Are we seeing the last push against Brexit?

Large parts of the senior civil service regard Brexit as almost illegal. Some of them regard loyalty to the EU as a higher duty than to the elected government they are paid to serve. They feel this most strongly in relation to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland which they believe — with no textual evidence — is indissolubly linked with the EU. Some of the top mandarins now leaving their jobs prematurely think this way, perhaps none more so than Sir Jonathan Jones, the government’s chief legal adviser. On Tuesday, Lord Adonis, the most Remainery Remainer there is, tweeted: ‘We are going to hear a lot more about Sir Jonathan Jones, the government’s chief legal adviser, who has resigned rather than be a party to breaking international treaties.’ Are we about to witness the final push by the Establishment to nullify the referendum result in effect, though not in name?

In the early hours of Sunday, a man walked round central Birmingham stabbing people. He killed a 23-year-old man, inflicted critical injuries on two other people and wounded five more. The police were accused of hanging about nervously in cars instead of getting out and tackling the man. Later, Supt Steve Graham gave a press conference. He could not yet say much, he warned, but he could confidently assert that there was ‘absolutely no suggestion at this point that this was in any way, shape or form, motivated by hate’. The stabbings had not been aimed at gay people, but had been ‘random’. So that’s all right. Supt Graham seemed to be proffering a new category — deliberate, fatal attacks which are not motivated by hate. What are they motivated by, then? And why, if in some strange way, shape or form, they are not motivated by hate, are they ‘better’ than fatal stabbings which are? The acts are just as intentional, the victims just as dead or wounded.