Brexit: You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

My grandfather always advised me to vote against the party in power, as this was the best way to prevent any of them doing too much irreversible damage. On the face of it, that advice now seems ever more valid, although finding a viable opposition party at the moment is something of a challenge - perhaps the SNP should migrate south for the winter?

Let me nail my colours to the mast: I voted Remain. In fact, of the seven members of my family, only one is on bread and water. Statistics based on voting profiles of age and education levels suggest that around three-quarters or more of our readers would have also voted Remain. The GAMBICA Trade Association announced that 87% of its members were in favour of Remain.

This journal is dedicated to the pursuit of ways to increase the efficiency of manufacturing, in the belief that increased efficiency leads to greater wealth and a healthier economy. Of course, the hidden consequence is that a big part of that increased efficiency revolves around robotics, which in turn leads to fewer low-skilled manual jobs. This is not just on the manufacturing factory floor, but in restaurants, agriculture, trucking and many other sectors. We expect huge numbers of further jobs to be lost to automation over the next two decades. These people won't be productive, they'll be an extra welfare burden - not through any fault of their own per se, but a burden nonetheless.

There is no doubt that the "left behinds" feel most disenfranchised. This is discussed elsewhere in the Round Table Discussion article on UK Manufacturing. It has been a major factor in deciding the Brexit referendum and the US Presidential Election. While this has little to do with the EU, it has fuelled the protests against the current Government - and the established "elite" style of democracy in general.

Increasing levels of automation is fine, provided that it is accompanied by distribution of wealth into those communities who have been "overtaken" by automated systems, without them having been re-skilled in the way that newer younger people have been. It is plainly unjust that, too often, globalisation involves paying the rich even more and the poor even less. There won’t be much mass consumerism if consumers cannot afford food and shelter.

Reflecting these concerns in a LinkedIn post, mechatronics engineering student Abhijit Menon asks if moving towards complete automation means we are moving towards a society with no work to do. Jonas Berge, Director, Applied Technology of Emerson Automation Solutions in Singapore replied "There will always be stuff to do. From the book Aundance: 'in 1862, 90% of our workforce were farmers. By the 1930s, the number was 21%. Today it's less than 2%.' He adds that humans have consistently demonstrated an ability to find new things to do that are of greater value when jobs have been outsourced or automated.

Berge continued "A positive way to look at it is that more and more people are getting higher and higher education. They don't want to do manual labour like data collection on hot, cold, rainy, windy days etc. They want to put their education to good use. Therefore plants have to be modernized not only for productivity, but also to fit the profile and expectations of future workers - those coming to the industry today."

Rajesh Mehta, Energy Controls Coordinator at City of Mississauga, reassured the young student, saying "Think about who is going to build these robots, program them and maintain them."

But Menon countered by asking if building and programming the robots would ultimately be done by the robot itself or some other automatic device, thus letting go of the middle man.

Stefan Mutschlechner, an automation expert for biogas plants in Bolzano, Italy commented that "Most people are still working more than 40 hours a week in our modern society. It's strange in a fully automatic world. I think the right way to invest our time is in our children, our families."

Such an opportunity requires a sea change of creative thinking to implement. Tesla CEO Elon Musk says there's a 'pretty good chance' universal basic income (UBI) will become reality - simply paying people regardless of whether or not they find work.

UBI has seen a surge in popularity in the last year or so. After a long period of dormancy since it was conceived in the 1960s, the idea has gained new life as tech entrepreneurs and businesspeople have started wondering what might happen when robots displace much of the workforce.

It is a massive irony that, as we prepare to leave, it is an EU country that is taking the lead in this initiative. Finland is to give 2000 of its unemployed citizens the equivalent of £480 every month, without any restrictions or conditions attached. Leaders hope the move will improve life quality, reduce unemployment and create jobs. Recipients will not need to prove they are looking for work and the money will be given regardless of any other income the person earns.
The Finnish government will study whether the policy helps recipients find work. It suspects many unemployed people are put off getting a job because they will lose unemployment benefits and therefore be worse off financially – a similar problem to that which tax credits were designed to solve in the UK.

What about the Plan?

