A Brexit puzzle

Simon Wren-Lewis has a thoughtful blog post about the great British public’s attitude to Brexit.

On the one hand, there’s this opinion-poll chart…

… which shows that people are increasingly convinced that Brexit will have a bad impact. On the other hand, there’s the evidence from the YouGov tracker poll, which suggests that, despite that deepening pessimism, people are not suffering ‘buyer’s remorse’ about the vote.

What should we infer from this? Wren-Lewis’s hypothesis is:

Voters feel that once a democratic decision has been made, it should be respected, even if they personally now feel less comfortable with the reasons behind the decision. It is important to respect the ‘will of the people’ for its own sake, just as it is important to keep to a contract even though you may now regret signing it.

If true, this would reflect well on the British public’s respect for democratic values. But somehow I doubt it. Probably it has more to do with a kind of weary acceptance. There’s nothing we can do about it, so we just shrug and get on with life.