If anything, this horror show has strengthened my support for Brexit

Plenty has gone very badly wrong, but it has prompted the political realignment we desperately needed

Was I wrong to back Brexit? Those on my side of the debate have been laughing off the various disasters for quite a while now. Don’t worry, we have said, it was never going to be easy, but it will all come right in the last minute.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. Which raises an awkward question: did I get it wrong? As a lifelong Europhile who voted Leave after much heartache and agonising, I like to think I’m openminded about this. With another six months ahead of us, there is plenty of time to reflect.

Does anyone seriously think an extra six months will make this Parliament vote for that deal? A general election may be the only way to break the deadlock – but polls suggest that, with things as they are, Nigel Farage’s new party (together with his old one) will decimate Conservative support. Brexit might end up meaning Jeremy Corbyn. If that isn’t cause for a rethink, I’m not sure what is.

Everyone has their own reasons for choosing a Brexit side and for most, I suspect, it’s a balance: does the good

outweigh the bad? Which, of course, depends on the weight you put on each argument. With so much changing, it’s normal to reassess.

Yet of the many strange things we are seeing during this debacle, one of the strangest is how few have changed their mind – in spite of seeing the Brexit process turn into a top-tobottom horror show. The mayhem has not put them off.

And why? Because mayhem was expected. The leader of every political party in Parliament, business groups, trade unions, scientists, actors, spy chiefs – all urged the country to vote Remain. Those who declined to do so knew that they were capsizing the boat and expected to see important people splashing around for quite a while.

The language and tactics used by Donald Tusk and others has also reminded people like me how I was naïve to think the EU would ever reform. I thought they would have to, given how many European voters were unhappy. But the EU has prided itself on its intransigence, seeing refusal to compromise as a strength.

Populism is the result, which the EU responds to with more intransigence. Their Brexit message is that those who try to leave the EU will be weakened and humiliated. Fair enough: they played rough, and won. But who wants to be a member of a club that behaves in this way?

Then comes the economics. Philip Hammond is wrong to say that “nobody voted to be poorer”. A great many people believed the Treasury’s warnings and thought there would be a price to pay directly after the referendum.

Its forecast of 500,000 job losses sounded a lot, but I expected some. Instead, far more than 500,000 jobs were created. This doesn’t mean no one trusts experts. It means we can’t take Brexit forecasts or warnings very seriously, as it’s hard to predict. People will not be so ready to believe that Brexit – with a deal, or without – might mean economic collapse.

The problems we have had leaving the EU have underlined how deeply its rules were ingrained – and how deep the problem ran. The two-year timeframe has proved unworkable because things are far worse than even Brexiteers thought.

They turn out to have been naïve in their assessment of how far EU rules had penetrated British government. I never quite believed the argument that the EU was holding Britain back, and thought claims to the contrary were exaggerated by people who loathed Brussels for ideological reasons. I owe them an apology.

Plenty of things have been worse than I expected. Brexit has lobotomised the Conservatives. I underestimated how they would be unable to think about or do anything else while this was going on, or how many MPS would be destroyed by the arguments. The social and welfare reforms I was keen on have all stalled.

Then comes how Britain is seen abroad. The Brexit vote was always going to be perceived by critics as a xenophobic yawp, so we needed a prime minister able to assure EU nationals that they would not be threatened and emphasise the global nature of Brexit. Theresa May seemed to relish going the other way, with an abrasive tone and hardly any warm words for our allies.

The idea of Britain turning away from European people (as opposed to the EU) pained me then, and does now. The Dutch, Swedes and Germans needed us to help win battles in the EU follow Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; read More at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion and we are deserting them. I like the idea of my children being able to live, work and study anywhere in Europe, and mourn the loss of this.

But this comes down to perhaps the biggest reason why Brexit still has such support, mine included. Things have been working very well for people like me, for some time. But a great many people are concerned, and thought globalism had over-reached. They didn’t want to destroy it, but they wanted it dialled down.

The cliché is of the angry, poorer, lesser-educated white man who felt like they were being ignored or treated like roadkill in front of the juggernaut of modernity. They felt politics was running away from them.

We can see reflections of this the world over. In America, it led to Donald Trump. In Europe, it has led to populism. In Scotland, it almost led to independence.

And in Britain, it led to the narrow vote for Brexit. A democratic realignment, forcing politicians to realise that the rules they are playing by, forged in the late-nineties, are long out of date. The nation state is back. Border control is back. Neither is a bad thing. Those who value them are not bad people.

If support for Brexit were dependent on how the Tories have handled it, a second referendum would be a slam-dunk for Remain. But it’s about far more – which is why, after weighing it all up, I’m more inclined than I was in 2016 to think that Brexit is necessary. Trying to ignore the demands of those who want it guarantees far worse problems later on.

What, you might ask, could be worse than the political mess we see now? If we give up on Brexit, I suspect we will find out.