We Britons who remain Remainers 28 months after the referendum are used to being called unpatriotic, undemocratic, boring, out-of-touch, elitist bad losers. The home secretary Sajid Javid labels us “deeply unhelpful”. We are urged to get behind the project and are blamed (along with the “EUSSR”, Ireland and supposed master-puppeteer George Soros) for Brexit’s difficulties. When I criticised Brexit in a talk to Conservatives recently, very polite Leavers exhorted me afterwards: “Be positive! If we believe, we can do it.”
But like the 700,000 who marched in London last Saturday for a second referendum, I feel it’s a patriotic duty to keep fighting Brexit.
Brexit was always in part a vehicle to punish Remainer-types for our arrogance and cosmopolitanism, not simply an end in itself. Still, after Brexiters won the referendum, they should have stopped worrying about us. They had had 25 years to fine-tune a plan. There has been a Brexiter government since July 2016. We Remainers don’t control a major party. I can’t see how our disenfranchised whining shaped two years of negotiations. In any case, pluralistic democracies shouldn’t aspire to speak with one voice. Disagreement prevents groupthink.