"At a Notting Hill party the Saturday after the referendum, I had a stand-up barney with a Labour MP. "It’s a disaster!" he cried. "We need a second vote right away." Other guests nodded gravely, but I couldn’t contain myself. Hang on, I said, are you saying a democratic decision is invalid because you lost? "It’s appalling," he wailed. "It can’t happen!" Thus began my life for the next five years. I voted Remain – "with no illusions" as we used to say when I was a student Trot – but I was raised in Doncaster North, a Red Wall seat. I saw the gradual untethering of traditional Labour supporters in my own late father. In 2009, after the local party was discredited by the Donnygate expenses scandal, he voted to make a so-called English Democrat mayor. My father, and millions like him, had little in common with bien pensant London lefties whom I call friends. A reckoning was coming. What surprised me wasn’t the result, but the reckless determination of Remainers to reverse it. Did they think 17 million people would just accept their votes being cancelled? If Remain had won, would they have been cool with Nigel Farage demanding a rerun? The contempt for Brexit voters – that they were thick, old racists, from shitty places – disgusted me."