If she could turn back time...

Well, they’re back. Tony Blair, Stephen Kinnock and their moribund troupe of Remoaners are popping up everywhere, determined to thoroughly piss on the chips of all who wish to release us from the deadly chokehold of the EU. Project Fear, despite several charges on many fronts did little to dampen our ardour and if anything strengthened the resolve to leave; especially when George Osborne’s dire predictions failed to come true.

When economic Armageddon didn’t materialise and the drip, drip, drip of bad business news items was regularly cancelled out by prominent figures breaking ranks and declaring bonanzas a different tack was required. So they waded in with charges of racism. Shame on you, they cried, tish and fie and away with your xenophobia. Surely, they reasoned, if we malign their desires for sovereignty as little more than open hatred for other nationalities, they will cease to clamour for independence.

It didn’t work. So they said: ah, but we can already control our borders anyway; we just choose not to. And think of the farmers, they alarumed – with no easterners to pull their carrots the crops will rot in the fields and a pestilence will stalk the land. Bollocks, we said. But, but they sound-bit back: ‘nobody voted to become poorer’. But, but, we said, we don’t care. Bummer, they said, we need to find another chink in their armour of indifference to our pro-supranational zeal.

So, with a stirring Teutonic chorus of Ode to Joy – for let us not be fooled that the EU is anything other than the Fourth Reich – on came the spear carriers and assorted supporting cast, with their handy one-liners to pour scorn on the very notion that the UK could even survive in any civilised fashion outside the work camps of greater Germany. Barnier, Verhofstadt, Juncker, Merkel and Uncle Tom Macron and all, merrily singing – for once – to the same tune.

Then came the disparaging claims on social media that, ‘funny, you don’t hear many leavers these days, do you?’ Accusations of buyers’ remorse flew thick and thicker as they challenged Brexiteers to prove they knew exactly why they had voted leave; we told them what we’d always told them and poll after poll showed a majority in the country was heartily sick of the whole debate and just wanted to get on with departure. ‘But how shall we leave?’ they asked, ‘hard or soft’. We just leave, we said.

And so, finally, slowly, some toe-dipping into the murky water of negotiation began, at which the EU team scoffed; whatever you want, we’re not letting it happen. We’ll walk, said the team; you can’t said the enemy. Well, offer us something, said we; nope, said they. Then Tony Blair began hearing the voices again; the messianic mania is strong in this one. Look, he opined, but nobody was listening.

They were too busy deploying Project Pity. The Tory Party is in disarray; they are briefing against each other; there are leadership challenges... the latest attempt to pour scorn is to go around telling any news outlet that will listen, that they feel sorry for Theresa May. Poor Tess, they say, she has no feeling but despair, no empathy save that for a faded old flag, no allies, no friends; beset by a sea of troubles. I bet she wishes she could turn the clock back; what a shame the new Doctor Who has already been cast.