The VAT guy does seem to make this opinion piece sound spot on:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/23/brexit-machine-perpetual-grievance-britain-brussels
Brexit is a machine to generate perpetual grievance. It's doing its job perfectly
Rafael Behr
The story of plucky Britain standing up to bullying Brussels spares leavers the discomfort of admitting they voted for a con
But in politics, an old pattern is playing out – a cycle of suspicion and self-sabotage that began long before the 2016 referendum.
It starts with the belief that Britain does not depend on its neighbours for trade or anything else. That leads to neglect of the diplomacy required to make the partnership work. Going against the grain of economics and geography escalates every negotiation into a test of national self-esteem. Each adjustment for reality is resented as a surrender of sovereignty.
Euroscepticism is a machine for generating perpetual grievance. It works by making Brussels the enemy, spoiling relations and serving up the soured mood to a domestic audience as proof that the other side does not want to be friends.
and
Were it not for the pandemic, loose ends and lost jobs would be making more headlines. Whether they would also be changing public opinion is a different question. Some enthusiasm is surely dropping into the chasm between Brexit as liberation theology and its real-world incarnation as rotting fish undelivered to a Calais market. But British political culture contains deep reserves of stoical resignation to adversity (especially other people’s adversity). There is no simple road back, no better deal on the table, and it is easy for ministers to spin the pain mandated by their deal as aggression by vengeful Europeans.
Leavers will be attracted to that story because it spares them the discomfort of admitting that they voted for a con, and then made a prime minister of the con artist. Keir Starmer will not fight on that terrain since doing so gets him no affection in constituencies that were lost by Labour in 2019. Thus (in England, at least) the folly of Brexit is being buried for excavation some time in the future, perhaps by a different political generation.
It might happen sooner, but I suspect any shift in opinion on the EU will come only as a consequence of some wider collapse in Johnson’s personal standing. He is the denial that people elected. For many voters, disillusionment with Brexit is downstream of disappointment with the whole “Boris” shtick in the flow of political events.