Matt — thanks for a great post.

I’ve been asking myself whether my sense of devastation is just because, as you put it, this is the first political outcome which really hits ‘me’. I think there’s more to it than that.

When a political party I didn’t support wins the general election, I am much more phlegmatic. I respect my opponent’s opinions. The manifestos behind the victory have been subject to critique and will shape legislator’s behaviour. There is a wisdom in crowds. And there are only 5 years to put up with. While there may be particular policies I strongly resent or would find costly/offensive — e.g. 50%+ rates of tax, abolition of university tuition fees — etc these policies are reversible and stem from the political pendulum swinging away from me — in a cyclical and temporary way.

Why the Brexit vote feels so much worse is for at least two reasons. First of all I feel that for many Brixiteers Brexit will prove to be a hoax. A fantasy. The dysfunctional anti-establishment disillusion will then get worse. Secondly, this vote — if it leads to us leaving the EU — feels irreversible. At least in my lifetime. There is a good reason why written constitutions tend to impose a higher bar than 50% on major constitutional change, and with 70% of our appointed parliamentary representatives opposing Brexit I find it horrific that a finely balanced decision can have permanent, damaging consequences when the ‘manifesto’ (such as it was) for Brexit made no coherent sense at all.

A normal political defeat, this was definitely not.