Britain is one of the oldest and most stable democratic societies in the world. For centuries, it conducted itself on the world stage with canny self-interest and the occasional moment of high principle. Sometimes it was a force for good, sometimes for bad, but it was always rational.
Over the past three years, however, ever since 52% of voters decided to leave the European Union, Britain has gone completely bonkers. Each day, the country has been forced to go through some new level of embarrassment, some new substrata of delusional thinking. We keep imagining that we have finally reached the lowest possible point, that things simply cannot get any more embarrassing than this, and then, no, it turns out they can always get worse.
Brexit is probably the most complex, technical, never-ending news story in global politics, but at the heart of it is a simple question: Do you believe in objective reality? Is there a shared set of facts which apply to the world, which we can all agree on?
Early on, the debate hinged on this issue. You either accepted objective reality, in which…
