May 2016 was when it first dawned on me that Leave might actually win. A friend had texted in a state of confusion. They thought that David Cameron wanted to leave the EU, so couldn't understand why he was suddenly warning that Brexit would put peace at risk. The message concluded, "Did I miss something?"
What concerned me wasn't the question itself, which was easy enough to understand. Cameron had been a fairly run-of-the-mill Tory Eurosceptic until he finalised his EU renegotiation and concluded he needed to win the referendum to stay in office. It was that my friend had studied politics at university. If they were unsure, what chance did anyone else have?
