I CAN only guess at the nature and tone of the celebrations that will erupt in some English neighbourhoods when the UK officially leaves the European Union at 11pm on March 29, 2019. For some reason I’m reminded of the opening stanza of GK Chesterton’s The Donkey:

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

Fuelled by the scarecrow elements of the English right-wing press and their stooges who occupy the Tory twilight zone there will be street parties and more Union Jacks than a royal jubilee. The Mail, The Sun and The Express will issue commemorative wraparound editions with the heading Happy Brexit Day or variations thereof.

The Telegraph will carry a 10,000-word editorial penned by Boris Johnson. This will start on page one and occupy the opening inside spread. The Heading will be: Rule Britannia. There will be a sub-heading too: “Today marks the beginning of a glorious new chapter in Britain’s history”. It will feature a timeline stretching back to Boudicca with all stops in-between: Margaret Thatcher; Bobby Moore; Winston Churchill; Horatio Nelson; The Duke of Wellington and Robin Hood. One of these papers will carry the words of William Blake’s Jerusalem “...and did those feet in ancient time”.

We know this because the party preparations have been put in place. Theresa May has already announced that there will be a Festival of Britain following Brexit to showcase British achievement and last month it was revealed that a special commemorative 50p piece will be minted. The UK Government, fortified by the press and the BBC, is already putting in place all the accoutrements that have previously served them well in distorting reality. The royal family will have received their orders. I’m expecting another couple of royal babies and Andrew and Fergie to renew their wedding vows. If Philip continues to be spared they’ll maybe give him Manchester to go with Edinburgh.

Those who smile condescendingly at such merrymaking in expectation of the day when the Brexit dream turns to dust and the people turn to a socialist government in despair, will have a long wait. Don’t delude yourselves. This day has been long in the making and represents the ultimate dream of the Conservative Party; when all their strategies and grand designs evolved over centuries come to fruition. With Brexit what we’re seeing is a distillation of the entire rationale and philosophy of the Tories and their approach to society.

Previously, they had been able to conceal the selfishness and greed that has always been the essence of their belief structure with the help of an elaborate and sophisticated confidence trick. More than two centuries of military engagement produced the warrior heroes required to subscribe to the fiction that we’ve always been in this together. The royal family and lately a world-class broadcasting arm with global reach has ensured that the idea of unity, even amongst the worst rates of economic and health inequality, has been able to fly.

When I was young I could never understand why a large percentage of the British working class could vote in the numbers required to return a Conservative government. It’s not the aristocrats and the affluent who are responsible for electing them – there simply aren’t enough of them – it’s the people who have suffered most at the hands of traditional Tory policies who continue to vote them in.

For centuries the Tories fought hard to keep those whom they considered beneath them shut out from power and a share in Britain’s great wealth. Now the children and grand-children of the dispossessed are effectively keeping their ancestors’ gaolers in power. Only a very powerful coalition of interests working closely together can maintain the lie required to hoodwink almost an entire class.

Just as fear and suspicion of immigrants and foreigners was exploited by the architects of Brexit to achieve the desired result so the same targets will be used for shifting the blame when the apocalypse dawns. There might have been a chance to achieve a workable Brexit deal with our European partners but this would have required an element of respect from the British negotiators. Instead, the Conservative deal-makers, from the outset, have branded the remaining 27 EU nations as obstructive and as consumed by a spirit of vengeance. By the time this softening-up process has concluded many in the UK will have been persuaded that the EU activated Article 50 and threw us out of their club.

This is a convenient fiction which will come to serve a crucial purpose: it delivers the required scapegoat when the food and medicine shortages become apparent and when holidays and trips to Europe become an ordeal. The millions of EU citizens who reside here and any unfortunates from further afield will have a torrid time. This, in turn, feeds the other great obsession of the Brexiters: taking back our laws as well as our borders. The ability to frame workplace legislation weighted in favour of the corporate elites; to make it easier to practice summary justice (to enable discrimination, if you will); to stop, search and imprison on a whim: this is the greatest prize of all.

Next week Mike Leigh's historical epic recalling the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819 will be released. This was when armed cavalry charged a crowd of 80,000 who had gathered at St Peter’s Fields to demand parliamentary reform. Fifteen people were killed and more than 500 injured in a military action against British citizens that foreshadowed something eerily similar 153 years later in Derry’s Bogside.

The Peterloo massacre was set against a period of intense civic and cultural upheaval when children could be imprisoned for stealing bread and workhouses spread out like a pox across the land. It was a period of low wages, huge profits; wars of adventure and violent state crackdown on any signs of protest. It’s the England that has occupied the dreams of Jacob Rees-Mogg since he first attended Eton and it’s the England he hopes Brexit will deliver. This time the working classes will be too busy blaming the foreigners to notice.

In Scotland it doesn’t need to be like this and there is a simple solution.