Category: Brexit

Musings on leaving the European Union

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The Billion Pound Lie

We are hearing from our government that an extension to Brexit will cost the UK taxpayer one billion pounds a month. Is this true? (hint, look at the title)

So, first off, where does this figure come from?

It appears that this was originally something that a Downing Street Spokesperson said.

James Grove, political editor of the Daily Mail (oh, what a surprise) tweeted on the 3rd of September 2019:

No 10 says rebel efforts to delay Brexit will cost the taxpayer ‘roughly £1 billion a month’ in additional EU budget contributions if successful.’

Now, you might want to stop me at this point and bring the Brexit Bus to my attention, which claimed we paid £350million a week to the EU (times by 52, divide by 12 to get a rough monthly figure) which means that Boris had already claimed we were giving the EU about £1.5billion a month, so we are saving money already.

But even then, £1billion a month is huge. Have they checked their maths?

After arch comedian and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab quoted this figure in an interview, the BBC did a Fact Check on this figure and they discovered:

‘Reality Check verdict: Mr Raab is right that staying in the EU would cost £1bn a month in budget payments. But his figure excludes any money the government gets back from the EU in grants for things like regional development or supporting farmers. When you factor these in, the figure comes down to about £744m a month.’

Well, what is £256million a month between friends. If the government would like to round it up to £1billion and pop the rest in my bank account, I am sure that I could make this dissapear.

But £744million is a huge amount.

Yes, it is. But bear with me while I look at our Divorce Bill with the EU. It will all make sense, I promise.

When we enacted Article 50, to leave the EU, it was calculated that we would have a ‘divorce bill’ of about £39billion. This is money that we owe the EU to cover our financial committments. It should have come due when we were due to leave.

There is some argument between the Hard Right and reasonable people over whether we would actually have to pay this bill.

Now let’s stop being silly and consider what we are actually saying by threatening to not pay our bills.

We are saying that the United Kingdom would reneg on it’s legally agreed commitments, rather than pay up. What would that do to the UKs credit rating? We have already dropped from AAA to AA with a negative outlook (in other words we are at risk of dropping further). Not paying our bills will have the same effect on the country as not paying our bills at home would have on us.

But who cares about that?

Well, you should. Standard and Poor produce these ratings for countries so that investors can see how good a country is to invest in. It helps world banks to see if a country is acceptable to lend money to. It helps countries to work out what sort of trading relationship they might have with another country.

Look at it this way, if we don’t pay we can expect Europe’s Baliffs to come knocking on our door.

‘Nice Country you’ve got here. We need to come in and start working out what we are going to take away in order to cover your debt.’

And don’t forget, if we don’t pay we will accrue interest on our debt, and who knows what the rate will be.

‘Hi, this is PayDayLendingBastard.com. How can I help you?’
‘Yes, I’m looking to borrow some money to tide me over until my fantasy country appears.’
‘OK, well, late me take a few details, can I take your name?’
‘Yes, it is Boris Johnson’.
‘And do you have a job, Boris?’
‘Yes, I am Prime Minister.’
‘And how much are you looking to borrow?’
‘£33billion.’
‘OK, well your credit rating is plummeting, but we may still be able to help. Let me talk to my manager.’
Muzak on the telephone.
‘Hello Boris, my manager says we can offer you the full amount you need, but we would need to take London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast as security. And your interest rate would be 1266% APR. Remember, your Country may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments on your loan. Do you want to go ahead with that?’
‘But the taxpayer would suffer so much! Nah, only joking. Can a take out the loan in the name of H M Government please…’

We risk becoming like a third world nation if we don’t pay our bills. We have already fallen from 5th richest to 6th richest country in the world since the Brexit vote. Lots of our biggest companies have moved their headquarters overseas to Paris and Frankfurt, and five minutes Googling will give you a frightening list. We have to pay our debts or we will cause a massive shock to our economy.

And before you get too hung up on the £744million a month bill, don’t forget that the EU currently gives grants and funding to British Business totalling about £192million a month. That is not even looked at in these figures.

But why do we need to keep paying £1billion to the EU every month if we delay Brexit?

We need to understand what this money is doing when we pay it to the EU. It is not wasted money, it goes towards paying our EU membership, and also our Brexit Bill.

The Office for Budget Responsibility say that the delay in Brexit (March to October) means that the current bill would be about £33bn because the UK’s continuing membership of the EU means that some of those payments have been made as normal budget contributions instead of as part of the Brexit Bill.

But doesn’t that mean this figure is completely irrelevent, as the longer we take to leave the EU, the less we will owe?

