The English, having been convinced that elected assemblies are bureaucratic whilst central government politicians and civil servants are democratic...

This one meme on its own is the source of many bad things. Overturning it would do a huge amount of good.

But it's a tough problem to solve, because I think dealing with the reality means dealing with the very limited levels of democracy in the UK. And many people would prefer to stay in denial about the real shape of UK (now mostly English) politics than accept just how badly they've been disenfranchised.

I think this may be one of the roots of racist extremism. The racists may not be nice, but they have a voice and they seem to have populist engagement.

They've managed to paint themselves as bottom up rather top down politicians, and to many people that seems like an attractive prospect.