Re: The big problem is
"the tories run around believing they're in god's own country of the 1950's"
Before the referendum Brexiters were shouting at me that they wanted to go back to the 1970s "before we joined the EU(sic)". I warned them that having lived through the 1970s they would not like the experience. However to them it was a mythical far off land full of friendly coppers, thatched cottages, long summer days, lashings of ginger beer, Butlins, golden beaches, donkey rides and no money worries. The fact that if they were old enough to remember the 1970s that they would have been children, therefore unaware of politics or economics and feather bedded by their parents didn't penetrate their thinking.
I warned them that in truth the 1970s were awful with rapidly declining manufacturing, coal mines running out of coal, education starting a long downhill slide, runaway inflation which was in fact "stagflation" with rising wages, rising unemployment, declining manufacturing output, hyperinflation, declining living standards, profound social unrest, and regular shortages of power and fuel.
And here we are just over a year from "Brexit" and the 1970s are coming home to roost.