Leavers should be demanding a new vote | Comment

The limbo in which we now sit until November, and which everyone calls humiliating, is a trial run for a Brino (Brexit in name only) Brexit. Adherence to the rules, no United Kingdom veto, no vote in the selection of European commissioners. Our first taste of vassalage, and the response has not been encouraging. We keep the benefits of membership at the whim of the “proper” members of the EU and the twitch of a French president’s eyebrow. This “humbling” of Britain which the news media now lament mirrors the status to which those MPs and commentators who call themselves compromisers and “reachers-out”, those who would “split the difference” between Leave and Remain, aim to reduce us. For the next six months we are rule-takers, not rule-makers. Now we know what Theresa May’s “implementation” period, and (probably trapped by the Irish backstop) beyond it, will feel like.