A MAJOR surprise of the referendum campaign is the narrow vision of special-interest groups. Your first reaction to that statement might be to say: “Well, since they are special-interest groups, what do you expect? They’re naturally going to focus on their interests.”

Maybe, but you also expect any level-headed person with some special interest to recognise a context beyond what merely suits them best. But let’s take a trio of examples – from many, it must be said. The World Wildlife Fund UK and the RSPB support remaining in the EU because “EU standards have safeguarded streams and rivers…helped protect precious heaths and woodlands…Leaving the EU would put much of what has been achieved at risk”.

Then there is a formidable body of Cambridge University academics, more than 500 in all, warning that not only is the EU vital because “most of the issues of our time” do not respect borders but – possibly more critical – Brexit could imperil university funding. Raising that same fear over scientific research, a baker’s dozen of Nobel Laureates argues also that Brexit would restrict Europe-wide collaboration.

What a mass of brain power is represented above. How can they be wrong? They might not be. But what they demonstrate is that, despite much learning, they have no grasp of, or at any rate concern for, the fundamental issue of the referendum – democracy.

As it happens, I feel very strongly about the environment. Possibly more strongly than anyone within the WWF or the RSPB. I don’t think the environment, town as well as country, is well enough cared for – EU laws and all. For instance, I would apply to the entire countryside the high planning standards currently reserved for national parks. But would I rejoice at an EU diktat to that effect? No. Measures should spring from democratic consent, which has long been our system, imperfect though it often is.

Some slight travelling inconvenience aside, all the supposed EU advantages identified by the above sectional interests could be safeguarded by our own government, provided it is persuaded of their worth. That is the task of all who want particular laws. It’s called democracy.

The EU referendum has revealed how little this central pillar of our national life is valued by many who form what you might call the intelligentsia. As long as those environmentalists, academics and scientists can get what they want through the EU that’s all that bothers them. Probably it’s to their benefit to have a law-making machine not subject to the extreme swings often produced by Parliamentary democracy. A parade of Prime Ministers, past and present, trashing our future prospects of self-government suggests even they have little regard for democracy.

But then, democracy has never come from the top, always the bottom. So it’s up to us, the people, to vote to keep our hand on government.

Meanwhile…one politician who invokes democracy is former SNP leader Alex Salmond. He claims a UK vote to quit the EU, against a Scottish majority to stay, would be a “democratic mandate” for a second Scottish referendum on independence. Equally, of course, if a Scottish majority to stay happened to tip the balance against an English majority to leave, England could demand its own referendum. Except it couldn’t, because England has no government. A democratic deficit regardless of the EU.