Thank you, yes, that is exactly what this means. Boris will keep repeating it, because not everyone is an economist and not everyone has taken the time to find out the full facts. Also, if he decided not to pay the EU divorce bill, then obviously leaving in October means less money to the EU than if we leave in January. But as we have seen, this is silly.

The claim that we will be giving £1billion a month to the EU if we don’t leave on October the 31st is a bit of a relief. I notice that Boris isn’t saying that we need to leave on the 31st October and pay the EU £33billion in one hit!

The reality is that, apart from inflating or rounding figures, Boris is not lying (which makes a change), he’s just not telling the whole story. A sin of ommission perhaps.

And don’t even start on the economic horror that is a No Deal Brexit. We stand to lose more than £1billion a month if we leave without a deal… and we will still have to pay the divorce bill. But that is a story for another day.

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Project Fear – why I am accused of it

In which your host looses his rag with people who are not paying attention.

You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road

So, a bit of history first.  Always good to get that out of the way.

Project Fear, apart from sounding like an amazing new ride at [insert name of favourite theme part], sounds like something that has been batted around by people for as long as man has undertaken political debate with man.

Nope.  It may surprise you to know that Rob Shorthouse, communications director for Better Together (a pro keep Scotland in the UK group), is attributed as having coined the phrase in 2014, during the Scottish Independence Referendum.  Now, this is where it gets a bit odd, so bear with me.  Better Together was being accused of scaremongering in order to get people to vote to remain part of the UK, by a group that wanted an independent Scotland called, simply, Yes Scotland.  Rob suggested, in jest, that it might be a handy phrase Yes Scotland could use instead of ‘scaremongering’.  I am sure he did not expect anyone to take the suggestion literally.

But those Scots, they are a canny lot, and they spotted an opportunity.  Alex Salmond, then leader of the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) used it to taunt Alistair Darling (Labour, pro Union) during a televised debate.

In 2016 during the EU Referendum Campaign the term was re-introduced by non other than Boris Johnson!  He claimed that the pro-EU campaign were agents of ‘Project Fear’ trying to ‘spook’ the electorate (he also claimed that we would get £350 million a week back to give to the NHS!  He also said he wouldn’t use the archaic instrument of proroguing parliament.  Oh, Boris!).  So BoJo The First was responsible for the new use of the term to refer to anyone who opposed his view on leaving Europe.

But wait, BoJo was not the only one to use it during the campaign, I hear you cry.  Go on then, you are right of course.  John McDonnell, Labour Shadow Chancellor said:

“The EU referendum is about our future relationship with Europe, not who is the next leader of the Tory Party … the Labour leadership will not go anywhere near the Tories’ ‘project fear’ campaign on both sides of the debate. But instead we will continue to set out the positive case to ‘Remain and Reform’ the EU to create ‘Another Europe’”

Alistair Darling, still campaigning to stay put said:

“Project Fear? In fact, it is a reality check. The kind anyone would take before making such an enormous decision in their lives.”

David Cameron, he who called the Referendum as Conservative Prime Minister said:

“The only project I’m interested in is Project Fact. Project Fact is about saying: ‘Stay in and you know what you’ll get.'”

So What is Project Fear?

Looking at the main use of the term, it would appear that anyone who wishes to warn others of the potential impact of a decision is now just spouting ‘Project Fear’. 

It seems unfortunate that the term has now become so widely used by Pro Leave factions that it has become a real thorn in the side of anyone who disagrees with their point of view.  It is interesting to note that it does appear to mainly be used as a way of deflecting the recipient of the information from having to come up with a coherent anti argument.  It is almost as prevalent on Twitter and Facebook as ‘You lost, get over it’ and the term ‘remoaners’ for anyone who doesn’t agree with the Leave view point.

When I was a kid they used to stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes and hum loudly.  I think I prefer that on Twitter and Facebook as I won’t be able to see or hear them.

Quick, copyright an emoji that does that – you’ll make a fortune.

In current times, anyone who does not support the exiting of the EU by the UK, anyone who does support it but does not think No Deal is a viable option, anyone who has the temerity to stick there hand up and call the Government to account is said to be spreading ‘Project Fear’.

Heaven help you if you want to defend democracy!

But you are just trying to frighten people, it is Project Fear

I get people telling me this almost every time I try to explain facts and figures that show that a No Deal Brexit is not a safe option for us as a nation.

Following on from my rambling walk over the stats on medication, I saw someone say that they had a cousin who worked in the NHS and there were no such worries.  Well blow me!  Hundreds of facts and figures gleaned from reading government reports, professional journals and looking at the NHS Shortage list which is growing rapidly (a list of medications that the NHS is now allowed to pay way over the odds for because of short supply), and all I actually needed to do was ask this ladies cousin.  They may be a receptionist, a nurse, a porter, maybe even a consultant in the NHS, we aren’t told.  Hell, they could even be a Director of one of the Trusts.  I some how doubt it.

