Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is believing two or more completely incompatible things at the same time.

If you type it into a search engine, they could do worse for an example than to take you to a headline in this week's Independent with a quote from Tony Blair.

He is presented as saying "Brexit failed - and it triggered mass immigration."

Now it's perfectly possible for a well-informed, intelligent and reasonable person to hold either of those views in isolation, although I personally think one of them is broadly right and the other is broadly wrong.

But anyone who believes both those things is suffering from a textbook case of cognitive dissonance. It just makes no sense at all to argue that Brexit made things worse in this country and at the same time that it triggered more people to come here.