Chris Grey writes in Byline Times about the need for constantly reinforced victimhood for Brexiteers:

On the one hand, Brexit must be done because it is the ‘will of the people’. On the other hand, any actual form of Brexit is a betrayal of the will of the people. That is a consequence of the Brexit Ultras constantly asking for more and – at a profound level – of their need for the victimhood that comes from not being given more.

Since the referendum an entire nation has been shackled to the political psychology of a relatively small number of people who – like rebellious teenagers secretly wanting to be set boundaries – demand total victory whilst craving defeat. It makes it impossible to turn Brexit into a workable policy because, at heart, it is not a policy demand at all, but a demand to be thwarted.

And he’s not wrong. There’s no logical or economic reason for Brexit, there never was. Even the political reason – ‘sovereignty’ was a lie. The United Kingdom never lost any sovereignty as a result of being a member of the European Union, and in an interconnected, interdependent world, leaving the European Union could only ever result in losing strategic relevance in a world dominated by economic giants. Even a Biden presidency will be more interested in trade deals with the EU than a self-absorbed UK run by incompetent nationalists.

The Brexiteers in politics have been shown, as the article points out, to have moved the goalposts for the rationale of isolation again and again. The more reality has collided with their delusions the more extreme their demands have become, and ever more disconnected with their own previous positions. I’ll throw this out there – their behaviour is the logical extension of the greatest extremes of their idol Margaret Thatcher. Following the Falklands War her premiership was defined entirely by conflict – the miners were redefined as ‘fifth columnists’ who had to be defeated, then all unions, even LGB people were legislated against. All the while financial services were deregulated and unparalleled greed unleashed, along with a lie that most people could share in the spoils. That lie hasn’t been dispelled amongst Tory voters (who hold all the cards in a voting system unfit for purpose), nor has Thatcher’s paranoid approach to governance, and here we are. We have an imagined nirvana which no one tries to define, a political class driving it beholden to dark money and paranoia in equal measure, and no means of reconciling Brexit’s inherent contradictions into a sane policy. When disaster strikes because of this (on top of a pandemic which won’t have gone away) in 2021 the question will be whether Brexit’s remaining supporters in the electorate will double down and increase their sense of grievance or opt for some sense of sanity. My hopes aren’t high for the latter.