Kathy Sheridan: From Great Britain to little England

One of the more entertaining manifestations of Brexit is watching the Leavers move ever closer to a religious movement, as authoritarian, fanatical and swivel-eyed as any rogue cleric.

Christian Holliday, Tory councillor for Burpham, for example, has launched a formal petition to make supporting EU membership an act of treason. His amendment to the treason felony Act would read as follows: "To imagine, devise, promote, work, or encourage others, to support the UK becoming a member of the EU; To conspire with foreign powers to make the UK, or part of the UK, become a member of the EU".

Thrillingly, this is not even "semi-parodic", as Boris Johnson described his persuasive pro-Remain column. A Tory councillor by the marvellous name of Christian Holliday exists, works for an estate agency and has a fiancée called Tammy.

On his wish list is all the usual stuff about parliament, courts, borders and fishing. But “still very important”, he told the local paper, “will be the removal of 12 stars from projects paid for with our own money and from our driving licences, which I resent greatly. I also look forward to the reissuing of truly British passports for the first time in many years. A British passport gets you into more countries visa free than any other – a nod to our global history and our standing in the world. . . ”

Rule Britannia! Thee haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame.

A couple of weeks ago, I met a 72-year-old Londoner who seemed perfectly sane and rational – until Brexit came up. "I don't care if the economy is down by half in five years time, it will be worth it," he said through bared teeth, as his Irish-born wife murmured that England seems a colder place since June.

The barking tone is similar to that of the 70-year-old billionaire Peter Hargreaves, top funder to the Leave camp and by far the biggest donor on either side. In June, he predicted insecurity comparable to the aftermath of the retreat from Dunkirk, burbling excitedly that it would be "fantastic".

When the Daily Telegraph published a Brexit-supporting letter signed by 300 "business leaders" (inflated to "Top Business Leaders" by the Express), commentator Alex Andreou scrutinised the first 20 names and found a dozen businesses so small they were exempt from filing full accounts and a Ukip member's website set up to sell his own book.

Industrial scale lying

The point of reprising the attitudes and industrial scale lying that lifted the Leave side to victory, is to understand why the Remainers are still frothing with rage and councillor Holliday is nervous. The casual insistence of Johnson and co that everything is grand and the predicted apocalypse never happened, is particularly galling given sterling's record-breaking plunge, soaring costs for imported food and rising levels of hate crime.

Worse, there is still not a ghost of an outline of a plan nor meaningful offer of accountability to parliament on Brexit negotiations. Paris' siren call to City of London financial institutions to "Leave the fog and join the Frogs" seems rather apt.

It is obvious now that no rational argument was ever going to sway the Leave vote. That it was always about migration is no longer in question. Theresa May’s determination to prioritise that issue ahead of the single market confirms it.

There are respectable psychological studies that show how people put huge energy into protecting the beliefs they already hold, regardless of contrary evidence placed before them. Their explanations follow a variant of “well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

This may explain why a new poll carried in the Observer shows about 60 per cent of the British public supporting continued membership of the single market, even though nearly 52 per cent of voters opted to leave the EU. Were they not listening then or are they not listening now?

Not a government-in-waiting

This week, the director of Vote Leave,

Bernard Jenkin

, told parliament rather snippily that it was “made very clear in our campaign that leaving the EU meant leaving the single market”. But Vote Leave was merely a catch-all, ragbag, campaign group, not a government-in-waiting whose commitments were binding. Only a year before, the Tory party manifesto stated that the UK must remain in the single market.

Even the Daily Telegraph sketchwriter wondered whether he was given a different ballot paper to everyone else in June. He saw just one question, he wrote - did he want the UK to leave the EU? – but this government seemed to see something entirely different: a mandate to do anything they like.

And if the Telegraph man feels conned, imagine how Remainers feel.

Meanwhile, the attitude of the EU-27 was neatly summarised by Luxembourg's prime minister, Xavier Bettel, in a tweet : "Before they were in and they had many opt-outs; now they want to be out with many opt-ins."

And Holliday’s petition tweet had already racked up over 500 signatures before being deleted, alas.