Sweet deal’s gone as Brexit turns one

From top dog to who knows what?

David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street for the final time SO it’s been a year since we decided as a nation to leave the European Union. What a crazy year it’s been. We only had a referendum because the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, was certain he’d convince us to stay in.

When the results were announced and it emerged the nation had backed Brexit, he was so mortified that he resigned.

What, then, was the point of holding the referendum at all? It was purely a political move, designed largely to stop anti-EU MPs in his own party giving him a hard time.

To replace Mr Cameron we got a new Conservative Prime Minister — who also opposed Brexit.

Theresa May never wanted us to leave the EU either. She was pretty quiet during the referendum campaign, but when she did speak it was to say leaving the EU was a terrible idea.

But perhaps a bigger problem was the way that Mrs May was selected to become Tory leader.

She never faced a real contest. Every other candidate was either rejected by Tory MPs or dropped out, so the party members never got a vote.

Perhaps it meant she escaped the scrutiny she would otherwise have received. There were fewer interviews, fewer difficult questions and less opportunity to expose her flaws.

Meanwhile, the EU referendum result prompted Labour MPs to make a serious effort to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn, a leader most of them never supported.

They were furious at his lacklustre attempts to back EU membership during the referendum campaign.

But Mr Corbyn stayed. All Labour MPs did was to make their party even more divided.

Brexit plunged both our major parties into crises. Some Labour activists are feeling good about themselves at the moment, after losing the June 8 General Election in a less devastating fashion than many people predicted. But our political elite have never looked more hapless.

We’re now trying to negotiate a deal with EU leaders who no longer respect us.

The truth is that we had a sweet deal with the EU. We’d kept our own currency but we had the prestige and international clout that went with being a top dog in one of the world’s largest trading blocs.

Foreigners wanted to invest here, and British businesses had access to a market of 510 million people.

The world of a year ago looked a lot more secure and optimistic than the world of today.