Brexit decision will affect all our lives

‘The British people want this settled,‘ said Theresa May when presenting her deal to Parliament. She argued she had got the best deal possible but could not say it would be better than the current status quo of being a member of the EU, only that it would be ‘different.’ Brexit has been shown through government and NHS impact assessments to be damage limitation at best so the deal on offer might do less damage than crashing out with ‘no deal’ but it doesn’t mean it’s what we should accept. Both May and Corbyn seem to assume if Brexit’s out the way, we can focus on other issues and the same ‘magical thinking’ was evident at the council meeting of November 8 where the Lib Dem motion to persuade the council to back the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign was dismissed on the grounds that Brexit wasn’t ‘council business.’ Additionally, Councillor Paul Myers used the astonishing justification that as people are ‘bored of Brexit’ it’s time to move on. Both locally and nationally the people of the UK are being treated like troublesome teenagers with poor attention spans. Clearly, if Brexit could have been settled easily, this would have been done, but the complexity of the process and consequences weren’t evident in 2016 to politicians, let alone to the public. Brexit is not a separate entity. It will frame all our policies and funding for the future. Councillor Myers’ belief that BANES can run local government in a bubble is worrying. For example, one of BANES’S highest budget priorities is social care. Currently, there is a national shortage of care staff so to lose a potential 5.9 per cent of EU workers would be catastrophic. As cabinet member for economic and community regeneration, one would assume Councillor Myers would be concerned about the potential loss of £8.4 billion of EU regional funding as well as the assessment by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy that the South West could be hit harder economically than many other regions of the UK. It’s right and democratic to let the people have a say on the final deal and many councils have added weight to this by publicly backing the People’s Vote campaign. How disappointing that ours refuses to do so. Jane Riekemann