Even if Brexit is cancelled, it won’t erase the divisions of the last two years

The meaningless vote is off. Article 50 can be revoked, and this can be done by parliament. We don’t have to bother with a “people’s vote” and all that paperwork. Brexit can be cancelled, and we can pretend the last two years didn’t happen. Just a glitch in the matrix.

But here I am – the Grinch, as ever – to say: they did matter. Those two years can’t be written out of history. I voted remain, but have always been fairly Brexit-fluid. My heart was leave; my head was remain. As time wore on, two things became obvious: Brexit is a disaster and has to be seen to be so by the rest of Europe because the EU is unpopular in many other member states; and our political system is broken.

I knew that anyway, but surely everyone sees it now. Logjam, impasse, inertia: the political class can’t govern. It’s anarchy in the UK – just not in the style we ever imagined it. With the government circling in a holding pattern, some thought that Labour might shove the pilot out of the way and land the plane, but that requires guts.

It’s all so bonkers, and I often think of that period when Belgium didn’t have a government for two years and its economy improved. Nearly everyone I know is firmly remain, and insists that this is the worst thing that has ever happened, but I don’t see it that way. The worst thing that could ever happen has already happened to many folk in this country. They are not worried about studying in Berlin. They don’t have passports, and are using food banks.

The haute remainers are a tribe I certainly don’t belong to. I watched Alastair Campbell shouting over everyone on Newsnight and I saw an advert for leave right there. (Why is he even on the BBC when he once tried to destroy it during the Hutton inquiry?) Arrogant monologuing remainers are a complete turnoff. If there is to be a second vote and you want to persuade leavers, then you have to stop despising them and sitting around at “supper” talking about how thick they all are.

As for the matter of being lied to – yes, I think people were probably lied to. The effects of social media manipulation have yet to be properly grasped, both as a way of organising dissent and as a way of creating a consensus of deep distrust. We need to understand this, even if Brexit gets cancelled. I don’t know what will happen next except that during any discussion on Brexit, at some point, you have to say: “What about the fish (quotas)?” And most remainers haven’t got a clue about any job that involves working outside.

That intangible thing – “the will of the people” – which is a movable feast, has to be situated somewhere real. Sure, the will of the people can change, as Caroline Lucas has argued eloquently. But how is it to be voiced? I worry about muting 17 million voices. I am neither fish, nor foe, nor lexiter (leftwing Brexiter) nor Jacob Rees-Mogg. I simply think telling everyone who voted against the status quo that their vote didn’t count is serious. One of the slogans of the anti-austerity Indignados in Spain is “Tenemos un voto, pero no tenemos voz.” (We have a vote, but we don’t have a voice.) Many people feel today that they have been deprived of a voice.

I know this won’t make me popular in liberal remainland, but for two years many remainers have stuck their fingers in their ears and commiserated only with each other. It’s not enough. The Tory party is not enough. The Labour party is not enough. Nothing can be as it was. The real backstop should be that we remain open to looking at ourselves and wondering why half of us see things differently. If votes are meaningless and voices are unheard, the last two years are just the beginning of the chaos.