I read the Freedland piece before you posted it and wasn't surprised that polls show leavers still filled with resolve. That's referendums for you: they have the baleful effect hardening attitudes and polarising the country. The polls also reveal what we always knew, that the leave vote was largely predicated on the success of the leave campaign whipping up little England and instilling fear of foreigners. Those are the immovable rocks in the debate. The ghastly effects on the economy and on living standards creep up on us far more gradually and won't change minds very easily. Things have to get very bad in those regards before we sit up and take notice. Every day we are sold the massive Tory lie about their amazing achievements in creating jobs. The truth is that millions of those jobs are bogus self-employed, fake apprenticeships, temporary, part-time, seasonal or zero-hours. The good old "flexible jobs market," a euphemism for low pay, job insecurity and exploitation. The growth and productivity figures, far weaker than the Eurozone's, are obstinate testimony to that. The collapsed pound leading to inflation is another factor that is hard to blame on the brexit vote in the eyes of leavers: we get the Nigel-style cyclical adjustment argument. There's always an answer for adverse trends that can avoid blaming brexit, just as there are answers for global warming that ignore carbon emissions. The capacity for denial is legendary. But I'm predicting that that situation will change by around the middle of next year. The bad things will finally become undeniable upshots of that disastrous vote.

We elect our politicians to act in the interests of this country. Among their ranks there are still a few clowns who think that brexit is a great idea. But this is too important to allow party politics to dictate events. We need our politicians to get honest and act in the interest of the country. That means a united front in ditching brexit. No more bloody referendums either. Just do the job we elected them to do.