RIP Brexit - the dividing force is finally losing power

Whatever the fate now of Boris Johnson - which longer include a return to power - there is hope in the spring air.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Hope, that, after some seven years of Brexit agonies, our long national nightmare may be drawing to a close. Like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and so many other of the dramatis personae, Brexit is slowly but perceptibly fading into the distance, morphing from live national debate into a topic for lively historical debate, rather like the Iraq War, Suez or appeasement before it.

Increasingly, and thankfully, it seems to be losing its power to divide families and friends, and to poison our political system. There’s no denying that the malign economic, cultural and geopolitical consequences of Brexit will reverberate for years (if not decades) to come, and no doubt we’re worse off out; but there is some sense that the British have at last become exhausted by civil war.

Take, as a recent example, the Eurosceptic “rebellion” on Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal, the Windsor Framework. It might actually be the moment when Brexit got “done” at last, but the European Research Group, self-styled Spartans, were having none of that; and so, fronted by the slightly Gilbert and Sullivan-esque figure of Mark Francois, they organised one of their famous revolts.