Three ways of visualising what is happening to our country:

1.The Overton window.
Brexit was sold on the basis that "nothing would change" "Only a madman would suggest leaving the single market", but predictably Brexit was used to justify a political shift to populist extremism.

We now have a situation where the Tory party supports 5/6 of the National Front of the 80's, with the Labour party supporting 3/6 of these policies, maybe 4. Both have adopted the National Front's imagery: flags, flags, flags.

Barnier's staircase, in deal terms also helps visualise how the Overton window has shifted, so that now No Deal is accepted as a perfectly reasonable outcome despite its catastrophic consequences. Brexiters promised the first step, but somehow we have fallen off the end.

2. The Boiling Frog

This oft-quoted idea is a myth. Unlike the British Electorate, frogs are sane enough to jump out of gradually heating water before it's too late. But the metaphor still stands because people assume the myth is true. https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/brexit-no-deal-brussels-eu-customs-union-b219100.html

3. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid."

... "From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization.

Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up."

Brexit was sold on a pitch of abstract nationalism (self-actualisation, esteem, love/belonging) but has come aground unable to deliver even safety (reduced security, access to intelligence),...

...and at no deal or thin deal even threatens physiological needs: food, medicine shortages - there's even talk of threats to the water supply through supply chain disruption for chemicals.

At what point do we wake up and do something about this? The opposition parties seem to have gone mad, or rather accepted that the electorate has, now viewing it as politically suicidal to even mention the temperature of the water, the nose-bleed political extremism, ....

...the wilful decision making of the government to push the population's concerns and struggles right down to the bottom tier of Maslow's pyramid.

This Labour MP seems to think the water is lovely, the upper tiers of the pyramid are irrelevant, and the Overton window is just fine where it is. This is insanity.

I mean. Snap out of it guys. /ends