I’m feeling a little guilty about my suggestion in my last post that we try to appease the more red-necked Brexiteers by giving in to them to an extent (the ‘Norway option’). I was more affected than perhaps I should have been – indeed depressed, and even frightened – by the violence of their language on social media, and by their quite explicit warnings of mayhem, murder and even armed rebellion if the ‘élite’ don’t surrender to them. That, of course, is the response they’re looking for. But might it not be better, and more honourable, to call their bluff and get out of this mess in a more principled way?

If we had more time, beyond March 29, we might find ways of persuading them of the many errors of their ways, and of the hoax that has been played on them by the true ‘élite’: élite being one of their favourite hate-words. Put in this way, and without telling them they were stupid, which riles them, we might be able to re-package the ‘Remain’ case as a popular  one, against the ‘Establishment’. The current flight of British firms back into the EU-27, followed by loss of jobs, would materially bolster that. Which is as good reason as any for seeking to postpone Article 50.

Short of that, I’m much attracted by the following ‘Baldrick’ strategy, which is going viral on the internet just now.

Isn’t that quite brilliant? After all, when you ask them, hardly any Brexiteer can give you a single example of a way in which membership of the EU has worked or is likely to work to their personal detriment; apart from Boris’s lies (‘straight bananas’), which they could be disabused of, and ‘immigration’, which is a false flag. (Britain could have controlled immigration even when she was in the EU, but chose not to.) So, if we stay in, but don’t tell them, they won’t notice the difference. Indeed, they’ll even be fooled into thinking that they were right all along: ‘look, we’ve left the EU, and none of that “project fear” stuff has come about’; which might make them unbearably cocky but would also defuse any sense of resentment on their part, or on ours, the Remainers’. It’s the perfect solution. Or would be, if only the illusion could be sustained.