‘I feel entirely vindicated’: three Guardian columnists debate Brexit and its legacy | Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins

The vote Aditya: I have three distinct memories of that entire period: the sense of anger, the sense of the confusion in Westminster and then, afterwards, this quick curdling into a really base form of racism. I remember reporting around south Wales and the north-east of England and then coming back into London, and noticing that one group were talking about their anger and frustration and the other were talking about facts. On the morning itself, I remember waking up at 4am to write and thinking that David Cameron would have to go fairly quickly, and then at 6am I got a confirmation phone call from my editor to say he would be stepping down . That weekend, I remember a friend telling me he was sleeping with the window open and he heard a guy shouting: “We’ve got our country back, and now I’m going to burn down that mosque.” He lived in east London and there was a mosque at the end of the road. Polly: I spent referendum day at the Labour phone bank, where they were campaigning for remain. The group I was with were phoning Nottinghamshire. And listening to the calls, every single one was: “Out, out, out. I want my country back. I want control. Get rid of the foreigners.” It was the archetype of young middle-class students and graduates sitting in London, talking to people in a place they had never visited who were very angry and ferocious. It seemed to me to sum up exactly what you’re saying about the great remain and leave divide and how painful it was. …