Since the referendum result this country really has felt a surreal place. It’s been like one of those parallel universes so beloved of science fiction writers. You know, one of those places that (superficially) look and sound the same but have startling and unsettling differences. So, what was once an outward, democratic, fairly prosperous and socially liberal country was replaced overnight with one that was inward, xenophobic, illiberal that had a whiff of fascism about it and that was happy to ruin its economy for the chimera of having ‘taken back control’.
Today, that division has been thrown into stark relief as the High Court has ruled that Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the EU and that the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – beginning formal discussions with the EU – on their own.
This is clearly a victory for democracy. You would have thought Brexiteers would be welcoming the decision. After all, they campaigned for sovereignty, democracy and Parliament, for us to ‘take back control’.
Not a bit of it. Instead the rhetoric and threats have more in common with a fascist dictatorship. Here’s a few comments from Twitter.
But the ‘best’ has to be the Daily Mail comments. Take a look at these – and this is a mainstream newspaper for God’s sake…
And finally…
This is why I worry about the future of my country.
Paul Bigland 
We are still leaving the EU – however it will be on the terms of the people, through their representatives, rather than popular opinion. There are two immediate strands here to the ruling and the outcry. It appears to comprise the uneducated or duped – who do not understand that the judges have supported democracy rather than autocracy – and the rather more thoughtful, who appear to want to recreate the slide into fascism that we saw in the 1930s.
You’re not the only one worried.