Listening to David Allan Green and Roland Smith on the Remainiacs Podcast last week has really left me wondering, what happened to moderate Euroscepticism? Both are the kind of Maastrict Treaty era eurosceptics who are pro-Single Market but anti-ever closer union and completely aghast that a No Deal Brexit is even being suggested as a Brexit option.

This isn't to say my position on the EU has changed significantly since the referendum. As I wrote the day before everything went to hell, I became convinced of the wider benefits of the European project a while ago and the performance of the British government since the referendum has made the case for shared sovereignty and supra-national government more, not less, compelling.

I have thought however, at multiple points since the referendum, that there have been a number of opportunities where a kind of "consensus Brexit" could have been developed in a way that brought together people across the remain/leave divide. Something that achieves the aims of that kind of 90's Eurosceptic movement which accepts the benefits of the European Economic Area but moves to disentangle the UK from the European political project. It might have required more creative thinking from both the UK and the EU on reforming freedom of movement than has ever seemed to be in evidence on either side. You wouldn't have satisfied everyone in the UK but I suspect you might have brought most people on board other than the small extreme majorities on both side of the debate.

It appears that this is the approach that the Common Market 2.0 group in the House of Commons and, to some extent, the Labour Party, are now attempting to drum up support for but I'm worried that it's too little and too late. The utterly shambolic way in which Theresa May's government have handled the negotiations over the past two and a half years has served to entrench extreme opinions on both the leave and remain sides - so that instead of a move towards an EEA-style middle ground we have a debate about two utterly extreme positions - No Deal vs revoking Article 50. Neither of those options are particularly feasible ways forward - No Deal would crash the economy and potentially reignite conflict in Ireland, Article 50 revocation has the potential to damage any remaining faith in the political system and potentially open up the UK to very real threat from the far right. As much as I'd like to pretend the referendum result didn't happen, trying to enact that wish is dangerous and anti-democratic. (although the 5 million and rising signatures on the current Revoke Article 50 petition seem to be attempting to give the lie to this assertion that I originally wrote a mere three days ago...)

I don't really know where we go from here as a country - I suspect we face some dark times over the coming weeks, both politically and economically. The deeply held beliefs on both sides only seem to be becoming more entrenched and I struggle to see how we get back to the middle ground. I do however think it will take political leadership of the type that we just don't have at the moment - and that's perhaps the most worrying thing.