So, my main reason for today’s topic is that I am sick to death of accusations from people that I am just trying to frighten people.  The main reason I include so many quotes from documents and from the Governments own sources is to show that I am not making stuff up.  If you don’t believe what I say, go and do some reading online.  It is all there.  I don’t have a magic knowledge tree that tells me what to say.  I form opinions by going off and doing the reading.

Some of the articles I read have quotes in them that seem totally at odds with the main article, suggesting that the government does not think we should worry.  I don’t dismiss these, I include them.  And I also look in to them.  I then decide, taking a balanced view, whether I think there is a trend there or not, and on balance I write what I see.

Am I biased?  Yes, everyone is.  You hear about people saying they are being impartial.  I just ask them whose side they are being impartial on though.  We all have our own opinions.  They are formed from our life experiences and what we see and hear and read.

I am a proud European.  Born and bred in Europe, in Rugby in Warwickshire in the UK in fact.  Even though we weren’t part of the EC when I was born, we were still part of Europe.  That won’t change if we leave the EU either.  Might surprise a few people.  Even that Great British ingenuity will not help.  Doesn’t matter how many Welshmen we get to try to tow the country towards Florida!

I am also a bit of a Globalist.  By that I mean that I see global political affiliation as being a good thing.  The more countries join together to work together, the less likely there will be a war and the more likely we are to solve some of the real pressing issues of our time such as Starvation, Homelessness, Disease and Climate Change.

So yes, I am pro remain, and no I am not a card carrying member of Project Fear.

You can find out more about Project Fear by watching this new 10 part TV Series:

Government is secretly being run by aliens whose aim is to reintroduce carnivorous dinosaurs to Britain by vaccinating children with dinosaur DNA.  Only one man knows and can stop them.  But can he and his handsome assistant stop Project Fear alone?  Rated 18 for bad language and nudity.  Contains scenes of trolling!  Definitely contains nuts.

TTFN 

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Dying For What I Don’t Believe In

In which I think about the effects on health of a No Deal Brexit

“I cannot guarantee people won’t die as a result of a no-deal Brexit.”
Matt Hancock, Health Secretary speaking to Cabinet

Pretty stark to see this in black and white.  I have seen the videos in which Matt Hancock doesn’t actually say this, but refuses to rule it out, and some people have questioned whether he actually said these words.  Yes, he did.  Not in a public interview, but whilst speaking to Cabinet.  It is a matter of record.

Do we really believe that our Government would be so reckless as to allow people to die for their ideals?

When the Prime Minister Prorogued Parliament for 23 days, he pretty much signed the death warrant for a number of people.

Now, many will accuse me of ‘Project Fear’.  Being a remain supporter I am trying to frighten people in to my way of thinking.  But I was not the one who predicted a shortage of medicine in the event of a no deal Brexit.  That was the government themselves.  I may bang on a bit about Project Yellowhammer, the leaked document that was prepared to help the cabinet to focus on the real dangers of a No Deal Brexit.

When the document was leaked Michael Gove tried to fob us off by saying that it was “absolute worst case scenario”, which doesn’t really make you feel full of confidence.

Several Cabinet members said that it was an old document, and not something that was current.  In fact it is true that the document’s existence was first brought to light on the 6th September 2018.  Old news then!

Erm, no.  In mid-August 2019 an official cabinet Yellowhammer documentfrom earlier that month was leaked.  It is a live document that is still being revised.  Do you know what it said?  Would you like to see?  Well, I’m going to show you anyway as this is my blog:

“The Border Delivery Group/Department for Transport planning assumption on reduced flow rates describes a pre-mitigation reasonable worst-case flow rate that could be as low as 40% on Day 1 of No Deal via the short straits [main Channel crossings], with significant disruption lasting up to six months. Unmitigated, this will have an impact on the supply of medicines and medical supplies.”

“Supply chains for medicines and medical products rely heavily on the short straits, which makes them particularly vulnerable to severe delays: three-quarters of medicines come via the short straits. Supply chains are also highly regulated and require transportation that meets strict Good Distribution Practices. This can include limits on transit times and temperature-controlled conditions. While some products can be stockpiled, others cannot because of short shelf lives. It will not be practical to stockpile six months’ supplies. The Department for Health and Social Care is developing a multi-layered approach to mitigate these risks.”

I present this ‘as is’ so that you can see that Government are genuinely thinking about how they can mitigate this, but they don’t offer any solutions.

So, getting drugs in to the country may become a challenge.  About time it was, you might say.  No, not that kind of drug – we mean pharmaceuticals.

It gets worse.

