In the meantime, as an elite form of neurotic escapism, there was one last refuge for self-pity: leave the plebs in their bondage trousers and return to the Middle Ages. A strange word re-entered English public discourse, its sudden presence a reminder that there was still some mileage in the ridiculous at the heart of Brexit’s sublime. That word was vassalage: ‘the state or condition of a vassal; subordination, homage or allegiance characteristic of or resembling that of a vassal’.34
