Vocal Voices

... platform one is the 23rd of June for Brexitville. Due to toatally foreseeable circumstances this train might never reach its intended destination and passengers are warned to have their passports, visas and work permits ready for inspection at the border. Please be assured that our staff are working extremely hard to get as near to Brexitville as possible, but it might take some time. Buffet cars and refreshments are available in carriages three and seven and a trolley will pass up and down with sandwiches and soft drinks. Have a safe journey."

You think I'm kidding, wait for the announcement from a new campaign group, Change Britain, in the next few days. This 'new' group is led by Gisela Stuart, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis, former leading lights of the Vote Leave team. Remember them? During the referendum campaign they told us that Brexit would be a doddle, that we would take control of our laws, borders, trade, immigration, and that we would get our Sovereignty back. So why are they now campaigning to ensure Brexit talks return border ­controls, laws and trade rules from the EU to the UK?

Their points-based immigration promise has already been trashed by Theresa May. Only the other day Brexit Minister Davis said that to remain in the single market was "very improbable" and today Amber Rudd said that work permits could be introduced for everyone, not just EU nationals, as a way of controlling immigration. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, there are plans being drawn up for people from non-EU countries, which is what the UK will be if Brexit is ever delivered, to obtain visas to travel within the Shengen area.

It is looking more and more like we will be getting a very different Brexit to the one that was promised and what people voted for.

People should have understood that any Brexit was going to be a negotiation and both sides would be looking for the best for themselves.

Unlimited Schengen visa's and Unlimited UK visa's for either side would be quite simple and would give the control that the Brexit crowd sold to the voters. I.e. the visa process would be simple but allow vetting to a very simple degree. Also when the visa expired, it would have to be renewed. However if the visa holder had broken UK law the visa could be withdrawn and the EU national would be expelled.

Equally benefits would have to be earned by EU nationals just as benefits have to be earned (to a degree), by UK nationals in the rest of the EU today (no it's not as simple as the UK makes it and it is totally unfair).

When all the emotion has gone out of it, we're likely to see that the vast majority of what was promised will be delivered. Yes some things will have to be modified because we did have nearly 50% vote to stay and they want their voice heard. But the majority had their say and we are leaving. What that leaving looks like is something else.

Had it been 75:25 we could expect to see just about everything that the Brexit campaigners promised.

What we see today is reality coming to the fore. I don't see this as a bad thing, nothing in international relations fits within "ivory towers" and, as far as I'm concerned, the bill of sale may be slightly tarnished but a significant proportion of the people in the country didn't want to buy it.

10 years from now this will be a moot point. The UK will drift further and further away from the EU as British manufacturers realise they can trade more easily and more cheaply and in English, half way round the world, than 22 miles across a strip of water which has, many times, saved the British people from subjugation.

When I end my life, I will end it as it started. With the British people knowing that Europe (the part over the water), is an insular and inward looking bunch of people who are only a small part of the whole world picture. That the UK fits into that world picture much more easily than the EU and that our place on the world stage is equal, or greater than, the entire EU.

The UK in the EU enhanced the EU position greatly. The UK outside the EU greatly diminishes the EU position. As that becomes more and more clear the people of the UK will forget their fear and remember a bit of pride.

Ask the new youth of the UK, in 25 years time, if they want to "join" the EU and it will be close to 90% NO. Because that was the elephant in the room during the whole debate. Something nobody asked publicly. If we turned the question around and asked all the remainers if they would want to "join" the EU, the UK being at that time outside the EU and stable of economy, the answer would be no for at least 50% of them. Making it a 75:25 vote in any referendum the other way.

I am comfortable with what is going on right now. I don't read the press on this in detail, I read the headlines, look at the outlet it came from, compare it with another outlet of another affiliation and just shrug.

I'll talk about this in a years time when the dust has settled. When A50 is triggered and all the remainer press have stopped crying into their soup and have stopped trying to scupper the negotiations. Then we can have a debate about it when the landscape is about "HOW" we exit, not "IF" we exit. Which is what the remainer press, the civil service and everyone else who thinks it would be better for them to try and stop A50 from being triggered, are trying to do right now.