“France will impose EU mandatory controls on UK goods on Day 1 of No Deal and has built infrastructure and IT systems to manage and process customs declarations and to support a risk-based control regime. On Day 1 of No Deal, 50%-85% of HGVs travelling via the short straits may not be ready for French customs. The lack of trader readiness combined with limited space in French ports to hold “unready” HGVs could reduce the flow rate to 40%-60% of current levels within one day.”

“The worst disruption to the short Channel crossings might last 3 months before flow rates rise to about 50%-70% (as more traders get prepared), although disruption could continue much longer. In the event of serious disruption, the French might act to ensure some flow through the short Channel crossings.”

Disruption lasting 3 months!  I have read other articles on the logistics problems of No Deal that have suggested 6 months or even 9 months.  The Government thinks 3 months, but says disruption to drug supplies will last 6 months.

Looking back at the information on drug imports, you will see that the statement is made that “three-quarters of medicines come via the main Channel crossings”.

That is a lot of medication that is not arriving in the UK come 1st November.

How do we cope?  The answer that the government has given us is ‘by stockpiling’.

For 18 months the government has been asking pharmaceutical companies to stockpile 6 weeks of medication on a rolling basis before we reach the leave date.  Give them their due, most companies have been getting on with this and are reporting that they ‘expect’ to be ready.  None of them seem to be saying they ‘will’ be ready.  Several are saying they will not be able to do this.

Stockpiling is a poor solution.

Most medications are made using Just In Time production principles where the constituent parts of a product are ordered often 6-12 months in advance, prepared, packaged and sent to our pharmaceutical wholesalers, arriving just in time to send them out to those who need them.

To stockpile drugs you need to order more constituent chemicals, but orders are normally put in a long time in advance (it helps to get a better price, you know).  There is a limit to how much extra you can get, as most of it needs to be manufactured before being sent to be made up in to the familiar drugs we know and love.

So to stockpile we need to increase the initial production level of the medication components, get the pharmaceutical companies to increase production of the medicine (with no extra equipment I might add), and then get it packed – with even more need to advance order packaging – and shipped to the UK, to be put in a warehouse.

This is not practical.  So how else can we stockpile?

There is a supply coming in already.  If we throttle the supply to the NHS and other big buyers we can put some medication aside for a rainy day.  What that means in practice is ‘borrowing from Peter to pay Paul’ as I used to be told.  Taking medication from one pile to go in to another.  The result – medication becomes in short supply before we even start to leave the EU with No Deal.

But of course this is Project Fear.  It is not like there is a shortage yet is there.

Unless you have been ignoring the news, yes, we are already seeing medication in short supply.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/09/brexit-medicine-shortages-pharmacies-england

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46843631

https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5226

I like the last link, it is from the BMJ (British Medical Journal).  Let’s face it, if anyone would spot shortages, they would.

In most reports we are told that the Department of Health are on the case, but there is no solution being put forward.

Can we cope in another way

Amazingly someone has already thought of asking this question.

Laws have been put in place allowing your local pharmacist to offer you alternative medication if the one your doctor prescribed is not available.  Think online shopping.  You order carrots, they send you condoms.  Mainly, pharmacists have been asked to distribute generic rather than branded medicines as an alternative, to see if there is a similar medicine in a different form (pill, liquid, suppository – I may have added that last one myself, but you get the idea) or to offer a reduced dose or an alternative medicine that does a similar thing.  And all this without the need to talk to a doctor!  Wow!

The Good Law Project has argued that Pharmacists are not qualified.  The Pharmaceutical Journal says of the submitted skeleton argument:

It said that the legislation, which came into force on 9 February 2019, “allows an existing clinical judgment made by qualified persons (doctors and other properly qualified professional persons) to be substituted or interfered with by an unqualified person (a pharmacist)”

Now let me say that I have the greatest of respect for our pharmacists.  They are highly trained, capable individuals who really know their stuff when it comes to the drugs they dispense.  I would not insult them by suggesting they are not qualified to follow these laws.  I would, however, like to draw your attention to the fact that they are NOT doctors, don’t have full access to your medical record, and when the first person dies because of this I will not be surprised.  I also won’t blame the pharmacist.

Fly them in, can’t be that hard

Yes, they have thought about this too.  The Government have put in place a contingency to fly in short shelf life medicines to get around this.

Please note – Short Shelf Life medicines only.  But we are already seeing shortages of non-short shelf life products, so this is not really helpful.  The total budget for preparations for Brexit for healthcare is £434 million.  If that is the money that they have to spend on healthcare, they will need to ship the drugs by Ryanair!  Actually with the luggage surcharges this might not work out.

But Matt Hancock has chartered a plane!

