Time to stop the madness

The monstrous drain on public finances, resources and manpower caused by the black hole of Brexit is enough to make the British public weep.

What is now evident is that if 52% of UK voters had not said ‘Up yours, Delors’ back in 2016 then the country would be in a far stronger position economically than it is now – and with far better prospects for the future.

The revelation at the weekend that the UK has been losing the equivalent of £500 million each week as it moves to break from the economic union with the EU is truly shocking.

If that information had been written on the ‘Boris Bus’ instead of spurious promises about funding for the NHS then voters would have had a more accurate perception of the pit that the country would be sinking into.

It is a report by the Centre for European Reform (CER) which highlights the weekly cost of Brexit. According to The Guardian’s story on the issue: “Public finances have been dented by £26bn a year, more than half of the defence budget. This translates to a penalty of £500m a week, a figure that is growing.”

The CER admits that the findings in its report ‘contained a margin of error’. However, it shows that the UK economy is already 2.5% smaller than it would have been had Remain won the referendum.

Add to this the tens of thousands of civil servants who are spending all their time either trying to work out how to unravel the UK from its links to the EU; or mired in the Brexit negotiations; or drawing up papers on how no-deal will affect businesses and ordinary citizens. Surely they could be better employed at the service of the British people, helping to run frontline services and improve people’s quality of life.

Also this week RBS chief executive Ross McEwan has warned a no-deal Brexit could tip the UK economy into recession.

He told the BBC a ‘bad Brexit’ could result in zero or negative economic growth which would hit RBS’s share price. He also said the bank was now being careful about lending to ‘certain sectors of the economy - particularly retail and construction’.

Can the insane waste of public money and resources be halted?

A second referendum with the real facts presented to the electorate about the economic and social disaster which Brexit is causing in Britain is, in my opinion, the only sensible way forward.