DURING his unsuccessful campaign to become president of the European Council in 2009, Tony Blair’s acolytes would boast that their man could “stop the traffic” in capitals. He was box office, he could turn heads, he could make people listen. In a speech in London on February 17th the unpopular former prime minister proved he still has that quality. Where other pro-European politicians waffle and prevaricate, he was crisp and frank: Brexit will be terrible for Britain, it cannot come “at any cost”, voters were “without knowledge of the terms” when they cast their ballots. Mr Blair’s intervention elicited a tsunami of furious responses from bulge-eyed Brexiteers seemingly opposed to his very right to speak out. They protested too much.

To be sure, the speech was politically unrealistic. The prospects of the electorate being moved to “rise up” against Brexit in the coming months are low. The Labour Party, from right to left, is catatonic. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party, though robustly anti-Brexit, are small. Remainers on the Conservative benches are mostly cowed and Theresa May is resolute. Public opinion will probably move slowly, however disastrous the Brexit negotiations seem once the prime minister starts the two-year process on March 9th. Voters do not tend to conclude that they were “wrong”; often they are too busy with their lives to notice that their opinions are changing and simply reimagine their original position. Polls in 2003 showed a majority for Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War, but most people today recall having opposed it at the time. More likely in the short term is that the negative effects of Brexit—an investment exodus, say—will be laid at the door of “Remoaners” who “talk the country down”.

Yet despite this, and Mr Blair’s undoubted political toxicity, his argument was important. This was the first big occasion on which a top politician had argued that Brexit should not happen despite the vote. Critics dismiss this as proof that the private-jet-bound Mr Blair is out of touch. But his logic was sound. The referendum result, now treated as a sacred unquestionable in Westminster, is only as durable and binding as the political reality it expresses. And the reality of Brexit may well change this. Anti-immigration voters will not be satisfied by whatever door-slam Mrs May achieves. The economic dislocation of pulling out of the EU’s single market, combined with the falling pound, will hurt living standards. The promises of bonus billions for public services will come to look like a bad joke. These are the makings of “Bregret”. Mr Blair is merely proposing to help that process along and, if he succeeds, to carry out the will of a now anti-Brexit public and stop the whole process. Bagehot can reasonably disagree only with his timing. Replace “stop” with “reverse” and you have a sensible political strategy.

There are two problems. First, the Remainers are divided. Those who stood together during the referendum campaign last summer have fragmented into five groups which, to Brexiteers, look uncannily and unfairly (because they are not progressing) like the five stages of grief. The first is denial: public figures like A.C. Grayling, a philosopher, who simply seek to stop Brexit in its tracks. The second is anger: Mr Blair and others who accept the referendum result but want to stop Brexit by changing opinions.

The third is bargaining: those Remainers who, like many of those who spoke up this week in House of Lords debates, accept that it will happen but want to moderate it or at least placate their Remainer supporters by grumbling. Many of these middle-grounders resented Mr Blair’s speech as an unhelpful polarisation of the debate. The fourth category corresponds to depression: that segment of political opinion sure that Brexit will be “potentially catastrophic” (as Margaret Beckett, a former foreign secretary, put it) but convinced that little can be done. The fifth is acceptance: the stage attained most comprehensively by Mrs May, who opposed Brexit but is now enacting it in its harshest form. Even discarding the last of these scattered tribes, what hope is there of uniting them into a force that can push back Brexit?

The second problem is that many Remainers—of all descriptions—are still living last year’s referendum. For those who think Brexit should proceed with limited opposition, that vote is almost all that matters in British politics today. For those who think Brexit should be smashed, it was a festival of deceit and democratic infamy that must be overcome. Both are wrong in their way. The accepters should not abandon the anti-Brexit arguments they put with such gusto during the referendum campaign. The opposers should not assume that voters will simply admit they were wrong about Brexit: shifting opinions is slow work.

So Remainers must embark on a giant job of consolidation, melding together their agendas, groups and goals. They must be realistic about the immediate future and ambitious about the long term. Yes, push for the softest possible Brexit now, but aim over the following years to negotiate a newly close relationship with the rest of the EU; perhaps gradually rejoining the single market or, one day, rejoining the union altogether.

Keep stopping the traffic

In other words, Remainers need to disengage from the last battle, the referendum, before they engage with the next, however hard it is to predict when this will come. In practice that means building the foundations of the next “In” campaign: popularising yardsticks by which Brexit’s success (or otherwise) may be measured, setting expectations of Britain outside the EU, running single-issue campaigns that raise the salience of the issues at stake (investment, the benefits of migration, international influence), holding Brexiteers to account for the commitments they make, gathering e-mail addresses and nurturing the networks that might, once the time is right, take Britain back into the European fold. If the public is to turn against Brexit, it will ultimately do that on its own terms. The task of convinced Remainers is to be ready.