“Mummy, when can I have my Insulin.”

“Hush child and look to the skies.  Here comes Matt Hancock with his plane full of drugs!”

Fade out to The Dambusters March!

Actually, there is no agreement in place for air travel.  Come the first day of a no deal Brexit planes will no longer be able to fly in or out of UK airspace.  We’ll have to find space at overseas airfields.  ‘Package for Heathrow?  We’ll drop that off in Miami for you.’  Who thinks this is workable solution?  Yodel? (Sorry guys, I know you do a great job delivering packages coming to me to other addresses in the local area, but not mine – I jest…)

But people won’t actually die, will they?

Well, they already have been, so I guess they will.

OK.  Grab on to your seat.  Here is the mathematics of reality…

In our area (Morecambe and Heysham) there is ONE doctors practice.  Why they still need to practice I don’t know.  Haven’t they trained for long enough?  Sorry, off topic.  We are all registered with one practice.  In Lancaster it is the same.

The rules are simple.  If you need any repeat medications you can order them 7 days before they are due to run out.  (Not 7 working days.  This is important to remember).  But the prescribing team only work Monday to Friday, so if the first day I can order is a Saturday my order will be processed on Monday.  I now have 5 days of medication left.

The way the new system works is amazing.  The pharmacy team processes your request and sends it electronically to the pharmacist, to be with them by 4.00 pm, two days later.  In theory that means that if I order on Saturday, I can pick my prescription up at 4.00 pm on Wednesday.  I now have 2 days of medication left.

The pharmacy will wait for me to be able to get in to sign the prescriptions before they will start making the order up.  On that Wednesday they are therefore able to fulfil my order, providing I am there, between 4.00 pm and 6.00 pm.  Heaven help me if I need to be at work or attending a medical appointment, or get stuck sitting on the M6 car park for several hours, or any of numerous other things I need to be doing because then I won’t be able to get in until Thursday.

Let’s be serious here.  It is going to be Thursday before I can get there.  So I arrive and I sign the reams of paper needed to let the NHS know that my condition means I do not need to pay for my prescriptions, and I then sit down with the 20 or 30 other people doing the same thing.

About 45 minutes later, if I am lucky, the pharmacist will call my name.

“Can you tell me your address?” He will ask me, despite having had the same pharmacist for three years and often being greeted by name when I arrive.  So I tell him and hold out my hands expecting a large carrier bag to be dropped in it.  All fine with a day to go.

“We’ve run out of Medication A, I’m afraid.  Hopefully we will be able to get it in some time tomorrow.”

But tomorrow is it!  My last day of meds!  If I get stuck in traffic and can’t get to the pharmacy, or have an appointment or anything else I won’t be able to pick up my life saving medication until….MONDAY!  I will not have any medication for Saturday or Sunday.  I’d better make sure I am there.  Perhaps sit at home all day like a recluse, ringing them every half hour for an update.  And what will they do if the medication does not arrive tomorrow, what if the wholesaler has run out?

This is the reality of the current system for millions of people who rely on life saving medications every day in the UK.  If there is a bank holiday you can run out of medication far too easily as it can remove a day from your 7 days (2 at Christmas and Easter).

At Easter this year I made sure that my daughter’s medication was ordered so that we could pick it up on Thursday.  I let the pharmacist know that we would not have enough for the four day weekend, so they needed to be ready for the prescription to come through.

On Thursday I arrived to pick the prescription up, to be told that one of the essential medications that keep my daughter alive had run out at the wholesaler.  It was a particularly difficult drug to get hold of as it was expensive, and pharmacy’s didn’t like to keep it in stock.  They could have it in by next Tuesday, but we needed it before then!  With I smile he handed me the prescription for that particular drug and wished me luck finding it somewhere else.

I drove from Pharmacy to Pharmacy, no-one could help.  Eventually ASDA Pharmacy said ‘we haven’t got it, but we can have it here on Saturday if that helps’.  It did.  We were saved.

Now imagine a delay of 3 days at the ports for the pharmaceuticals to come through.  We are almost always at the very last day before we manage to secure all the medication that my daughter needs now, using the current system.  Add in a three day delay and my daughter is without this lifesaving medication for several days every month.  It does not bear thinking about.

Since I posted about this on Facebook earlier this week I have been contacted by many people who are in the same position and are desperate.  We can’t afford a No Deal.  When we march and protest we are quite literally doing it as if our lives depended on it, because they do!

I have been moved to post, and even to speak out on the streets, that I don’t understand how our government could be so foolish as to put the lives of their citizens at risk, just because they want to leave the EU.  I have asked ‘how many people need to die for us to get a successful Brexit’.

