Why I lie about voting Leave

There are lies, damned lies and pretending to back Remain. I lie because I am a coward. I hug friends who burst into tears, petrified by life without the European Union. I sympathise with strangers, who act like Lady Di just died and there’s nowhere to lay flowers. I obfuscate, I mutter, I am evasive. And I am not alone. There are hordes of us who’ll not admit we voted Leave to our best friends, our next of kin.

We learned to keep schtum a long time ago — thanks to social media — since they’d defriend us if said we’d vote to leave. Now they are outraged, deeply confused — and unsure which of us to blame. ‘Literally no one on my timeline said they voted out, so it was just an echo chamber of smugness,’ says one of my friends — who has at least 500 on Facebook. Now they are howling: ‘I am never one to be political but you are racist scum.’