Lord Adonis — former Minister of State for Education under Tony Blair — has issued a new fatwa on Brexit: those responsible must be investigated by public inquiry and banned from holding political office ever again.

So let’s just get this clear. In June 2016, 17.4 million people voted for Brexit — more people than have ever voted for any cause in British history — but that democratic decision is not good enough for Lord Adonis who now thinks it must be stopped.

When Brexit is stopped, there will have to be a public enquiry and in my view those directly responsible should never hold office again — Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) September 16, 2018

Not only does he think it must be stopped but he also thinks ‘those directly responsible’ — presumably the most politically senior Brexit campaigners like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove — should be investigated by a public inquiry whose outcome Lord Adonis has already predetermined: they must never hold office again.

But why should the public be forced to pay for an inquiry whose purpose was to punish those politicians who most closely represented them?

How does it help a functioning democracy when an unelected chancer who has somehow wormed his way into the upper chamber vigorously campaigns against the decision of a free and fair democratic referendum?

At the risk of stating the obvious, Lord Adonis is in danger of sounding obsessive, unhinged, and utterly contemptuous of democracy.

The same is true, it must be said, of most prominent Remoaners.

Impossible to defend as "democratic" the indeterminate outcome of a crooked campaign aided by a hapless regulator won with lies and damaging to the UK that breaks key promises and is wanted only by a minority. Be honest: forcing it through is the very antithesis of democracy. — Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) September 16, 2018

Indeed @peoplesvote_uk will show that voting CAN change things. It can halt the theft of a country by right wing charlatans pretending to do it for the people against the elite. You’ve lost the plot like you’re losing the argument and going to lose the vote when it comes https://t.co/UvPG4pKVJa — Alastair PEOPLE’S VOTE Campbell (@campbellclaret) September 16, 2018

Respecting' the referendum result means supporting a result won by cheating, lies and undeliverable promises. There is nothing democratic about that – nothing.@UKLabour @Conservatives https://t.co/Ppiv4KBqp3 — Jessica Simor QC (@JMPSimor) September 16, 2018

Brexit must be stopped. Good news: it can be stopped! #PeoplesVote — A C Grayling #FBPE #PeoplesVote #RemainAndReform (@acgrayling) June 13, 2018

This is what happens, I think, when you are stuck in an echo chamber and the only voices you listen to are those belonging to people as fanatical as you: you work one another up into ever more extravagant flights of deranged, gibbering fancy, quite unaware how utterly bonkers you’ve become because everyone you know sounds just as barmy.

We could, of course, just laugh at this people and perhaps rattle the bars of their cages with sticks, as was fashionable in the days of Bethlehem hospital (aka Bedlam) where visitors would pay to come and gawp at the loonies.

The problem is that these people have power and influence. Andrew Adonis is a member of the House of Lords, Professor AC Wailing is prominent in academe, Alastair Campbell still trades heavily on his brash, noisy past as Tony Blair’s chief attack dog, and the two lawyers have QC after their names which presumably still counts for something (even though the truth is you get made QC these days by collecting tokens from the side of a Cornflakes packet and then signing your name below a statement that says “I totally believe in social justice, diversity, #MeToo, the gender pay gap, the European Union and the evils of white privilege”, at which point you’re in).

It was partly because we were sick to death of being bossed around by such people that so many of us voted Brexit.

So perhaps we should be grateful that they are still there, doing their thing: reminding us with their every prissy, contemptuous, arrogant, out-of-touch, sneering, spoilt, petulant, authoritarian, snobbish utterance how important it is that we get a Brexit outcome which wipes the smiles off their faces for all eternity.