Were you up for Rees-Mogg?

One of the defining moments of the 2024 election came at around 5am on the morning of July 5. Jacob Rees-Mogg – one of the arrogant, didactic faces of Brexit – lost his seat in North East Somerset & Hanham, which he’d held since 2010.

It was Labour’s 326th victory, one that rubber-stamped their Commons majority. As he lost his seat, the former minister for Brexit opportunities had to stand next to a man wearing a mask covered with images of baked beans. The new MP Dan Norris joked that he had “got Moggxit done”.

We had finally arrived at the season finale of the Conservative Party, the long-running surreality TV show that brought you austerity, partygate, VIP lanes, polluted rivers, crumbling schools, bankrupt councils, NHS crises, liars, lettuces and, most of all, Brexit.

Not even the expected Nigel Farage victory in Clacton, and three other seats won by Reform, could spoil the mood as several of those who took an active role in diminishing Britain at the 2016 referendum and beyond were buried by a Labour landslide.

It is almost a shame that Michael Gove (“the day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.”), John Redwood (“getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards and Dominic Raab (“I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but… if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing”) all saw the writing on the wall and jumped before they were pushed.

Others like Peter Bone (“Brexit is a roaring success”) and Boris Johnson (“There will be no border down the Irish Sea… over my dead body”) have been swept away by scandal. And some clung on, including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and likely future leadership candidates Robert Jenrick and Esther McVey.

But it was goodbye to Rees-Mogg (“I think Brexit has been extremely beneficial… the evidence that Brexit has caused trade drops is few and far between”), to Liam Fox (“a trade deal with the EU would be one of the easiest in human history”) in North Somerset and to Andrea Jenkyns (“we haven’t been given the chance to really embrace Brexit”) in Morley and Outwood.

Former ERG “hardman” Steve Baker (“In my own determination and struggle to get the UK out of the European Union that I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty”) lost in Wycombe. Michael Fabricant (“Bring Brexit on!”) is gone in Lichfield. The deeply unpleasant Jonathan Gullis (“Sir Softy wants to torpedo Brexit”) was defeated in Stoke-on-Trent North.

Daniel Kawczynski (“the EU acts as a mafia cartel”) was toppled in Shrewsbury. And former PM Liz Truss (“We will become greater still by seizing our newfound freedoms outside the EU”) looked shellshocked as she was kicked out in South West Norfolk.

How will we manage without some of these leading intellects as they depart the political scene? As Remainers were advised on June 24, 2016, we will just have to suck it up and carry on.