The Brexit war is over, but some people aren't ready to stop fighting

I didn’t expect to be writing about Brexit this week. Doing Question Time in Buxton last Thursday was a useful reminder that the country is already moving on. The people of Buxton didn’t really want to talk about leaving the EU at all, they wanted to talk about trains. It makes sense. After nearly four years concentrating on the macro, people now want to talk about how the hell they get to work.

I felt surprisingly phlegmatic about the whole thing on Thursday and Friday – but, by Saturday, seeing people online bullying a woman who had clearly spoken on live TV for the first time made me want to vote for Brexit all over again. In fact, it made me want to go for a hard, WTO, up yours Delors, bendy bananas Brexit. Baiting people with lower socio-economic status or poor linguistic skills isn’t a good look for the supposedly caring wing of British politics. If someone really is "thick", then giving them stick for it is just about the least liberal thing you could do. Personally, if my side kept losing votes to the "stupid" alternative, I’d keep quiet about it.

Nevertheless, now we've left the EU I’m not going to use Remainers as a broad pejorative anymore. It's ridiculous to think millions of people are anything like some of the #FBPE nutters you get on Twitter.

It didn’t take long for those lazy tropes to come out, of course. Some patronised Leave voters by reminding us that everything things we love originates outside Britain: "Actually St George was born in Palestine, his Dragon was from Westeros…keep Calm & Carry on was culturally appropriated from Hobbits." A few examples of hateful bigots were shared as proof the country was spiralling into a racist dystopia. I hate to break it to you, but we had racists and idiots before Brexit. In fact, I’d go as far to say that racists and idiots have voted in every single election since the dawn of British democracy. I seem to recall the British National Party seeing its first councillor elected in the first councillor in the early 1990s.

I know! The nineties! We even had mindless bigots in the era of free love and acid house. But back then, we didn’t have Twitter or camera phones to share these outliers with the declaration: "This is who we are now!"

The Remain establishment are frustrated because their tools of influence are glitching. The public is no longer voting for things because people who are good at pretending for a living say so. We may even have to question whether viral clips of high-status radio DJs "schooling" members of the public on phone-ins is a genuine route to democratic change. Another problem for the liberal left is that it hasn't won a national vote since 2005. Many commentators are now jacked up on hypothetical certainty; their ideas haven’t been tested for a while, so they can swan around convinced Ed Miliband would’ve done a cracking job, or that Britain could’ve perennially postponed any question over its ever-changing relationship with Brussels.

Despite Brexit Day having passed, some people still actively want to hold onto futile hostilities. On Friday, I appeared on both The News Quiz and The Last Leg. I had a great time. Despite being in the political minority on both shows, both in terms of the panel and the audience, we had playful back-and-forth and the audiences and fellow guests were generous. Subsequently, a handful of Leave voters accused me of "selling out" by being there. First, I’m a Tory, so it should come as no surprise that I quite like working and getting paid for it. Second, the same people who have moaned at the lack of political diversity on panel shows now seem to be furious that it's starting to happen.

The truth is Brexit has been a war. All wars leave scars. When they end some people, aren’t ready to stop fighting.

Maybe they're traumatised and over the next few years we’ll see a Brexit version of shell shock. Wards of men and women screaming obscenities at Andrew Neil in the dead of night. Deranged souls diving behind couches when they hear the opening strain of Newsnight. Blokes from Crouch End attacking domestic cats because they thought they saw the spectre of Dominic Cummings beanie hat.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country is ready to give moving on a tentative try. The smart ones, anyway. Because what’s really dumb is insulting the people you need to start winning over, or keep hold of, if your wing of politics is to stand any chance of future success.

Geoff Norcott's touring show ‘Taking Liberties’ runs from 25 January to 25 April 2020. Tickets are available here