EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

May I ask a stupid question please. I'm not British, but have lived in the UK in the past and Brexit intrigues me. I follow this thread and read the odd guardian article/analysis so know a tiny bit about what's been going on. Here's my question: wtf? Why? What's the idea? Why can't everyone (someone? anyone?) just shrug this off and say we're sorry, it was a poorly thought out idea, let's chuck it in the bin? Or rather, why doesn't anyone in government (I know lots of people do) seem to think that would work?

They're symbols in a culture war.

Remain is representative of the post-war progressive liberal / social / democratic order.

Brexit is a bit of an unholy alliance, so as I engage with its supporters I tend to find that it's primarily representative of the anti-progressive agenda (so it's against political correctness, immigration, evidence-based-policy, social justice, etc) - that tends to be the well off, south eastern, retired boomer voters.

But in addition to that it's also representative of a protest against the status quo, against austerity (the last ten years of which have utterly decimated the welfare state), etc., and that means the working class in the 'left behind' towns around the UK vote for it. As you'll note, these two groups are totally in opposition to each other.

But somehow it ALSO somehow manages to be a vehicle for disaster capitalists who want to decimate the welfare state entirely - hardcore neo-liberals like the Taxpayers Alliance and the IEA - in favour of a Singapore style low-tax economy which does nothing for those at the bottom of the pile but really provides good returns for those at the top.

It's the fact that these three groups are contradictory that prevents us from having a reasonable conversation about it. And those at the top know about it - 'Brexit means Brexit' and all the rest of the asinine sloganeering around Brexit is a symbol of this contradiction - that as soon as you define it, you lose one of these groups, and the mandate for it evaporates. They managed to get it over the line in 2016 before this was clear. May has been trying to bust out of it ever since.

Johnson and Cummings know this. They obviously know this. The cabinet they've recently formed is not about squaring this circle. It's about barrelling their agenda through - they want to win power; if they do that, they don't need to win the argument.

Effectively Brexit is a moment of temporary madness which has - due to the timidity of our media - allowed the unscrupulous to seize power. Their grip on power relies on hiding its madness. It is the end of the UK as a serious country.