Monday’s Brexit events mean that we don’t actually know much of anything. We don’t know whether it will take place on Oct. 31, whether it will take place at all, and we certainly don’t know the terms under which Brexit will take place if it ever does happen. Moving up a step of abstraction, though, we can at least identify what is happening.

The British establishment (not the “Deep State,” as that implies secrecy and this is blatant and open) have decided that the British people should not have voted for what they voted for, and should not have what nearly every political party promised in its manifesto at the last election. That is, that despite the referendum result and the promises made about it, the establishment says Britain should not, in any meaningful sense, leave the European Union.