How did the "Remain" campaign get the British character so wrong?

How is it that those very politicians who reacted to a startling tragedy with such immediate, faultless responsiveness to the national mood, could have been failing for weeks to show the slightest understanding of how their own countrymen think?

Almost from the off, and certainly since the going got rough, the Remain leadership in Downing Street has given out what seemed an almost explicit message that they know nothing about the people they govern – and what they do know, they don’t like. This strikes me as bizarre, as well as deeply wrong-headed. How can these politicians, who have famously come through the most quintessentially British educational institutions and established channels of national life, possibly be so ignorant (and unappreciative) of the instincts and character of their electorate?…

I have seen that subtle virtue in play many times over a lifetime here. Under the truly terrifying wave of IRA bombings, when virtually nobody flinched or even altered their daily habits and when, most movingly, the population evinced almost no trace of anti-Irish prejudice. (A fashion for fairly benign Irish jokes was as far as it got.) I saw it again after the 7/7 terror bombings, when the population grieved but did not panic, and again manifested almost no hostility to the British Muslim community. So I now have a very firm idea of what the British are like – and they are not going to be bullied or frightened like silly children.