The Virtue of Inertia Has Kept the UK Sane

tech.hindustantimes.com:

In the novels of Thomas Hardy, small lapses have dire consequences. In Jude the Obscure it is the cerebral Jude Fawley's ill-advised lust for the vacuous Arabella Donn that dooms his ambition to become a “Christminster” scholar. Gabriel Oak's misfortunes in Far from the Madding Crowd begin with a novice sheepdog and end with an amoral sergeant. The plot of The Mayor of Casterbridge hinges on a moment of drunken bravado.

There is something very Hardy-esque about Britain today. Nearly seven years ago, a majority of voters — 51.9% of the 72.2% who voted — opted to take their country out of the European Union. A significant number of those who voted “Leave” now seem to feel the same way about Brexit as Jude felt about Arabella. It was a terrible mistake.

According to a YouGov poll conducted in early November, 56% of Britons now think that, in hindsight, Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU, compared with 32% who think it was right, and 12% who don't know. A more recent poll revealed that 17% of those who voted to exit now regard it as a blunder.

When asked to explain their regret, one in four disillusioned Leavers said that things have generally become worse since Brexit. The second most common answer (given by one in five) referred to the deterioration of the economy and the rising cost of living.

True, the members of the political elite who backed Brexit make no such admissions of regret, even in private. The current lines of defense are either that Brexit simply hasn't been executed properly or that it is too early to judge it a failure. My old friends who make these arguments remind me of the Trotskyists we knew at Oxford back in the 1980s, who said much the same things about Marxism. I suspect they are uncomfortably