Whatever happens with Brexit, this toxic sludge will be in England’s political groundwater for a long time. The self-pity of Lost Causism will meld with the rage of betrayal. Without the EU as whipping boy and scapegoat, there will be no end of blame and no shortage of candidates to be saddled with it: anyone and everyone except the Brexiteers themselves. That most virulent of poisons, the ‘stab-in-the-back’, is in the bloodstream now and it will work its harm for a long time.