Some people may be wondering why there has been little semblance of a plan emerging from the May Government. This extract may throw a little more light on why, beyond the idea that we are holding our cards close to our chests so that the EU cannot take an early peek.

Gary Gibbon, the political editor of Channel 4 News, has written a book called Breaking Point that combines a campaign diary with reflections on what happened.
Some Vote Leave campaigners were never aiming for a win, Gibbon says. The scene was reminiscent of the scene from the film The Italian Job where robbers led by Sir Michael Caine blow up a truck completely when they were only meant to blow open the doors.

He quotes what he was told by a pro-leave Tory who worked closely with Michael Gove and Vote Leave in a conversation three weeks after the referendum. The source told him: "We weren’t meant to win. That line 'You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off’, it’s true. The plan was to run the Remain side close enough to scare the EU into bigger concessions. None of us thought we were ever going to win. With the possible exception of Dominic Cummings, who just wanted to drive a car into the Camerons’ living room. It’s all such a mess. I want a second referendum now."

The splits

As has been well documented, the referendum vote split the country down the middle in all sorts of ways - not just the haves vs the have-nots, but old vs young, graduates vs the rest, cities vs rural areas, north v south, indigenous vs non-indigenous, nation against nation within the British Isles.

Mrs May is keen now that we all unite around one negotiating Brexit stance, but that is unrealistic without major changes in approach and society. The last thing we need is an economic downturn.

Since the result was announced, the Leave camp has been very vociferous in insisting that it was a democratic vote, telling us that "we should get over it". Some in the Remain camp have indeed taken this advice, while others such as myself believe that the result should continue to be opposed.

So was the vote democratic? Should we unite and get over it? In one sense the referendum was an example in democracy, but it was advisory and non-binding. This is clearly recorded in Hansard and in other Parliamentary briefing documents. I respect it as that - and only that. There was and is no obligation on the part of Government to interpret it as a clear vote in favour of leaving the EU.

One could argue that had it been intended to be binding, a higher majority theshhold would have been imposed before a policy change could be forced through, or the referendum would never have been passed by Parliament in the first place!

What conditions might have been set for a referendum to be binding? Even for Muirfield to admit women to its golf course, a two-thirds majority of members (all men!) would be required - a system heavily weighted in favour of the status quo. Referendums in Australia require that all states should vote in favour, as well as there being an overall majority. Obviously, with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar all voting to remain, this condition would not have been met. Those same Parliamentary briefing documents also contain a table detailing all the various conditions that referendums are held under in countries worldwide. Nowhere is a straight majority without some other condition sufficient to implement a policy change on its own.

If we scratch beneath the surface, the vote was not at all democratic for many other reasons: any attempt to present this referendum result as "a clear majority" is simply a misrepresentation.

Firstly, three groups of people were denied the opportunity to vote: 16 to 18 year olds (who were allowed to vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum); UK citizens domiciled abroad (whose interests are affected by any reciprocal agreement between the UK and Europe, should Brexit happen); and the 3 million UK citizens already living here (excluding those emanating from Eire and Malta). This latter group also have a strong vested interest in the status quo prevailing.

The denial of the vote to young people seems particularly unfair, since it is they who will be affected for the longest period of time. It could equally well be argued that the oldest voters should be denied the vote, on the basis that they will not be around to experience the consequences - a kind of "you can't have your cake and eat it" scenario?

The most equitable solution would have been to give all of these groups the opportunity to participate. And had this been done, the referendum would have been more democratic, but at the expense of the result being reversed, as all those three groups heavily favour Remain.

Furthermore, statisticians are showing that over time, pure demographics will progressively sway the decision in favour of Remain. Since the referendum, over 120,000 Leave voters have sadly died, compared to only 39,000 Remainers (Table X). This is purely a function of the relationship between voting habits and age profile. Similarly, more 18 year-olds have become eligible to vote. The younger generation have different expectations - they are educated with a different skill set and have global ambitions to be free to travel, live and work where they choose. They are not content with living their lives in Hartlepool and holidaying in Southend. So simply with all other things being equal, as older voters leave us and more younger voters come on stream the result swings - sufficiently on its own to overturn the result by 2019, when the Article 50 negotiations are drawing to a close.

