Populist, anti-expert mood shaping Brexit supporters' views

London

BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron was only minutes into a final push to persuade his country to stay in the European Union (EU) this week when he invoked the e-word: experts. "It's not just the 'remain' side," he said, rattling off warnings of a cataclysm to come if Britain votes to leave. "You've got expert after expert: the OECD, the IMF, the Bank of England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies."

His audience of common-man interrogators on the BBC's vaunted Question Time programme was unmoved. The Bank of England, one elderly man dismissively told his prime minister, had been wrong three times on interest rates alone. Why should it be trusted now? And if the experts all say "stay", a middle-aged woman asked pointedly, then why was Britain on the verge of Brexit?