Leave aside whether you or I are annoyed by the High Court’s judgement on Article 50, or think it perverse according to law. Are you really surprised by it?

I am not.

Below are links to various more-or-less prophetic articles (wrong in some respects, especially my belief , later revised a fortnight before the vote, that the anti-EU cause was most unlikely to win the referendum; strikingly right in others) in which I explained to impatient and tetchy readers why I did not want a referendum, and was not convinced that such a vote could get us out of the EU:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/05/why-i-place-no-hope-in-a-referendum-on-britains-eu-membership.html

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/no-we-have-not-escaped-from-the-eu-and-we-may-not-ever-do-so-.html

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/02/the-eu-is-our-own-hotel-california-we-can-check-out-but-well-never-leave.html

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/05/the-referendum-mirage.html

The oldest, here, from October 2011, a trifle more than five years ago http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/10/referendum-no-thanks.html

is perhaps the most telling.

I wrote : ‘Even if they succeeded in getting their referendum, and even if they succeeded in winning it – near impossible without at least one major party calling for a vote to withdraw - it would not bind the British government. The only real solution is for a general election to be won by a party committed to secession. And with the Tory party in the way, bed-blocking the position that ought to be occupied by such a party, that will never happen.’

In May 2013, I wrote: ‘Why is there such a fuss about a referendum on British, sorry, I mean Ukay, membership of the European Union? Has Parliament been abolished? Has a constitution been quietly introduced, which demands that such issues are decided by plebiscite, and makes the result of such plebiscites binding on Parliament?

‘I’ve heard no such proposal, and can’t see how it could be so, given the cowardly, ignorant or plain stupid attitudes of most MPs to this question.

‘It’s certainly understood, by constitutional lawyers, that such an obligation is important for any serious plebiscite, and its presence or absence in any legislation will be crucial. I suspect it will be absent.’

It was absent, as I several times said at the time.

This is why, when I correctly predicted that ‘Leave’ would win the referendum (on 12th June) http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/the-british-people-have-risen-at-last-and-were-about-to-unleash-chaos.html

I also prophesied the constitutional crisis which is now developing. I said:

‘I think we are about to have the most serious constitutional crisis since the Abdication of King Edward VIII. I suppose we had better try to enjoy it.

‘If – as I think we will – we vote to leave the EU on June 23, a democratically elected Parliament, which wants to stay, will confront a force as great as itself – a national vote, equally democratic, which wants to quit. Are we about to find out what actually happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?’

The other point I made *after* the result was that the EU itself, and its supporters in this country (no shortage of them in positions of influence in politics, law, diplomacy and media) would act tough to begin with eventually offer us a compromise under which we will, in effect, stay inside the EU.

This isn’t exactly wishful thinking, of the sort which guides many of the reactions to the High Court ruling on Article 50. I have been committed to national independence for many years. But I have infuriated and failed to persuade most of my readers by repeatedly saying that the destruction of the Tory party, and its replacement by a genuinely patriotic and conservative formation, were the essential preliminaries to achieving this.

Well, instead of working hard and saving up to buy my well-crafted, effective if antique device, with its polished brass hinges, well-oiled mechanisms and chased silver decorative bits, they went down to the industrial estate on the edge of town, and maxed out their credit card to purchase a cheapo, bodge-it-yourself instant exit kit – the referendum. Then they hired a plausible man with a grubby white van to install it. It seemed to work to start with. Now it’s giving out alarming knocking and whistling noises, and shuddering in a worrying way. But where’s the man who installed it? His mobile phone seems to have gone dead.

Well, this is what happens when you get the cowboys in. I really did tell you so. We’ll end up in the European Economic Area before this is over, you mark my words – halfway out of the EU instead of where we were, which was halfway in.