Too many people say that Britain survived two world wars, so we can survive Brexit.  I am sorry to tell you this, and it may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but people died so that we could survive the world wars.  And this time we are not at war, so there is no need for people to die.

I will say it loud ‘Boris, I don’t want to die for your Brexit dream’.

Nuff Said.

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How did we get here?

A not so brief history of the torrid love affair between the UK and the EU.

In 1961 the UK started talks to join the EEC We applied to join formally in 1963 and 1967 but Charles de Gaulle did not want us and he was President of France.

He said “a number of aspects of Britain’s economy, from working practices to agriculture” had “made Britain incompatible with Europe” and that Britain harboured a “deep-seated hostility” to any pan-European project. Ouch! That cuts a bit close to the bone!!

By 1969 he had stepped down and we tried again. We were already aware that by joining we were giving up some of our sovereignty – the Foreign and Comonwealth Office reported that there were “Areas of policy in which parliamentary freedom to legislate will be affected by entry into the European Communities” including Customs duties, Agriculture, Free movement of labour, services and capital, Transport, and Social Security for migrant workers. They did, however, conclude that it was advisable to put the considerations of influence and power before those of formal sovereignty.

The Treaty of Accession was signed in January 1972 by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath and our instrument of ratification was deposited on 18th October 1972 with our membership coming in to effect on 1 January 1973.

In total it took us 12 years to get in!

In 1975 we held our first ever national referendum on whether to stay or go. Labour’s Harold Wilson had fought the 1974 election on a platform of renegotiating our terms of membership to the EEC. At a one day conference in 1975 The Labour Party voted two to one in favour of leaving! Not only that but 7 of the 23 cabinet ministers were opposed to leaving the EEC, so Wilson suspended the convention of Cabinet Collective Responsibility to allow them to publicly campaign against the government. Now that, my friends, is how it should be done!

The result of the vote was that 67.2% of voters voted to stay, on a turnout of 65%. Despite the government of the day opposing staying, they had to admit that this was the overwhelming view of the people.

In 1979 something momentous happened in the UK. We elected a party to power with a female leader, and Margaret Thatcher took control as Prime Minister.

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Margaret Thatcher paraphrasing the Prayer of St Francis

By December 1980 however, Maggie had the lowest approval rating of any Prime Minister ever – 23%. Added to this our love affair with Europe appeared to be over. Opinion polls suggested that 65% of the country wanted us to leave.

Knowing when they were on to a good thing, in 1983 the Labour Party campaigned in the General Election to withdraw from the EC without any further referendum. The people spoke. Labour lost.

By 1987 with European leaders looking at forming what was effectively a European Federal Superstate with Centralized Decision making, the anti European feeling in government was running high. In her remarks to the College of Europe in 1988 Margaret Thatcher said:

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

In 1985 the government had enacted the Single European Act which aimed to establish a single market by 1992 amoung other things, so that was nice.

We then joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1990. It is perhaps pertinent to point out that Margaret Thatcher was strongly opposed to us joining the ERM but was eventually persuaded by John Major, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. And so, government marches on and there was no need for a referendum as it was just business as usual.

The nail in the coffin of Margaret’s political career was driven in with gusto on the 1st of November 1990 by Geoffrey Howe, Deputy Prime Minister, who resigned, apparently over the hostility that the Prime Minister had towards European Monetary Union. He said of Thatcher’s dismissive attitude towards the recommendations of the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England:

It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.

On the 28th of November 1992, after a huge amount of in-fighting by her own party, Margaret Thatcher resigned. She was replaced by the Chancellor, John Major, a pro-europe and pro-monetary union Prime Minister and even though there was an increasing anti Europe feeling in the Conservative Party it did not stop them being returned to power in 1992.

It is worth noting that we left the ERM in 1992, following Black Wednesday because the UK was unable to keep the pound above its agreed lower limit in the ERM due to currency speculators.

In 1993 the Treaty of Maastricht changed the EC in to the EU. It is obviously a lot more complicated than that, but hey, I was hoping to keep you awake!

In 1994 Sir James Goldsmith set up the Referendum Party (wonder why he called it that?) to contest the 1997 General Election. He wanted a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU (right, got you). They fielded 547 candidates, and won 810,860 votes… in total… 2.6%. They won not a single seat, and lost their deposit in 505 constituencies.

Despite this, anti-European Union feeling continued to grow.

Maastricht to where we are now

Shall we stay or shall we go? Opinion Polls (for what they are worth) show that our love of our European neighbours is a fickle thing. In 1975 two thirds of the UK voted to stay. In 1980 polls showed that 65% wanted to leave. In 1984 the government negotiated a rebate on our payments and from then to 2011 the polls were generally favourable to our membership (except in 2000 when Tony Blair’s Labour government tried to get us closer to Europe. (Hey Europe, we like you, but we are not that sort of girl). Even in December 2015 polls showed a clear majority in favour of being part of the EU.

