You never stopped moaning, so why should we?

I recently read in our local paper a Leaver declare how delighted he was that the UK had finally left the EU, thus finally implementing the will of the people. While it's wholly understandable why a Eurosceptic would be pleased just now, I consider that he is on shakier ground when he describes the outcome as 'the will of the people'. A democratic vote is essentially a snapshot of opinion at any given moment - it is not a mandate for all eternity, proved by the fact the 2016 EU vote was the second we have had on the subject. The 1975 referendum resulted in more than two thirds voting to remain. If referendum results are supposed to last forever, the second vote should never have been called, but as we have had two, there is no logical reason why at some future date we cannot have a third.

I have looked at the results of eleven opinion polls conducted since September 2020 and all reported a majority for Remain by margins of between 4% and 10%. While I tend to take opinion polls with a pinch of salt, such consistency is fairly unusual, suggesting that the will of the people may well have changed in the four and a half years since we voted. Before the final result was declared in 2016, Nigel Farage stated that if it turned out to be 52% Remain to 48% Leave, that would not be the end of the matter. Oddly enough, when the actual result came through at 51.9% Leave to 48.1% Remain, he moved the goalposts and declared the result was final.

Some Leavers demand that, after more than four years, we 'Remoaners' should accept the democratic result and just shut up, sometimes even suggesting that we should now 'get behind the vote' for the good of the country. This is a bit rich, seeing that Eurosceptics never stopped complaining about Europe in the entire 41 years between the two referenda.

Although my politics are profoundly different from our prime minister's, I genuinely would like his breezy optimism about the UK's future to be justified as I do not want to see our country go into decline. However I am not encouraged by the sight of huge lorry parks in Kent, our fish going rotten before it can be exported due to bureaucratic delays, many thousands of financial services jobs being relocated to EU capitals, or musicians booked to perform in Europe facing copious and expensive red tape. If our future is so rosy, why have some wealthy and vociferous Leave campaigners obtained passports from EU countries for themselves and their families and in many instances moved their own businesses abroad? What do they know that they're not telling us?

The whole referendum campaign was skewed by barefaced lies - such as £350 million per week for the NHS - and not all just from one side. Regrettably, the flood of distortions has yet to be stemmed, and problems arising from leaving the EU will hit us ordinary people on the ground the hardest, not the rich and powerful who have the means to cushion themselves. As the old music hall song says: "It's the poor what gets the blame, it's the rich what gets the pleasure".

I hope I'm wrong in seeing little benefit in leaving the EU, but I seriously doubt that I am.