In response to Campbell Campbell-Jack: Sneering at the masses is a dangerous game to play, Captain Scarlet wrote:

A view of one of the elites: Matthew Parris talking with Matt Ridley and transcribed in the Spectator, December 2016.

PARRIS: No, I don’t admit that. Immigration made a lot of people unhappy, I agree. The argument they then alighted on was that there was a lot more competition and queues in doctors’ surgeries – and the rest. I don’t accept that that actually was their own experience. I think they were looking for a respectable argument behind which to mount the real argument: that there were just too many foreigners around.

RIDLEY: Matthew, you’re not saying that 17million people are, deep down, racists?

PARRIS: Yes.