In the depths of remoaner denialism a stereotype emerged of the regretful leaver who, having seen the effects of his ballot, wished he had voted the other way. Such people were especially championed by those lobbying for a second \u2018people’s vote\u2019 because they didn’t like the first one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Various polls<\/a> will tell you that more people would vote to remain now than leave (although they said much the same on the referendum’s eve). We have nonetheless left, legally speaking, and the transition period that keeps us under EU rules looks likely to lapse without any formal arrangement of where we go from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Doubtless this explains the reflective mood of some leavers. This week UnHerd<\/em>‘s deputy editor Ed West laid out<\/a> how his views on the European Union evolved, with customary uncertainty:<\/p>\n\n\n\n All the arguments I had previously used to justify leaving, in particular the hope of entering a sort of half-way house with EFTA, I just no longer believed. All that was left was the emotional reasoning; the elephant was in charge, while the rider was basically asleep.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I was reassured to discover I’d said something similar almost four years ago when YouTuber Leena Norms interviewed me for her podcast. Ultimately all political decisions are undergirded with emotions, I said<\/a>, adding that I did not feel \u201cpolitically European\u201d, so didn’t want to be governed from Brussels. In a sense that was my entire case for leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n