Ten signs that you have Brexit Derangement Syndrome and what to do about it

Everyone is talking about it. BDS is London’s most fashionable new affliction.

My colleague Matthew Parris, writing in this week’s Spectator, says in a brilliant piece that Brexit is driving him mad, but he is determined to press on arguing against the project. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown told the BBC’s Daily Politics programme that she has been fighting with people on buses.

But BDS is not restricted to the ultra-Remain side of the argument. Some Leavers have contracted bad cases of BDS.

How can you know if you have BDS? What are the vital warning signs to look out for?

1) Are you a member of the House of Lords?

2) Are you AC Grayling? If you are the tormented philosopher and wild-haired anti-Brexit campaigner, there is a strong possibility that you have contracted BDS.

3) Are you in the furious pro-Brexit Tory MP pressure group the ERG? If you are, leave the ERG before it is too late or lie and say you are busy on the night of their next meeting, then go out to the cinema or to the pub instead where no-one – literally not a soul – is talking about the customs union.

4) How many Brexit bulletin daily emails from newspapers and pressure groups are you signed up to? If the answer is more than three, seek help.

5) Have you ever put an EU flag in your garden or hung it out of your window?

6) Do you know the difference between Max Fac and a Customs Partnership? Are you a hardline Brexiteer who thinks that Max Fac is a real thing, like Father Christmas?

7) Have you somehow convinced yourself that the population at large cares about customs arrangements?

8) Do you find yourself in social situations – at family celebrations, with friends in a restaurant, or in bed with your partner – tweeting about either Jean Claude Juncker or Jacob Rees Mogg? Put… the.. phone… down.

9) Do you find yourself taking the side of Michel Barnier and Jean Claude Juncker, secretly wanting them to punish Britain, and finding this arousing? Does this spill into a vengeful desire for people who voted to leave to lose their job or be burned to a crisp in a house fire caused by a dangerously deregulated post-Brexit washing machine manufactured by leave voters in Doncaster?

10) In everyday conversation are you using any of the following terms – Brexshit, Brexidiots, will of the people, traitors, saboteurs, where’s the £350m?, Remainiac, lying liberal metropolitan elite, Project Smear, join the global race, let the lion roar?

As yet, there is no known cure for BDS, other than leaving the European Union or changing the subject. So, be careful out there. It’s infectious.