Harsh reality of Brexit is catching up with No 10

GOVERNMENT ministers no longer extol the virtues of Brexit. They merely recite grimly that it must be gone ahead with “whatever happens”.

Liam Fox, speaking for the Government a couple of years ago, said the Brexit negotiations would be the “easiest in our history”. We can already pass judgment on that issue.

The CBI, with its 170,000 member companies, says 10 per cent are already preparing to move their business to the EU and that two-thirds of European companies located here will return home.

The Government has been warned that it will be held in contempt of Parliament if it fails to publish the result of 58 surveys of the effect Brexit will have on the UK economy.

There is a strong whiff of imperial nostalgia about Brexit and your average billionaire is fully committed to this while our nation suffers a fall in real wages. The latter is due largely to the collapse in the value of the pound, which pushes up inflation, as investors make their assessment of our chances outside the EU.

The so-called “divorce bill”, no matter what figure is eventually arrived at, will be dwarfed by the cost of tariffs and imports stretching out far into the distant future.

It really is watch-this-space time.

BREXIT Secretary David Davis’s complaint about “doing all the running” in the Brexit negotiations is yet another nail in the “have one’s cake and eat it” coffin.

Brexiteers’ expectations of a great deal because “the Germans want to sell us their cars” and thanks to “Britain’s stronger negotiating hand” now seem a very distant dream, and Davis confirms that it is becoming more of a nightmare with each passing negotiating round.

Brexiteers have been able to shelter behind the referendum result so far but the reality is catching up with unrealistic political promises. Let’s be clear: if the EU forces the UK to do most of the running, it is because it knew Brexit was never going to be a painless, liberating exercise.

Compromises will materialise in the future but the Brexit camp must first recognise that having a relationship with the EU is only possible via EU or European Economic Area memberships. All other options will mean less EU trade and a hit to the national economy. That is the price to pay for Brexit’s promised sovereignty.

CAN anyone explain why your editorial [Comment, November 16] states that after Brexit there will be less money to go around, not more? When we leave the EU we won’t have to contribute to it any more and we would therefore retain around

£12.5 billion a year in our coffers.

If so, couldn’t that money be put towards our NHS or some other deserving cause?