As someone who spends much of his time listening to left-wingers, I’m used to seeing people upset after losing an election.<\/p>\n
Contrary to popular clich\u00e9, such events rarely look like the five stages of grief, and the aftermath of the British decision to leave the European Union has been no different.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If anything, since the initial shock remainers’ bitterness has calcified. Journalists and part-time pundits have gone out of their way to emphasise any news that confirms their view that the decision was a disaster.<\/p>\n
Dimwitted comparisons with British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s phony peace with Germany, and the Suez Crisis of 1956<\/a> have also abounded \u2013 though one led to one of history’s grisliest wars, and the other is usually cited as confirmation of an inevitable decline rather than a consequential mistake.<\/p>\n The coining or recycling of clich\u00e9s is always a sign that groupthink has set in. People too lazy or inept to think for themselves repeat not just the sentiment of others, but the phrasing too.<\/p>\n Witness the rise of \u201cpoisoned chalice\u201d\u00a0 to describe the premiership in post-referendum Britain, as well as the ease with which it sits alongside the untested assertion of Theresa May’s competence and nous. At least one of these views must be untrue.<\/p>\n Pundits have also refrained from retracting the claim that \u201cleavers\u201d deliberately shrank from power after the referendum as Boris Johnson moves into the Foreign Office, even as they gleefully celebrate his new exposure to the exit negotiations.<\/p>\n Anyone who believes Johnson wanted to be humiliated by fellow leaver Michael Gove has clearly forgotten his comments about the ball coming \u201cloose from the back of a scrum\u201d<\/a>, or simply ignored the Sunday Times<\/em>‘ behind the scenes view of his collapsing campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time those that attack Ukip’s ex-leader Nigel Farage for stepping down after achieving his long-held political ambition are the same who bewailed the prospect of him being involved in the exit negotiations.<\/p>\n Politicians are at least respected as agents in all of this, unlike the leave voters who are deemed thick and misinformed, even alongside \u201ceducated\u201d graduate remainers who cannot name a single good reason to leave the EU<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lawyers are concocting various schemes to undermine the referendum result, demanding that Parliament have a say on the legal mechanism for Brexit being triggered, in the hopes that the Commons will block it. A very European strategy, it must be said.<\/p>\n