Remember gung-ho, priapic Boris Johnson of the referendum campaign? The moment my remainer heart sunk, the moment I knew the leave vote might just get up in 2016, was during the debate in which Johnson loudly heralded "independence day!" to a spontaneous, rousing cheer.
But that excitable rhetoric of "sunlit uplands" and "amazing opportunities outside the EU" has been replaced by a more subdued mood from Brexit's most vocal cheerleaders. Their shoulders are slumped and the confident promises have been replaced by stumbling, mumbling desperation. And, unsurprisingly, the self-serving, grifting con man, Nigel Farage has abandoned the men and women of the fishing industry after using them disgracefully for his own ends in 2016.
The Brexiters' rhetoric now is more like "well, it won't be so bad" or "this is what we're doing to make this a bit less rubbish" - and everything "we're doing" is stuff that we're paying for, stupidly expensive stuff we, the taxpayers, wouldn't have to pay for if we'd simply stayed in the EU.
Take Nissan's Sunderland plant for the latest example. All of a sudden, Nissan executives were singing the praises of Brexit and announcing that batteries would be manufactured in Sunderland. Last year, Nissan was sending out perfectly valid warnings of the dire consequences of a no-deal Brexit - and luckily for Nissan, the wafer-thin deal covered goods (but not services). Last week, Nissan was all about Brexit.
First, before any leave voter dares accuse me of wanting Nissan to close the Sunderland plant, nothing could be further from the truth. On a personal level, I have friends and family in the area and, even if they don't work at the factory, a 6,000-job employer shutting up shop has implications for them all. And on a broader level, only a hateful sadist would get any joy from seeing the end of a genuine achievement for the north-east from the Thatcher era. Nissan Sunderland is a fiscal multiplier, an unalloyed good for the region, as well as the 70,000 supply chain jobs beyond the plant's gates.
The reality is that the loss of Nissan Sunderland would be a PR disaster for this government.
Sunderland voted 61.3% to leave the EU, smashing the nationwide 52% leave vote. Ever since, the people of Sunderland have been characterised, often cruelly, as idiots who shot themselves in their collective feet in 2016. A no-deal Brexit would have almost certainly spelled the end of the Nissan plant. The government knew this from June 24, 2016, and they have been generous with our money toward the automaker as a result. In February 2019, business secretary Greg Hand had to publicly concede that Nissan, a company with assets worth US$154 billion, received a government grant of £61 million.
While this is good news for Sunderland, such corporate welfare is unsustainable. Other parts of the UK automotive industry won't be as fortunate and the government knows full well it can't just spunk £61 million every time a big company threatens to leave the UK.
And the rest of this whole Brexit thing is just a bit pathetic really.
It's obviously a good thing that the country hasn't descended into total chaos. I'm glad I haven't been in a fist fight for the last loaf of bread in Asda or taken to shooting squirrels off the garage roof for dinner. Only the most economically reckless or illiterate disaster capitalists and disaster socialists - almost always people wealthy enough to be insulated from any real hardships - genuinely wanted absolute bedlam after 11pm on New Year's Eve 2020.
Instead, we now have lots of examples of supposedly "little things" that have happened as a result of Brexit. This was always going to be the way it panned out - Brexit as the death by a thousand cuts rather than one massive social and economic explosion wiping us all out.
These "little things" have been seized on by Brexiters as examples of pampered remainers whining from their ivory towers - it is low-hanging fruit picked gleefully by leave voters in what has degenerated into an embittered culture war.
Brexiters have laughed at remainers for calling out everything from having to buy dog food in France when taking pooches on holiday to increased postage charges. Apparently, only wealthy remainers have ever taken a dog on holiday to Europe, even though that is clearly nonsense. It's not just about bloody dog food - it is about the added costs of taking a pet on holiday across the channel which are a direct result of leaving the EU. Brexit makes what was once a simple, affordable pleasure for a nation of dog-lovers into something that will become out of reach for many people. It's a microcosm of the sheer joylessness that Brexit is starting to bring to us.
Increased postal costs between the UK and the EU are not just a bit of a pain in the bum - they are genuinely crippling a range of smaller British businesses and you can bet your life they won't be getting a £61 million handout from the government any time soon. But Brexit suffering is only for the little people and the little companies.
And there are other "little things" that are being minimised by Brexiters desperate to paint remainers as doomsayers. For example, phone companies have not yet started charging for global roaming when we travel to the EU - a dire warning of the remain campaign - but anyone who seriously thinks this will never happen is almost adorably naive.
The loss of access to the fast EU queues at European airports is dismissed by Brexiters by saying it's "worth it" or "anyone would think we never travelled or worked on the continent before the EU!", conveniently romanticising an era where travel was not accessible for a lot of people, where crossing European borders was inconvenient and time-consuming, where it was not easy to work or retire in Europe without a lot of money.
When Boris Johnson pettily pulled the UK out of the Erasmus scheme, even though we could have stayed in post-Brexit, this led to predictable Brexiter howls that this was just for privileged kids. No amount of people stating that they were working class kids whose lives were changed for the better by Erasmus will change their minds.
Similarly, Boris Johnson refusing the EU's magnanimity to allow easy access for British musicians to tour in Europe can be easily dismissed by Brexiters as just muso luvvies complaining. Never mind that the arts contributes way more to the UK economy than fishing or being able to easily work as a performer in Europe helps British artists financially and professionally. This is just another "little thing" we have to put up with for... For what exactly?
Liz Truss can bang on about pork and cheese all she likes but it's not going to bring us trade deals that are close to what we had in the EU. We will still need to abide by EU rules to trade with the EU, but we will have no say in making those rules.
Boris Johnson can tweet ridiculous photos of himself giving God the thumbs-up while on the phone to Joe Biden but the reality is that a mutually beneficial UK-US free trade deal was not part of that conversation.
Brexiters can yell "Sovereignty!" without being properly challenged on what it means or informed of the myriad things EU countries do as sovereign nations, such as effectively closing borders to help stop the spread of a deadly pandemic.
Any Brexiter who dares say they don't mind if the price of groceries goes up as a result of Brexit probably isn't trying to get by on universal credit. Covid-19 delays and "teething problems" can only be blamed for so long when it comes to reduced choice in our supermarkets, higher prices, and fresh foods with shorter expiry dates - these are all direct outcomes from voting to make supply chains with the EU more complicated, bureaucratic and time-consuming.
And anyone who is genuinely excited by blue passports that we could have had without leaving the EU is just too sad for words.
Nope, it's all just a bit lame, isn't it? It's not, as yet, an abject economic disaster - and the pandemic will be blamed for all manner of things for the foreseeable future - but over the next few years, we're going to see lots of little annoyances add up, in between completely predictable job losses across a range of sectors, even after the virus is under control.
In the meantime, the movement toward an independent Scotland and a reunited Ireland, with EU membership, will go from strength to strength - and, ultimately, that may lead to the isolated rump states of Wales and England rejoining the EU under terms that won't come close to the benefits we enjoyed as part of a 28-strong bloc. Brexit is already looking pathetic. It is a damp squib wrapped in a wet blanket - and nobody voted for that.
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