How many of us remember the elephant jokes? Why did the elephant paint its toenails red? So it could hide in a cherry tree without being seen. How do you know there's an elephant in the fridge? The footprints in the butter. How does an elephant get down from a tree? Sits on a leaf and waits til autumn.
Theresa May called this election that no one else really wanted because she felt she needed a substantial majority to negotiate a hard Brexit.
Yet Brexit has barely been mentioned in this campaign, which has instead been dominated by terrorism, rows about police cuts and the terrible embarrassment – and now unfortunate ill health – of Diane Abbott.
It seems that Brexit is the elephant that has painted its toenails red and hidden in a tube of Smarties.
Like the war in Fawlty Towers with the German guests, it has become the thing we can't talk about. As in, 'I mentioned Brexit once, but I think I got away with it.'
We see mooted, mainly from the left, that by the time a Brexit deal is proposed it will be different from anything anyone expected. There is quiet hope that it might not be all done and dusted, and that sufficient political pressure might be applied for another referendum which would go the other way. It would be an embarrassing climbdown, and we would look ridiculous to the world – but hey what's so different about that? And we would still be in the Union.
From the right, the assumption – underpinned by determination – is that it will goes through whatever the result of this election and there can be no U-turn.
The elephant that is lurking outside and is nosing at the window, yet to make its way into the room, is the unmentionable and impossible thing – the possibility that a new government might call a new referendum to impose or reject a Brexit deal.
No one wants to think about the consequences of Brexit at the moment. To take just one aspect, as far as financial uncoupling goes, we face being thrown into a degree of chaos. We are going to surrender a lot of data, contacts, information. Will Hutton is among the commentators who are clear in their scathing assessment of what a disaster Brexit will be. Agreements, organisational deals, laws – nothing is clear. People's jobs and futures are at risk. We've lost the goodwill of huge numbers of important people who are also our geographical neighbours. Why did we do this? And whatever happened to the reassurance we kept being given that it was intended as an advisory measure only? Somehow the Referendum has been turned into a mandate, with Parliament undermined not by Europe but by itself. Why didn't it assert itself?
In a country that once prided itself on looking after its minorities, why are Remainers now the people who dare not speak the name of Brexit?
My husband jokes that the Referendum was lost on the playing fields of Eton. This contains more than a nugget of truth. The sad fact is, whatever the result of this election, it seems we've shot ourselves in the foot – with an elephant gun.
