Oh, in my personal experience living in several countries in Europe including the UK, the British elites are pretty much the best in Europe at manipulating the local plebes.

Probably helps that culturally the English (and less so for other nations) have this strain of "know your place" and "look up to your betters" that's not there or at least nowhere as strong in countries which had actual bottom-up revolutions were they overthrew their installed elites.

Just look at the reaction to the Snowden Revelations in the US and UK - in the former there was an outrage and at least some of it was walked back, in the latter the government just made a law that retroactivelly made the whole thing legal and the press quickly shut up about it and never mentioned it again.

And don't get me started at the insane levels of Royal Arse Kissing of even supposedly liberal newspapers like The Guardian.

Britain is definitelly "world class" at both sheep herding and being sheep.

I mean, that guy Farage does have a great track record of solid decision-making!