John Bercow and the paper-thin skins of the Brexiteers

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The House of Commons has no trouble with the idea that an MP can, overnight, go from taking a party whip to being its impartial speaker.

So it really ought to be able to cope with John Bercow having expressed a view on Brexit after the referendum.

I have never been a Bercow fan - see the column I wrote for Liberal Democrat News when he was first elected speaker - but the meetings with young people he holds around the country to talk about parliament and its workings seem wholly admirable.

No, what the fuss in the media this weekend shows is the incredibly thin skins of the Brexiters.

They won the referendum, yet they do not seem to be enjoying it. They are constantly on the look out for slights and treason.

If Brexit is a revolution, then what I once said of Jeremy Corbyn's followers is relevant here too:

The failure of the revolution is always blamed on sabotage and the new regime takes brutal action against the supposed culprits. 

Once they have been eliminated, the people are told, all the promises of a better world that accompanied the revolution will be fulfilled

This hunt for traitors will only increase when Brexit fails to deliver the more prosperous and ordered society that its proponents seek.

The good news is that they will probably end up fighting each other. I quoted Bryan Magee in the same post:

There is a situational logic to revolutions. Disparate groups unite to overthrow an existing regime, but once they have succeeded in doing so the cause that brought them together has gone, and they then fight one another to fill the power vacuum that they themselves have created. 

These internecine struggles, usually savage, among erstwhile allies perpetuate the revolutionary breakdown of society far beyond the overthrow of the old regime, and delay the establishment of a new order.