I pointed out to someone the other day that there were £140bn of completely unfunded tax cuts that mainly benefit the rich, and the response was "at least we'll get our country back". Whatever that means (back from whom, and to whom? Where did it go? Who are "we"?.
I think most people entering a polling station today have "getting my country back" on their mind. I think it's shorthand for many, a way of expressing a feeling of our country just not doing well, not feeling like a positive, prosperous, friendly place.
But what people are doing about that feeling varies.
I think there's a huge proportion of people in the UK, who will simply listen to which group those doing well instruct them to hate next.
And they're always told, it's those beneath you holding you down, as opposed to those above you pushing you down. It's the, relatively tiny amount of people from other countries "comin' over 'ere" crippling a modern, prosperous nation. It's the people "scrounging" the tiniest slither of our wealth through benefits making life difficult for everyone else. It's the wokies. Workers who are unionised. Etc. Etc.
The theme always is, it's never, ever those at top that are bringing any sort of hardship to the nation. It's like walking into a wrecked room, and a pair of drunk toffs point at a grain of sand on the floor, and say "they did it". The people blamed for all our problems are specks of dust, a rounding error. "Send them back", "Let them starve" and our country STILL won't come back, we'll be in the same place we were before. That slither of freed up resource from their absence won't be benevolently showered onto us, it'll just go where the rest of the wealth, health and prosperity goes. UP.