Don’t expect the Brexiteers to quiet down after their ‘victory’

Mark Francois and his ilk are enjoying their moment of triumph – but next will come an exaggerated show of martyrdom

The British public has been told that something stupendously important happened yesterday; something so huge and historic that nothing will be the same again.

Tory MP Mark Francois planned to get very emotional about it all. Not the getting-blind drunk-and-bursting-into-patriotic-song kind of emotional – he simply wants a quiet moment to process the profundity of the Brexiteers’ triumph over Brussels’ dictatorial rule. “I’m not going to bed. I’m going to stay up and watch the sun rise on a free country,” he said of his Brexit celebration plan.

It is tempting to imagine this newly zen Francois – a Francois less red-faced and combustible – sitting close-eyed and cross-legged on a rooftop, mediating on the dawn and his own future on the Conservative backbenches – but it is not going to happen. Brexit is not actually over. And Mark Francois won’t stop appearing on TV, turning crimson and saying very stupid things.

The initial phase is now done, it is true. But little about the United Kingdom’s relationship with European Union is resolved. We have a rough outline on the terms of our departure, full of awkward fudges on very basic things, like border arrangements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

As we move into the transition period and the nitty-gritty of trade deal negotiations gets underway, there is a painful inevitability about reliving the same theatre of the absurd, in which the same players donning the same guises will take the stage and reel off the same lines.

Over the past 12 months, we have been pummelled with talk about deadlines, possible extensions and the threat of a cliff-edge exit. In 2020, we will be pummelled with talk about deadlines, possible extensions and the threat of a cliff-edge exit. If you thought Francois, Steve Baker, Iain Duncan Smith and the rest of the goon squad in the European Research Group (ERG) were telling us how those arrogant, controlling bullies in Brussels are trying to screw us over, you are sorely mistaken. For as the orgy of Union Jack-waving recedes and details of necessary trade-offs and compromises emerge, the Tory ultras will be raging once more, telling us that those arrogant, controlling bullies in Brussels are trying to screw us over.

The ERG still needs a bogeyman, and the EU will continue to fit the bill. Boris Johnson and his key ministers – if they aren’t seen to be standing up to the enemy – might just replace those pesky Remainer MPs as partners in the terrible crime of failing to deliver the one, true, rock-hard Brexit.

This is not what the British people voted for, they will say. This is not really Brexit at all. Can we have back our proper Brexit please?

Brexit remains a fantasy of splendid isolation in an interdependent world. It is also a chance to bathe in martyrdom when those forces of interdependence become real.

Francois, a former part-time officer in the Territorial Army, likes his military metaphors. He is also fond of thinking in quasi-religious terms about the good versus evil struggle for political “freedom”. Remember when he channelled Jesus Christ himself after a disappointing defeat in the Commons last April? “Forgive them father,” he said in earnest. “For they know not what they do.”

So let’s allow Francois his moment of calm to watch the sunrise. He and the others have time yet before they pick up their crosses and cry out to the heavens about the great Brexit betrayal that lies ahead.