There is something surreal about watching Remainer politicians, seated in a television studio, seeing a pro-Brexit landslide developing before their eyes and insisting that this issue must be “taken back to the People”, even as the People’s latest reiteration of the 2016 referendum verdict is being recorded. It seems that, as in 2016, it was the wrong People who voted this time too. The only solution would seem to be Bertolt Brecht’s ironic prescription to “dissolve the people and elect another”.
The fashion for bandying around psychobabble jargon is irritating but, in the case of Britain’s political class, it is an accurate diagnosis to say it is in denial. Any normal human beings, faced by a massive insurgency in the shape of a six weeks-old political party winning a national election by a clear margin, would be chastened and alarmed. But the Remain somnambulists on television simply construct an alternative narrative as a comfort blanket to block out reality.
