May’s mistake was embracing the lie that Brexit would be easy

Brexit is getting a far easier ride than it deserves. I accept that its promoters live in a world of paranoid irresponsibility. They lament their unjust suffering, and blame everyone but themselves for its many failings. But consider how Britain has bent over backwards to enable their project. We don’t have an opposition willing to oppose Brexit. A Tony Blair or indeed an Ed Miliband would be hammering home the government’s failures. They would by now have ensured that voters, who barely thought about politics from one month to the next, knew that they had been sold a false prospectus. Instead of robust opposition, however, we have the gloriously hypocritical spectacle of the far left triangulating with the Tory right.

Take a moment to savour it. For decades, the far left has accused its opponents of selling out to become red Tories, Tory-lite, Blarites, neo-liberals, centrist dads and so on. Yet on the great issue of the day they stagger towards the Tories like the living dead towards a fresh corpse.