Blame Theresa May, not Remainers, for our Brexit crisis

Are Remainers to blame for the looming hard Brexit? The theory goes that had Remainers compromised and accepted soft Brexit, none of what is about to unfold would ever happen. It’s true that the behaviour of some Remain campaigners in the aftermath of the referendum has hardly been exemplary. The whole Russian conspiracy thing was deeply alienating to anyone who might have listened to their case otherwise. These campaigners helped turned Brexit into a skirmish in the culture was, unconsciously saying that Brexiteers weren’t just wrong but a malign force in British politics. Some remain campaigners also sucked up to Corbyn in a fruitless and embarrassing manner. Yet hard Brexit isn’t their fault for a very simple reason: it is the fault of one person alone. That person is Theresa May.

Why? Because those who say that Remainers never got behind soft Brexit are ignoring reality. If you go back to late 2016, soft Brexit was the mode of the day for almost all leading Remain figures.