It follows therefore that by the time we leave, the country will be overwhelmingly in favour of not leaving. Many opinion polls suggest we have already reached that point, two years early.

My final point relates to the uneasy alliance of people that voted to Leave. We are told variously that they "all" voted to curb immigration, or to bring an end to perceived Brussel bureaucracy, or have the freedom to manage our own trade deals. But we know that another group voted Leave as a protest vote against the Government, and another against job losses to automation. I have also met a taxi driver who hates Germans, a family who oppose Cameron's views on gay marriage, and a lady who objects to the number of pigeons in Sleaford town centre.

All of these reasons are entirely valid reasons to vote - none of us are obliged to vote one way or another for any particular reason. But the main point is that this is an amalgam of reasons, and includes votes for many different outcomes. The current Cabinet of Leavers cannot even agree amongst themselves whether Brexit means Wotsits or Maltesers - should we leave the Single Market, and control (EU) immigration, or stay in the single market, pay for the privilege and accept EU immigration. Or can we indeed have our cake and eat it and bludgeon the EU into compromising on its Four Freedoms?

The Leave vote therefore represents an amalgam of different choices, not one single choice - divisions and compromises are emerging in the Cabinet as the implications of these choices are emerging. Ultimately, the May, Fox, Davis, Johnson axis may even implode.

There were no questions on the ballot paper about what type of Brexit we were voting for, just Yes Brexit or No Brexit. The various Brexit votes cannot be conjoined into one amorphous, all-defeating mass, against a bloc of Remain voters which is solidly in favour of just one outcome - staying in the EU. I would therefore argue that in fact the Remain campaign is already the clear winner, outnumbering as it does any of the other factions.

In any event, the result was extremely close - so close that the principal architect of the Leave campaign Nigel Farage said on the night that were the result 52-48 in favour of Remain, as looked likely at the time of the interview, he would immediately campaign for a second referendum. This is perhaps the only thing I shall ever agree with Farage on. Of course, he no longer feels that way....but neither he nor his fellow Brexiteers can blame any of us for feeling the same way.

So what are we left with? A vague snapshot in time of public opinion, and the certain knowledge that implementing it would exacerbate the splits which it has highlighted in the UK population. Really not a mandate for action.

Views from the front line

My commitment to the EU and the Single Market stems from having served the materials research and manufacturing sectors for over 40 years. My livelihood depends on it. And after studying the likely effects on manufacturing and the economy as a whole, both before the referendum and subsequently, I believe that the course we are embarking on is one of great risk.

Moving as I do in circles of manufacturing company executives, technical press and senior civil servants, I hardly ever come across anyone with a good word to say for Brexit (although a few companies have benefitted from the weaker pound). And yes, that view does prevail, even amongst civil servants in the government departments charged with managing our exit from the EU. Amongst American and European company executives, there is a mixture of sympathy and complete disbelief that any country could embark on such a course, which they largely see as economic suicide. More recently of course, Americans have been somewhat distracted by more pressing domestic affairs!

A couple of months before the referendum took place, I met a number of Siemens executives at a pre-arranged meeting at an exhibition. We had a number of topics on the agenda, of which one was Brexit. It has never been within the remit of the technical press to comment explicitly on political issues, so we discussed other aspects of automation in preference. However, before we went our separate ways, we agreed that it was (at the time) unlikely that the Leave camp would win, and all agreed that was a good thing for manufacturing and for the economy.

Before the vote itself, I started to look in depth at the views of other key players in the engineering community. One of the most persuasive - for me - was an economic analysis by the CBI into the true costs and benefits of EU membership.

In 2013, the CBI surveyed the academic estimates of the overall net economic costs and benefits of the UK’s membership of the EU, as part of its major report Our Global Future. This analysis was further updated in February 2015, noting that some aspects of EU membership are poorly or rarely analysed. This is particularly the case with (on the benefit side), the impact of the Single Market on competition, economies of scale and global value chains; and (on the cost side), the costs of poorly designed regulation.