Don’t you love me any more? Did something go wrong in our relationship with Europe. Generally as a country we seem to have been in favour of the EU and our membership through most of the relationship. Yes, they had some odd habits that drove us mad, but at the end of the day we could live with that. Maybe a better question is ‘What changed?’.

It is true that throughout our turbulent relationship we have had, shall we call them ‘issues’. Despite the UK having negotiated itself all kinds of goodies – the UK is the member state with the most opt-outs in the EU. And we are not like most of Europe – they use Civil Law, we use Common Law. The UK was granted a block opt-out of all Justice and Home Affairs legislation that came into force before the Lisbon treaty, 130 measures in total. Then, like the cat that can’t make up its mind, the UK chose to opt back in to 35 of those including the European Arrest Warrant and Europol. As far as travel, well, Britain is not a member of the Schengen area. So, unlike when traveling across the rest of the EU, passports must still be checked when crossing the UK border.

Let’s face it. We are that annoying neighbour who is always pushing their luck. No matter how nice to us the EU are, we never seem to be happy. They take in our Amazon parcels when we are out, feed the cat when we are away, and we still play ACDC at full blast all night long.

Do you know, the UK even had an opt out from the social chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, which covers areas such as worker’s pay and health and safety? Following Labour’s victory in the 1997 general election, Tony Blair opted-in to the chapter. Workers rights, I see no workers… (I may have paraphrased wrongly there).

Time to try to bring this up to date I think, before I loose the last of you…

In the 2015 Parliamentary elections David Cameron threw a bone to the members of his party who did not like Europe and to the people who fancied someone called Nigel as the next Prime Minister (Nigel Farage, UKIP). He offered a referendum if the Conservative Party won and had a majority. For the previous 5 years they had been in Coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a very Europe leaning party, so it would have been hard to offer this if they had been in Coalition again.

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, had been running around shooting themselves in the foot at the sniff of power that they had found working with the Conservatives, and totally failed to uphold so many of the principals that made them a political force and in 2015 they suffered for it at the polls.

The Conservatives won, and David Cameron had to call a referendum – he had promised after all, and politicians never go back on a promise do they?

For a long time there had been a very vocal group in the UK who were constantly talking about ‘Unelected European Officials’ and how the sovereignty of the UK was undermined by Europe. We were even unhappy with the European Court of Human Rights which we helped to establish in 1950!

With our disallowed Bendy Bananas (erm, is this a sex thing?), Health and Safety gone mad and lots of other things the press was wrongly blaming on the EU, well, if you throw enough muck, some of it is bound to stick. If you want to scream with laughter (or rage) at some of the rubbish we were told have a look at https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ .

In 2016 the UK went to the polls in an advisory referendum to ask the Country ‘should we pull the trigger now?’.

It all gets a bit fuzzy here – lots of people accusing other people of lying and misinformation. Pro Europeans telling Anti Europeans that they were lied to, and vice-versa. The upshot was that the UK voted to leave the EU by 51.9% of votes to 48.1% of votes. The significance of this is that ‘Remain’ lost by 2.7% – a tiny amount. Remember, the Referendum Party in 1997 won 2.6% of the vote and it had no impact at all…

And now we come to the crux of the argument. 51.9% of the population voted to leave the EU. Whatever their reason was – to keep more money in the UK, to curb immigration, because ‘we’re British and we can do this’, for more political freedom. If you think that they just voted to leave because of the lies, you are quite wrong. Remainers, take note.

The problems start at this point. We asked Stay or Go with no explanation of what Go actually meant. To some it meant a gradual withdrawl with a negotiated trade deal. A chance for us to get out and be unshakled from European Beaurocracy. To give us room to breath as a country. To some it meant leave now and forget the EU. All the time the Devil was sat on our shoulder, having re-inventing himself as leader of the ‘Brexit Party’, telling us we voted to leave, so we need to go. (Nigel, if we leave with no deal your Brexit Party might become a wake!)

For remainers, asking to Stay meant only one thing ‘No Change’. No one likes change, let’s face it. It makes everyone nervous.

The Government said ‘you spoke, so we will do as you asked.’ It was only an advisory referendum and many of the Remain campaigners were furious that an advisory referendum led to a jump in to the dark with no hope of reprieve.

For Leave voters it is a done deal – we are leaving and that is right. They won after all.

For Remain voters it is inconcievable that we would throw everything away with such a small Leave majority.

And as for David Cameron – he buggered off (to keep pigs, wasn’t it?). In steps Theresa May, chosen by no-one at all.

