This madness has a Lear-like logic. Brexit is a nothing that pretended to be a thing, a departure that posed as a destination, a break-up masquerading as a relationship. It knows only what it is not. It is rooted in a crisis of identity within the UK and in such crises, when you don't know what "us" means, it is always easier to go for the negative definition: we're not them. And thus there is an absurd rationale in Brexit ending up with a supposed policy that is merely an absence: no deal. The Brexit discourse has now arrived at the point where it has to present that nothing as if it were a something, as if failing to create an alternative to EU membership is in fact the alternative.