Vote Leave’s poster boy should have been crowing, so why was his post-referendum press conference so subdued? “If we are victorious in one more battle … we shall be utterly ruined.” Like the good intellectual that he’s vigorously pretended not to be of late, Boris Johnson will probably know that line. It’s from the Greek historian Plutarch’s account of the battle that gave us the phrase “pyrrhic victory”, the kind of victory won at such cost that you almost wish you’d lost. Continue reading...