This is not me, I wish it were. I found it hidden away as a comment on another blog post, and thought it deserved wider circulation. I particularly liked the comparison between Nigel Farage and Arthur Daley. (Remember Minder?)

Mike Swain. I could almost feel sorry for the Brexiter ‘ultras’. They’ve been on a real journey, haven’t they? From triumphant, gloating euphoria, back to the swivel-eyed rage tantrums they used to have after reading billionaire-sanctioned stories about straight bananas and jihadi immigrant benefit cheats with 30 kids.

Their world is falling apart; Chicken Licken. An apocalyptic vision where the – now – grey cliffs of Dover tumble solemnly into the sea, as if to weep tears of stone and lament the glorious Britain that could have been. A haunting nightmare where bonfires of cricket whites burn in the middle of village pub pitches, and where goose-stepping Eurocrats issue directives via the proxy of ‘regulatory alignment’ in order to make proud English nationalists drink cold, tasty, crisp beer, and food that doesn’t taste like a combination of wallpaper paste and monosodium glutomate.

I can envision them now, surveying their suburban drives, watching their battered Union flags fly precariously on single threads as the shitstorm of betrayal shreds their shared vision of Brexit. A vision that, sadly, has only ever existed in their heads. A vision that was never on the ballot, yet sold to them by an Arthur Daley character in an Arthur Daley jacket, representing the opinions of an elite band of lobbyists who were already doing a mighty fine job of turning the UK into a deregulated sink-hole of private capital, tax-dodgers, precariat labour and crumbling public services. The fact they won’t’ be getting an opportunity to accelerate that process just yet is no real victory, and more akin to snatching a lesser defeat from the jaws of an even bigger defeat.

Now nobody ‘wins’. No Europtopia. No glorious, new British renaissance ruling the waves of trade and culture. And definitely not the ethnically-cleansed ‘send ’em back’ fascist dystopia the knuckle-dragging flag-worshippers pined for. It’s just a similar, but inferior deal, with a giant bill and no say in the future of trade relations, law-making and infrastructure projects.

And while it’s true you can heal after shooting yourself in the foot, the likelihood is you’ll never walk the same again. You certainly won’t be winning any races either.