In 2017 our unelected Prime Minister went to the country to get a mandate (even though she was already married) so that there could be no doubt that the country was behind her. And some where – right behind her as she headed for a cliff, waiting to push her off. The Conservatives failed to secure a majority, loosing seats, not gaining them. The only way they could survive in government was to make a deal, and the only candidate for that deal… The Spanish Inquisition! Sorry, the DUP, the Democratic Unionist Party, a party with policies written by Oliver Cromwell himself. (I may be getting a little carried away here).

We had a democratic referendum to decide if we should leave, then we had a democratic election to decide who would be responsible for delivering the results of the referendum. All very democratic. Thumbs up to the UK for showing the world how it is done.

The fact is, that we, the people, did not believe in what the government were doing to such an extent that we gave them a black eye. Now the fight was on. Get the popcorn, Parliament was about to get messy.

And it did. The Conservative Party split in to factions. Some said ‘mum, I’m hungry, can’t we just go?’ Others said ‘I like snails, I don’t want to go’. Still others said… well I can’t repeat what they said here.

In the end Mrs May’s Eurodeal turned out to be very unpalatable. No surprise, who wants to eat shit. We could leave but we needed to organise what was happening to the kids, well, to Northern Ireland anyway. Now I could go on and on about The Good Friday Accord, how we need the EU to have Northern Ireland at the weekend as she is volatile and might blow up (literally). I am not going to do that here. Perhaps another blog and a bit there.

Anyway, Mrs M came back to class and it was her that learnt her lesson. Three times she asked us to eat the mouldy apples, and three times our elected representatives said ‘No’ and stamped their feet. The deal was dead. Time for change.

Since then Parliament has been trying to decide exactly what Leave means. For the majority of MPs, leaving without a deal is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the head (and then blaming Europe for it). As far as the majority of people in the UK are concerned, No Deal was never part of the plan. In a recent poll 36% of those polled said we should leave with No Deal, 45% said we should just stay and 19% admitted that they didn’t know. The difference between the Leave and Stay result – 9% in favour of Stay.

But what of the Don’t Knows? Are these the people who wanted a deal and are not sure whether No Deal is the right way to go? If we held another referendum would they vote to Stay or Go? They are the people both sides now need to influence.

Along comes Boris who has been bravely absenting himself from anything challenging for years. Brave Boris told his voters he would lie in front of the bulldozers rather than have a third runway at Heathrow, and then was conveniently not there when it was voted on in Parliament and they decided to build the third runway. But that is surely not something we should come to expect from the man who keeps getting sacked for lying. If you listen intently whenever he appears in the media you can hear either the song from The Holy Grail with a slight alteration (Brave, Brave old Boris) or the sound of a tuba. Boris had the backing of a whole 90,000 people to be elected PM.

Do you know how many of those Euro Myths I mentioned earlier were down to Boris when he has European Correspondent for The Telegraph? If you fancy playing ‘Spot the Fib’ there are plenty of sites out there that might help. What a choice to lead our nation!

But there was a problem. Our democracy was threatened by actually working, so Boris had to do something. ‘Prorogue’ he said, ‘never!’ and then he did.

Anyone for another Referendum? The anti No Deal coalition of MPs are determined not to let No Deal see the light of day. The government have Prorogued Parliament, a normal political action which allows a break between sessions of Parliament, on average for 8 days (in the last 40 years). But the government have called for one of 23 days, at a crucial time for our exit of the EU. Seems a bit anti-democratic and suspect!

One thing is for certain, this Brexit is something that we cannot solve overnight, and it is not something that we should just throw aside on a whim and leave anyway, like a petulant child who has been told they can’t have something, but they really want it, even if it is bad for them. It took us 12 years to get in, and a further 46 years to get ourselves embeded as we are. Isn’t it rather stupid to think we can untangle this in 3 years. Personally, I don’t think we have even started yet.

My point – and I know this is a long read – we need to stop and take a breath. Extend the deadline to leave, make it a sensible length. We have so much yet to do. Leavers need to listen to the genuine concerns of Remainers. Most of us have very real and relatable reasons why we oppose No Deal. A sensible deal would swing more of us to your view. Remainers, we need to stop assuming that all Leavers are suffering from a one-track mind and remember that they had genuine reasons for voting to leave and we need to listen to them to.

Perhaps if we talked to each other and stopped aggressively attacking each other we might realise that underneath it all, most of us have the best interest of the people of our great nation at heart. If we all agreed we would only need one political party and we would all vote for them. Everyone believes they know the answer, and to the very last one of us, we are wrong.

So… Let’s not be in such a hurry. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know, and it definately wasn’t built by any of our polititians – it is still there after all. And finally… Let’s talk.