HOW ARE THE BREXIT PROMISES STACKING UP?

You have to wonder at people who actually believed any of that ****. But it seems they did, probably without giving it any thought at all.

It’s a bit like leaving the Golf Club, saving the £750 a year fees, and then expecting to be able to play a round when you feel like it, pop in for a drink with some of the lads on a Friday night, and maybe eat in the restaurant with your other half on Saturday. Also get the kids along to the children’s party at Christmas and attend the odd monthly dinner dance, all the while enjoying reduced bar prices. Free.

It would have occurred to me that if Britain could leave the EU, yet remain in the single market (which had 4 indivisible elements: goods, services, finance and personnel) and still take back control of its borders, there would have to be some spectacular changes in the idea of borders and taking back control. Or maybe some sort of magic?

Also if that meant saving a (fictional) sum of £350 million a week, why would every other country not want to do the exact same thing? Or did they really believe that Britain was that different, better, superior?

Well, they were wrong about all that.

In fairness they did have some trade deals ready on day one. They were variously more or less the same as the trade deals we already had, considerably worse or so small as to make no difference at all.

As time went on the deals signed by Truss as Trade Secretary were terrible. The deals meant jeopardising the very high standards of hygiene and phyto-hygiene , which the EU practises and will do huge damage to farmers, who had been promised the same level of payments from the magical money tree..

That £350 million was a fictional figure which failed to take account of the rebate that first Mrs Thatcher and then Mr Blair negotiated. They also neglected to mention that after the rebate had been taken into consideration, there were all the grants and funds that the UK enjoyed, most particularly the farming grants, social funding and science grants not to mention a shed load of shared services which came with the deal.

Still, who needs farming and science…?

We were obviously expected to believe that we could take back control of every border, except the one running across Ireland, because obviously no one would even vaguely consider smuggling goods into the EU across a completely unguarded border. So, two years plus on, and they are still fighting over that. The only amusing thing is seeing the DUP becoming daily more apoplectic, and refusing to take part in a democratically elected Assembly in Belfast where they lost the leadership. (My way or the highway politics.)

Citizens’ right in England have already been reduced. It seems that protesting is illegal if the government says it’s illegal, even if it is only one person and even if they haven’t actually done anything yet. Also clearly (as we pointed out the other day, it will illegal to hint at criticism of royals in the august presence of any of them even if the hint is carrying a black piece of paper.

I’m pretty sure too that the security question is also in doubt. Sharing information between EU/EEA/EFTA nations no longer extends to Britain, as Theresa May, when Home Secretary, warned it would not.

The notion that you could strengthen the union between Scotland, England Wales and the North of Ireland by Brexiting is preposterous as the map shows.

Brexit split most of the UK political parties. It has clearly done most damage to the Tories who lost a lot of their best people, but it split the UK into countries that voted for and countries that voted against. And the government made no concession at all until, in the case of Gibraltar and the North of Ireland, it was forced to.

In Scotland, despite every major politician from all the parties (except UKIP) telling us that leaving the EU would be a catastrophe, the English based parties reversed their opinions when England voted to leave.

It didn’t have to be like that. In the Kingdom of Denmark, the will of the three constituent members has always been respected. Demark and Greenland joining along with the UK 50 years ago, while the Faroes remained outside the EU. Greenland also later (1985) decided to leave while Denmark remained. (Real devolution/Home Rule, eh, Gordon Brown?)

The UK’s integrity has been maintained, more or less, although that’s not how the DUP sees it, but only by force and disrespect for democracy. That, of course, is something the UK IS good at.

You will NOT have a referendum says SIR Starmer.

The science co-operation and educational exchanges have come to nothing.

As I understand it the British universities used to do well out of scientific grants and now they don’t. And the Erasmus scheme has been ditched and replaced by a British scheme that is a poor imitation with far less funding… and operates outside Europe.

As for being out of the EU by March 2019? We weren’t.

Finally. It is not certain that migration has decreased since we left the EU.

Although it is true that vast numbers of EU citizens returned to their countries, many of which are rather more prosperous than Britain, thus leaving us with gaps in medical, caring, retail, catering personnel, along with a dire shortage of tradesmen and lorry drivers, immigration from elsewhere in the world may have actually increased since we left the EU.

So, actually, none of it was true.

To be fair, in Britain, we don’t tend to expect that much truth from political figures, but surely 10 out of 10 wrong has to be a record, even for this state.