“Some people will say as I leave office that this is the end of Brexit,” Boris Johnson told the House of Commons on 18 July, as he defended his government against the confidence vote that it had, confusingly, decided to call in itself. “Oh yes, and the leader of the opposition and the deep state will prevail in their plot to haul us back into alignment with the EU as a prelude to our eventual return. And we on this side of the House will prove them wrong.”
It’s hardly “we will fight them on the beaches” (a setting, one must assume, that a demob-happy Prime Minister who isn’t even pretending to care about the nation any more would much rather be fighting in during this heatwave). It does, however, contain two unnerving phrases that are worth a moment’s thought.
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