We’ll all pay for UK sovereignty

DO you feel it yet? We have taken back control; sovereignty has been restored. Now, watch as the queues at the ports and airports lengthen.

There are newly necessary visas before you travel, the cost of which will increase as new airport fees kick in. At least there is an army of new jobs available as customs officials, paperwork administrators and lawyers.

Perhaps we will be building new ships for an expanded Navy. Do we still have any shipbuilders? We may need them if we are going to exclude Europeans fishing in waters they have fished for 40 years.

Prices in supermarkets will increase and choice will decrease, but as Julia Hartley-brewer said, this is a price worth paying for our sovereignty, as she boosted an Australia-style deal — that is a no-deal — trading under WTO rules with tariffs and other barriers.

Malcolm Turnbull, the ex-australian Prime Minister, pointed out that you wouldn’t want to do this. If you can get a deal, do so.

Australia faces many annoying barriers to trade with the EU, which once you are outside is a very protectionist market.

In fact, as we leap on to the world stage, ready for free trade, we find protectionism and tariff barriers going up all around us.

We could do a free trade deal with Australia. That would give us all cheaper food, but it would destroy our farmers.

I expect our new sovereignty will diminish our GDP, our cultural and creative connections.

Economics may eventually force us to a position, as it did in the 1970s, where we are desperate to seek to join a larger trading block.

How hard will that be then?