The Brexit Summit Was Just An Exercise In Self-Delusion

Ditchley Park is a grade 1-listed building, so it may very well be that a crime has been committed. Are you even allowed to bang your head repeatedly against its specially selected Burford stone for a full weekend in a futile search for "How to make Brexit work better"?

- Tom Peck

It is hard to see what else can have happened at the "secret cross-party summit on Brexit" that took place last week, attended by Michael Gove, Peter Mandelson, and most of the big names on both sides of the Brexit divide - particularly as no one who was there is especially willing to tell anyone.

But we do know that, despite the attendance of Gove, Norman Lamont, Michael Howard, and the de facto Vote Leave deputy campaign leader Gisela Stuart, the Daily Mail has already concluded it was a "secret plot to unravel Brexit".

It is hard to know what "unravel" means in this context. Gove, apparently, was very "honest" about Brexit's many shortcomings, and there is certainly no doubt that nothing can unravel Brexit faster than the H-word.

Being honest about Brexit is the very worst thing you can ever do, which is precisely why no one in favour of it has ever been honest about it (apart from Gove, who we now know is happy to be "honest" about Brexit - as long as that honesty happens in private, and no one is allowed to be told any of the details).