Ignore real politics -- boycott Wetherspoons (for now)

Rather minimalist coverage of this in the Graun:

Sombre EU leaders sign Brexit withdrawal agreement

Followed by a lengthier piece on this

Revealed: complex post-Brexit checks for Northern Irish traders

They told us so. Expect much more delighted seizing upon complaints.

Elsewhere feisty zeitgeist interpreter R Lucy Cosslett reveals her priorities:

Maybe, as on the day after the referendum result, I’ll head to my local cheap and cheerful Italian for a Birra Moretti and some clam spaghetti and sit there, miserably, to a soundtrack of Andrea Bocelli like the filthy, sentimental remainer I am. Maybe I’ll get completely off my face. All I know is that I definitely won’t be in Wetherspoons, which is cutting its drinks prices to celebrate, in a campaign it is calling “Let’s stay friends”.

Cosslett has had a colourful life, it seems:

I’ve drunk buckets of wine in Wetherspoons pubs – some of it from a tap  ...It was cheap, and a bit filthy. It did the job. It felt like home....we would consume a bottle of Aldi’s finest Badger’s Creek wine, before stashing the other bottle in our favoured shrub and heading inside, where everyone from school would be waiting. The Wetherspoons was in an old Catholic church....In fact, it was one of the few places where you’d often see people with disabilities. Lots of older people too, and people who clearly didn’t have much cash. Wetherspoons’ prices have kept it inclusive, like an informal community centre....I was irked by [a critic's negative] review becauseit felt like she was implying something negative about my family and our tastes, our lack of money, possibly our class...Wetherspoons seems to have become another front for a proxy culture war that’s about so much more than just Brexit. It’s infused with our ideas about social class and belonging, and who we ultimately are.

But as a sign of how important Brexit is to the identity warriors:

[the] rabidly pro-Brexit stance has alienated me, and it feels weird giving him my money. I still think Brexit is colossally stupid, and often underpinned by bigotry 

She still seems a bit torn:

[I] know that isolating ourselves from the rest of society is not going to heal the deep divisions in this country. You can’t escape where you are from, though at times I’ve tried. It’s true that I live in a bubble, surrounded by remainers.   Yet I knew enough of my brother’s North Wales constituency to understand that it would switch from red to blue in the general election...[So]  it won’t be long, I’m sure, until I’m back in the Coronet on Holloway Road 

A sign of how important urbanism is to the identity warriors? It reminds me of the remarks made (by J Hunt), that if we just reassured remainers that their urban and cosmo lifestyles would persist they would give in.