What the Capitol riots and the plot to stop Brexit have in common

It’s not often that browsing the genteel aisles of Waterstones reminds you of madmen storming the Capitol in buffalo-horn helmets, but that’s the buzz I got as I briskly scanned the History shelves. I happened on a slender volume called How To Stop Brexit, written by Nick Clegg. I’d never heard of the book (a realisation that probably attaches to quite a lot of books by Lib Dem leaders) so I pulled it out, with curiosity. The text, I thought, must be a new thing, written since we finally Brexited and Clegg joined Facebook. But no: it was published in 2017. It seems I was holding a kind of revolutionary pamphlet, advising Remainers how they might ignore Britain’s largest ever democratic vote, and get it reversed, thus evading the will of the people.

Ignoring and reversing a democratic vote is particularly piquant right now as the world remembers, much more vividly, what happened in Washington DC a year ago: when angry Trumpites marched through the American capital, intent on annulling the US presidential election, and reinstalling The Donald.