Brexit celebrations, flags and church bells will deepen our divisions, not heal them Why the bread and circuses?

I was on Jeremy Vine’s television show on Channel 5 last week. One subject up for discussion was Nigel Farage’s plans for a big, fat, jingoistic party in Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on 31 January. I won’t join in, I said. I will instead grieve for what we gave up and where this country is headed.

A few women in the audience cheered my cheerlessness. They felt the same way. Vine and some others consummately made the counter-arguments: that all Britons should welcome such celebrations because they would bring us together, open the process of reconciliation and mark a new beginning.

Since then, all sorts of other plans are bursting forth. Enthusiasts want bells to ring out in every church, large and small. The Prime Minister announced yesterday that he was working on a “plan” to allow the public to fund Big Ben to come out of hibernation. As i reported on Monday, the Government is set to encourage councils to fly the Union flag.

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Get Kim Jong-un’s parade planner on the phone; the North Koreans know how to enforce happiness. Maybe the first “Brexit Day” celebration could have a float with Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Francois in Roman togas and wreaths, throwing English grapes to the masses.

I jest, but this is dead serious.

The Roman poet Juvenal wrote that people can be so distracted by bread and circuses that they do not notice autocrats taking away their rights and freedoms. That’s what happened in that city state. That’s what’s happening in the UK, ruled, as it now is, by a hubristic government.

About £120m has been demarcated for a Brexit festival in 2022. Martin Green, its newly appointed director, is already there in his imagination: it’s creative, digital, he says, and “not just that. It’s durational things, things that travel, it’s things of scale, it’s going to where people are”. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will bring a “bit of joy and hope and happiness”.

A number of liberals, arts entrepreneurs and institutions have become part of the state’s Brexit propaganda. They will do well in the coming years.

Remainers are under pressure to join in and believe in the promised land, whether we want to or not. We were beaten by those who ran a more proficient, hard-headed, often iniquitous and dishonest campaign. But we should never bow to their power. Such submission is what they expect of brides forced into marriages: give in, pretend to be happy at the wedding, accept reality.

In all that noisy demagoguery about the “democratic will of the people” and “get Brexit done”, few now remember these figures: 17,410,742 people voted Leave and 16,141,241 voted Remain; that’s 51.89 per cent versus 48.11 per cent.

Since the election, Remainers of all political persuasions are, in my view, being discarded as second-class citizens or politically irrelevant. It’s over, we are told. Now maybe if our side had won, similar triumphalism and victory fever would have crushed Brexiteers. But we didn’t. They did. And now they want us to acquiesce to the will of Tory authoritarians in government and anti-Europeans in the media.

Our profound loyalty to the European project is denounced as treacherous or unpatriotic. We are still expected to pay our taxes but get no representation. After normal elections, policies are debated, defended and disagreed with. Brexit is an absolute, so those against it have to accept total defeat. For ever. Well sod that, I say. Democracy did not end with the referendum or the last election. It carries on. Too much is at stake for us to shut up and put up.

According to ratings agency S&P, Brexit has already cost the economy £66bn. It calculates that the amount is more than we paid into the European Union for 47 years. The economy is stagnant. The Union of the four nations may not hold. Migrants and black, Asian and minority ethnic Britons are experiencing more hostility. Complaints are met with increased hostility or disbelief. Universities are panicking about the potential loss of EU grants and the Erasmus+ scheme – a travel bursary for young people which enriched their lives.

Musicians and artists are losing essential EU connections. Care homes cannot get workers because EU citizens are leaving. Too many feel unwelcome or are discouraged by new, costly and unfair immigration rules. NHS workers from elsewhere are becoming disillusioned.

My friend Priti, a nurse who came over from India five years ago, says: “This is not the country I came into. Not the place my parents loved when they studied here. It has become so impolite. Even when I am changing a bandage or putting drops in their eyes, some patients shout at me to go back. My colleagues are great but I am going – I have a job in Dubai. They need us but don’t behave well.”

A Brexit bash will distract the masses for a while, but not for ever.

Committed Remainers should, as suggested by the economist Will Hutton, light candles with like-minded friends on the night of 31 January and then carry on opposing Brexiteers.

We must, for the sake of young Britons, for the future of this hitherto formidable nation.