Opinion: Wingeing Brexiteers should look at themselves!

I can't disagree with him when said:  “At the most basic level, nothing works properly anymore."

But his analysis of why we have reached this state totally ignores the elephant in the room, the reason nothing works properly anymore.

If you look at where we are now and where we were eight years ago there is one clear factor - and that is Brexit. 

Stephen Britt (Image: David Garrad)

And Mr Britt really needs to face up to the fact that he does bear some responsibilty for this - he was one of the most prominent Brexiteers in East Anglia.

He was telling people, and writing press articles telling us how Brexit would make us richer, slash bureaucracy, and free the UK from an organisation that wanted to control our lives. 

He and his Brexit colleagues accused those warning that Brexit would make doing business with our largest trading partner infinitely more difficult of stirring up "Project Fear." 

Remember in late 2015/early 2016 the world was emerging from the economic crisis of the previous seven years and things were starting to improve. Then Brexit applied a handbrake turn to this recovery!

Seven years after the vote I haven't come across a single business who says it is easier doing business with France, Germany or the Netherlands now than it was before the vote.

I haven't come anyone who reckons it is easier travelling around Europe on holiday than it was before.

But that is only the start. We left the EU with no plan. Our economy and social systems had been part of the European project for 42 years.

We'd been an integral part of the European Union since it was fully formed in 1999 and frankly no one had a clue about how to untangle all the links that had developed.

The leaders of the Leave campaign said different things to different groups - Boris Johnson and Michael Gove came to Ipswich and said it was nonsense to say the UK would have to leave the Customs Union and Free Trade if we left the EU.

But there was no plan - and civil servants and ministers have spent so much of the last seven and a half years trying to work out what to do is it any wonder that nothing else works?

Brexit still hasn't been sorted. In Northern Ireland (a nation that voted against leaving the EU) there's no functioning government because the minority Protestant establishment uses an obscure Brexit clause to veto it.

And many sectors of UK business have great difficulty in recruitment because the supply of European labour has dried up.

I don't know if the change in government that looks almost certain to happen next year will change anything - Labour leaders have made it clear they don't want another referendum.

I can understand why - and I haven't wanted one because I felt the democratic decision should be respected and given a chance to work.

But it hasn't. It has divided society and turned Britain into a nastier place than it was 10 years ago.

In 2026 it will have been 10 years since the referendum. No one under 28 will have had a chance to have a say on the issue. And millions of those who did take part in 2016 will no longer be with us.

I'm not sure Mr Britt or his colleagues would like it - but if we do want to say that we live in a democratic society where everyone has their say on the big issues of the day then we have to allow them to make that decision.

I just hope that if there is another vote it will be conducted in a better way than that in 2016 which infected British society with poison and hatred that exists to this day.