and can now only be maintained through heightened propaganda by the right wing press and political censorship by the governing far right wing of the Tory Party. The Guardian reports:

Academics are accusing a Tory MP and government whip of “McCarthyite” behaviour, after he wrote to all universities asking them to declare what they are teaching their students about Brexit and to provide a list of teachers’ names.

I can’t be the only one to read this article with both dismay and alarm. There can’t be any reason for demanding this information other than to threaten academia into towing the government’s line. Number 10 however (never normally hesitant in engaging in McCartyite behaviour) has disowned him completely now:

Downing Street issued a rebuke to the MP Chris Heaton-Harris on Tuesday, telling reporters he had not been acting in his capacity as a government whip when he wrote the letter to university leaders asking for details of professors lecturing on Brexit matters.

“Chris Heaton-Harris wrote to universities in his capacity as an MP, not as a representative of the government,” the prime minister’s spokesman said.

Number 10 has disowned Heaton-Harris, but that’s not to say they weren’t the originator of his letters. Mirroring the Trump Administration in America, Brexit has become entirely about sowing chaos. The more exhausting it becomes the more likely Brexiteers feel they are to get away with their reckless, pointless and racist behaviour. Academia is of course not their friend:

Prof David Green, vice-chancellor of Worcester University, told the Guardian he had felt a chill down his spine when he read the “sinister” request.

“This letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous,” he said. “Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and newspeak, naturally justified as ‘the will of the British people’, a phrase to be found on Mr Heaton-Harris’s website.”

Heaton-Harris has walked his letter and its demands back, following the furore, but there’s no way this will be the last such incident, given there’s no justification whatsoever for pursuing Brexit. Repression, suppression of the facts and outright lies are all these people have left, and it’s chilling to think of what lengths they may be prepared to go to in order to achieve their nationalist objective. Until a mass movement really takes hold, comfortably deconstructing the ‘will of the people’ propaganda nonsense, and overwhelming the far right gutter press, this nightmare is still very likely to happen.