𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I feel sorry for hardcore Remainers. I really do. It must be ghastly. They are pathologically incapable of moving on, stuck in a doom loop of bitterness and resentment, and a constant, crazed, foaming-at-the-mouth longing to turn the clock back to those early months of 2016, when they’d convinced themselves they were going to win. What a contrast with the vast majority of people who voted Remain, who sensibly if reluctantly accepted the result and got on with their lives. But a minority, this hardcore, just can’t. Okay, that was understandable in the first few weeks.

But months later? Years later? Now very nearly a decade later? Remarkably enough, they are still utterly incensed, as though the vote took place last Thursday. It’s not called Brexit Derangement Syndrome for nothing. These folk really do see everything through the Brexit lens, forever sniffing out data and surveys to convince themselves that they were right, and that anyone who voted Brexit is either evil or thick. Or both.

Alastair Campbell (yup, him of Iraq War fame) has got the affliction bad. So’s his partner in crime, Rory Stewart, who sounds less like a Tory every day. Then there’s folk like Anna Soubry, another former Tory who now seems to be Keir Starmer’s biggest fan, Sadiq Khan, Andy Burnham and Ed Davey. Good God, imagine them all around a dinner party, furiously clucking away.

But there are plenty of other sad hardcore types out there. We all know a few. Just yesterday I received a WhatsApp message from a couple of them, positively screeching with delight at a new poll indicating, allegedly, that a majority of people would vote to rejoin the EU if given the chance.

“Democracy anyone?” one of them wrote, wilfully ignoring the fact that the British establishment’s desperate attempts to overturn the referendum result led to the most profound collapse in trust in the political class that this country has seen in decades.

Democracy? How dare they claim that symbol for their cause, when for years their whole being was consumed by the disgraceful notion that the democratic wish of the British people to leave the EU should be ignored.

The desperation to prove that Brexit was a calamity of biblical proportions will never leave them. If there’s an increase in crime, they blame it on Brexit. An uptick in inflation? It’s Brexit. Not winning enough gold medals? Brexit. They’d blame the February rain on Brexit if they could. In fact, they probably do.

Meanwhile, they brush away or just refuse to accept the truth: that the British economy has actually outperformed France and Germany since the Brexit vote, and instead choose to repeat, on a mad loop, the idea that Brexit took 4% off our annual GDP – a highly dubious figure based on a finger-in-the-air long-term forecast by the OBR, an organisation that has hardly covered itself in glory.

Meanwhile, they gloat on social media about how British holidaymakers now have to queue to get into the EU, which, if you ask me, is a good reason to take our hard-earned cash somewhere else where we’re more wanted and respected.

Will these bitter folk ever get over their syndrome? I really do doubt it. I genuinely believe that they will be suffering from this affliction for the rest of their days.

Years from now, and possibly decades, they’ll still be bleating on about a pink bus and £350 million for the NHS, and with a glazed, dazed and crazed look in their eyes, furiously condemn the Brexiteers for ruining everything. Yup, it’s a doom loop alright. And we can only pity them.