I'm amazed at how quickly the EU went from being a complete non-issue for the majority of the population to a central aspect of English identity politics. It just goes to show how terrifyingly successful populism can be - tell people that some outsider is doing them down, and that things would be better without them, and it doesn't matter how little evidence you have to back it up, there'll be people who seize on it and turn into raving paranoiacs. May basically did the same as Corbyn with her "Brexit means Brexit" - she sat on the fence for as long as humanly possible because she knew damn well that she wasn't going to be able to deliver any unicorns. Both Labour and the Tories are guilty of playing Schrödinger's Brexit, and while the Tories are infinitely more culpable, the sense of betrayal is naturally greater when it's your own side that act as enablers.

I see that the petition is now down to 5.8 million. Presumably they cleaned out a whole bunch of invalid signatures (doubtless from disgruntled Leavers hoping to discredit the whole thing - paranoid? Moi?)