Why are hard Brexiteers still given a soft pass?

I’m neither angry nor irritated by this. Merely confused.

It is bizarre listening to, watching or reading the UK media with mere weeks to go before the expiry of the Article 50 process continue to allow those who still insist that leaving the EU with no deal is not only perfectly acceptable, but manifestly the “will of the people”.

Ignoring the well trodden (and fully documented) question of whether “no deal” Brexit is a good idea (spoiler alert, it isn’t), I am curious about the idea that people were sold and voted for a hard Brexit all along. That’s not the Brexit campaign I went through. Perhaps my kids are right and I live in a parallel universe after all?

I’m pretty sure it started with promises that no one was talking about leaving the Single Market, or that we would be mad so to do. Then it meandered through the question would it be so bad to be like Norway or Switzerland? Then it was that there would be no downsides and that we held all the cards. I’m sure it was going to be the easiest deal in history.

So given all of this, why are those advocating “leaping off the cliff” (Owen Paterson’s words, not mine) allowed a soft pass by media interviewers? It should be raised each and every time, if nothing else than to assure consistency in the debate and to regain long-lost intellectual rigour as the UK careens towards that very cliff edge.