“We are the 48%” is a new mantra within the fold of those who voted to remain in the EU. They are also the type of people to push for a second referendum to truly make the result “democratic”. For what is more democratic than ignoring the result and instead pushing the same inane arguments which led to the British people voting to leave the EU in the first place.

The thinking behind this second referendum is easy to see. It is the epitomisation of London-centric, liberal sentiments which see everything as cosmopolitan and multicultural. There can be nothing wrong with immigration because in their White-majority neighbourhood/apartment complex they see no issues with it. Their wages aren’t undercut, and their lifestyles aren’t radically changed. This type of thinking leads one to suspect darker elements to other people’s opposition to mass immigration. Instead of seeing legitimate concerns, they see deep-seated racism and xenophobia (as well as other buzzwords). They cannot possibly understand why people in Birmingham, Coventry and Sunderland could have any problems with immigration or multiculturalism.

Economically speaking, they cannot realise why people in destroyed towns and cities who lost nearly everything due to deindustrialisation would have a major problem with the economic status quo, as they themselves benefit from it.

Fundamentally, this is pure selfishness. Instead of seeing the potential for collective action and a collective belief in a problem, they see their own egotistical ends as more important and foundational than any such collectivity. Theirs is a world of pure, atomised individualism, where ideology and principles are shaped by their own desires and wants, yet paradoxically bounded in the conception of a wider collection of liberal thought and feeling which deems other opinions which question such a bounded collectivity as dissident and even extremist. Fathoming other people’s worries and concerns does not concern them, as they personally do not need to understand them when shaping their personal worldview.

This is the thinking behind a second referendum. It is not a collective groan of economic and social concerns, but rather the selfish desires of people who do not have a care for the thoughts of others (except as markers of identity in the case of expressing concern for intersectional racism or sexism). Their economic and social positions most likely will not take a significant hit due to leaving the EU, but their ideological assumptions of an enlightened liberalism do. That’s their major problem. All these people have accepted the dominant narratives of the modern world. Rampant consumerism, neoliberal corporatism that pillages economies and taxpayers, and the creation of political entities that take power away from people and into the hands of self-selecting bureaucracies.

Commonality and nationality are concepts completely alien to their ideological perspectives. The people who want a second referendum are simply turning their angst against a wider collectivity who they assumed were as “liberal and enlightened” as they purportedly were. They symbolise neoliberal atomisation and the statism and bureaucratism that infects modern societies.