T HE BREXITEERS have become the angry brigade of British politics. Boris Johnson has accused Theresa May of wrapping a suicide vest around Britain. Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused her of being “cowed” by the European Union. And several Tory MP s have used anonymous briefings to savage her in the press. “The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted,” declared one conspirator who is probably more familiar with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” than the complete works of Edmund Burke. “She’ll be dead soon.”

The obvious reason for this is that Brexiteers think that Mrs May is wrecking a project that has consumed much of their lives. They are furious that she botched the election of 2017 with a wooden campaign and a shoddy manifesto. This has weakened the government’s hand in dealing not only with recalcitrant Remainers but also with cunning Europeans who are determined to exploit any sign of British weakness. They are equally cross that she is betraying what they consider to be the glorious principles of Lancaster House, the speech in which she laid down various “red lines” about leaving the European Union.

There is a lively debate about why Mrs May has done this. Was she always going to betray them? (She voted to remain before briefly becoming the Boudica of Brexit.) Or was she corrupted by establishment types such as Olly Robbins, the civil servant in charge of the negotiations? Or was she simply ground down by European bureaucrats? That she is a traitor is now taken as a given.

There is also a deeper reason why Brexiteers are so angry. Mrs May represents the reality principle in a political world dominated by fantasy and wish-fulfilment. She didn’t fluff last year’s election only because of a wooden campaign and a botched manifesto. She also fluffed it because a more or less equally divided nation was not willing to give her carte blanche to pursue a hard Brexit. She didn’t blur the red lines of Lancaster House just because she was manipulated and deceived. She blurred them because she is trying to avoid terrible hazards such as a breakdown of trade with the EU or the imposition of a hard border in Ireland. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, described his tribe as liberals who have been mugged by reality. Brexiteers are Tories who are furious that reality has proved to be more stubborn than they imagined.

They believed that leaving the European Union would be a cake walk. Liam Fox pronounced that “the free-trade agreement that we will have to do with the EU should be one of the easiest in human history.” John Redwood averred that “getting out of the EU can be quick and easy—the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation.” In fact, leaving the EU is likely to be one of the hardest bureaucratic exercises in post-war history. That is not just because the EU is determined to make it difficult (though it is), but because unravelling 45 years’ worth of trading regulations is inevitably complicated and time-consuming.

The Brexiteers believed that Britain would be able to have all the benefits of the single market while also striking trade deals with the rest of the world—that “there will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside,” as David Davis said, or that Britain would be able to have its cake and eat it, as Mr Johnson pronounced in a phrase that should be carved on his tombstone. But leaving the EU inevitably involves difficult trade-offs. Britain has to choose between maintaining open access to the EU’ s single market (which means complying with its rules) or freeing itself to make independent trade deals with the rest of the world (which means losing automatic access to the EU’ s market). It may yet have to make an even harder trade-off within its own borders: treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, which would eventually tie the province more closely to the Republic of Ireland, or accepting a soft Brexit.

The Brexiteers further believed that the EU would prove to be a pushover. During the referendum campaign, Michael Gove promised that “the day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.” In fact, the EU not only has a lot more cards in its pack than Britain—27 member states, including aces such as France and Germany. It also has more experience, as a regulatory superpower that is used to dealing with other superpowers such as China and America. Some Brexiteers also thought that Britain would be the praetorian guard of a revolution against an ossified global order, represented by Brussels. In fact, the EU has arguably been strengthened rather than weakened by Britain’s imminent departure, while pro-Europeanism has gone from being an exotic taste in Britain to a real force. And Britain’s fellow rebels against the old world order consist of such dubious figures as Matteo Salvini and Donald Trump.

The new moaners

There is an element of vanity in this. Many Brexiteers spent decades in the wilderness, being dismissed as “swivel-eyed loons” by senior Tories. They thought that the referendum result would finally turn them into prophets and heroes. But it is increasingly looking as if the establishment types got it right. Preparations for a no-deal Brexit are becoming increasingly ominous, as the government prepares to charter container ships to import food and drugs, and turn a Kent motorway into a giant lorry park.

There are two very different ways that you can react to reality when it turns out to be harsher than you expected. You can recognise reality for what it is, and try to render it a bit more palatable by hard work and careful thought. Or you can rage against it—and bolster your rage with talk about ideals betrayed and simple solutions denied. Mrs May is no one’s model of a perfect prime minister. But it is to her credit that she has tried hard to grapple with a fiendishly difficult problem. And it is to the discredit of Brexiteers that, rather than helping Mrs May to do her duty, they have decided to rage against her.