Following the decision of the British people to exit the European Union, supporters of the Remain side immediately lashed out in hateful, alarmist, and dangerously illiberal ways. As the proud citizen of a non-EU country, much of the reaction struck me as bizarre, and plainly absurd.

Today in the New Yorker, remain supporter Bee Wilson wonders whether Britons will be able to continue eating the foods they love, suggesting that outside of the EU access to such simple pleasures as apricots and olive oil will be in jeopardy. Others seem to believe that Brexit will somehow prevent them from international travel; my Facebook feed is filled with posts about folks enjoying their last holidays to Europe. Believe it or not, most countries in the world are not in the EU, and those of us from those countries still travel and eat fruit. Though you wouldn’t think it listening to outraged remain voters, some of us even have electricity.

What’s truly odd, however, is the assumption made by many that Brexit is a rejection of internationalism that will isolate Britain. I watched the vote in Paris, with a group that included Americans, Germans, French and English, and cheered as the UK voted to leave. Exiting the EU is not a pulling up of the country’s drawbridge, but an opening to the rest of the world. Accusations of racism seem particularly bizarre, though there were unfortunate attitudes held by some Leave campaigners. What could be more racist than an organization which ensures largely white Europeans can enter the country no questions asked, but those from the (largely non-white) rest of the world are routinely turned away, despite their qualifications and cultural or familial ties to the UK?

As Matthew Ellery of the Get Britain Out campaign has written, “We want an outward facing United Kingdom; we don’t want to be a part of an elite gentlemen’s ‘club’, which believes Europeans are superior to people from the rest of the world.” It is puzzling to me that students who fervently decry any perceived euro-centrism in university curricula are the first to laud its most obvious and concrete manifestation.

Even stranger are the attempts by supposed liberals who continually decry an elite they claim is out of touch and ignores the working class, to ignore the votes of that same working class because it’s members are allegedly unable to understand their own interests. Arguing for MPs to ignore the referendum or for a second referendum to be held on these grounds is tantamount to claiming that the working class are too stupid to be trusted with the vote. It is the worst form of elitism to suggest that we, being Oxonians after all, understand what’s best for disaffected voters in post-Industrial cities and towns better than they themselves do.

In this very paper, Toby Williams claimed that there never should have been a referendum because, “Many people have far more pressing concerns, such as putting food on the table and paying the bills, than ensuring they are sufficiently informed to vote on every piece of legislation that comes up in Parliament.” This is a clear suggestion that those who struggle financially cannot be trusted to participate in our democracy, plain and simple. Ordinary people understood the importance of this referendum, and thought carefully about it. If ordinary voters cannot be trusted to determine such fundamental questions regarding the nature of the British state as its membership in the EU, then why should they be trusted at all? This attitude is a shameful betrayal of the liberal principles central to Britain’s identity, which the remain campaign claimed to stand for.

There are many reasonable arguments against leaving the EU, and it will take time to see whether the economic forecasts warning against Brexit will pan out. However, the reaction to this vote by a vocal, elite minority has been hysterical, misleading, and deeply illiberal. Brexit is not isolationist – indeed, precisely the opposite is true. By separating itself from an elitist, insular, and implicitly racist club, the UK can now prosper even more by engaging with the whole world, rather than just a small slice of it.

The Labour Party may well be a mass membership organisation. Jeremy Corbyn, however much some want to topple him, was indeed democratically elected by the members. But neither of these two things change the undisputable fact that Labour’s membership and electoral system are currently severely hindering its ability to act as an effective opposition.

Regardless of their ambitions in the next general election, the fact of the matter is that currently Labour is the official opposition party in this country, despite speculation of their being superseded by the SNP should this inner party turmoil not come to an end soon.

The role of the opposition party, arguably one of the most important structural pillars in our parliamentary system, is to question the current government’s decisions and to hold them accountable to the public. Without an effective opposition, we risk affording the government too much power, a clearly dangerous position, which can ultimately lead to what amounts to a dictatorship.

In a Facebook post today, renowned lefty, Billy Bragg, focused on the members’ democratic power within the party and dismissed the importance of the PLP’s verdict and what it revealed about the party’s confidence in Corbyn: “The PLP have had their chance to express their opinion. Now there must be a leadership contest so that the members can have their say, after which the electorate will vote on the outcome. That’s how democracy works.” What Mr. Bragg fails to understand is the absolutely pivotal importance of the parliamentary members’ approval and support of their leader.

Yesterday’s PLP vote, in which the no confidence motion passed by the overwhelming majority of 172 to 40, provided crystal clear evidence that Corbyn doesn’t have the support of his parliamentary party.

If you end up with a leader supposedly wanted by 60 per cent of the members, yet unanimously unsupported by his MPs, something has clearly gone seriously wrong within the party’s internal structure. In my mind, the MPs and MEPs should have a greater say over who their leader is, since they’re the ones expected to be working directly with him on a day-to-day basis. The idea that any Tom, Dick or Harry could buy the right to help decide who leads the Labour party for £3 is so ill-thought through and idealistic, that it miserably fails to acknowledge how easily abused this system can be. It’s common knowledge that during the last leadership election, thousands of Corbynistas and even duplicitous Tories bought membership just to intentionally skew the results.

It’s clearly unfortunate that there’s a clash of preferences between the PLP and the rest of the members over who should be leading the party, as in theory an enfranchised membership is desirable. Yet in the interest of maintaining the party as a single, coherent, unit with the power to contend law-making in parliament, the PLP’s verdict must take precedence. In challenging situations such as our current one, pragmatism must triumph over idealism.

It’s all well and good clinging to these noble socialist ideals of the party being a voice of the people and every member standing on a level footing, but if they can’t even function as an opposition in parliament, what’s the point? Whilst the Labour party lacks a leader that can unite the party and command the support of his MPs in parliament, it will be inhibited in carrying out its current, primary role as the party of the opposition.

We should consider it telling that the Tories clearly don’t feel under any pressure or scrutiny whilst Corbyn is leading the opposition. This was made clear in David Cameron’s comments during this Wednesday’s PMQs: after a relatively tame interaction between the two, Cameron pulled no punches as he directly questioned Corbyn’s leadership: “It might be in my party’s interest for him to sit there, it’s not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven’s sake man, go.” Then again, this could just be a cheap shot from the recently resigned Cameron, taking advantage of the current turmoil within his opposite number’s party.

Given that Leave have already gone back on various pledges made during the campaign, such as the now infamous £350bn supposedly pledged for the NHS, or even the suggestion published in The Independent that Boris, Gove and Farage would support its privatisation, surely having a united opposition in place is more important than ever?

However noble or democratic the concept of mass membership may be, there’s no denying that it’s at least partially responsible for Labour’s current crisis and inability to function as the coherent and united opposition our country so desperately needs in these times of uncertainty.