The CBI analysis suggests that the body of academic evidence points to an overall net benefit of EU membership. The mid-range estimate is around 4-5% of GDP, or £73 to £91 billion per annum, which equates to £2700 - £3300 per household per annum. This estimate has not changed from that published by the CBI in 2013. Added to this must be the bill for leaving the EU, which has been estimated by the EU as £50 billion - this is the cost of commitments already made to research programmes, pension entitlements by EU employees and other forward commitments. This is not negotiable, even if the UK government thinks it is.

What about the costs of bureaucracy? The UK has 384,000 civil servants managing the affairs of a single country, while the EU has 33,000 civil servants looking after the interests of 28 countries. Ok, I accept that the individual country's civil servants have a wider remit, because (contrary to the Brexit argument) the vast majority of UK administration is still administered by the United Kingdom. But we have already heard that the UK will need to assign extra 30,000 civil servants to the job of unravelling all the EU-UK connections, a cost which must be also borne by the UK alone. This is a comparable number to the total number of EU civil servants, yet there the cost is shared across all member states. The claimed savings in bureaucracy claimed for Brexit by Gove and his compatriots appear hard to find!

The analysts note that there is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty over this judgment, and the benefit may be smaller, but it could also be considerably larger. The analyses considered cover a wide range of opinions and methods. It covered 12 studies and 14 different estimates, which range from a net cost of 13% of GDP to a gain of 31%. Five out of the seven estimates which the CBI regarded as credible concluded that the long-term economic benefits of the UK’s membership have outweighed the costs.

Conversely, the CBI says that those studies which find a net benefit from EU exit are based on some relatively ambitious counterfactual scenarios. Examples include: unilateral free trade, in which the UK abandons tariffs on imports for no reciprocal reduction in tariffs on its exports; major repeals of regulation - including some for which there may be limited political appetite (such as removal of all climate change legislation); or scenarios in which Britain undergoes a dramatic industrial shift from manufacturing to services with no impact on unemployment.

Finally the CBI analysis mentions additional empirical studies, including two examples which imply that the UK has received a substantial benefit from its EU membership.

In the light of this, it seems surprising that the CBI is now adopting a Nevill Chamberlain-esque approach of trying to make a success of Brexit, rather than continuing to resist it altogether.

If one truly believes that the annual cost of leaving the EU is between £60 and 90 billion, would it not be beholden to that organisation to fight to the end?
The CBI claims to have held thousands of conversations across the country with trade associations and firms of all sizes since the summer and taken an in-depth look at the opportunities, concerns and questions that 18 sectors of the UK economy face ahead of EU negotiations in 2017 - on the ease of doing business, regulation, and access to talent.

In Making a Success of Brexit, the CBI calls on the Government to consider the complexity of the modern economy where no business operates in isolation. Products come with complementary services, supply chains overlap across borders, and many companies do not fit neatly into a single sector.

The UK’s new relationship with the European Union (EU) must meet the needs of every sector of the economy to be a success, as the consequences of leaving any behind could have knock-on effects for others, says the CBI. This follows its largest consultation of members since before the EU referendum.

“Businesses in every corner of the UK are rolling up their sleeves as they prepare for life outside the EU and are committed to making it a success. Leaving the EU will be a highly complex process, and all sectors of the economy are making their priorities clear in order to get it right," says Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI Director-General. “The Government will need to take a ‘whole economy’ approach to avoid leaving sectors behind.”

The impact on pharma

According to the Office of National Statistics, the UK’s pharmaceutical sector is worth over £13 billion of gross value added (GVA), or around 9% of the country’s manufacturing economy. Analysts therefore suggest a Brexit would have serious consequences for the UK and for the industry itself.

An analysis ((GDHC1102EI) conducted just before the referendum by GlobalData, a provider of data and analysis for consumer, technology and healthcare businesses concluded that a close vote for either Brexit or Bremain would create much uncertainty. It says that it is difficult to envisage a positive outcome for the UK pharmaceutical industry in the event of the UK exiting the EU, but a close vote to remain might in fact provide a driver for great positive change in the industry.

Here are some of the arguments cited by the pharmaceutical industry against Leaving the EU:

• A Brexit would cause UK researchers in the sector to lose access to facilities and valuable public/private partnerships, such as the EU’s Innovative Medicines Initiative.
• The EU is introducing new Clinical Trials Regulations and a portal to make it easier for companies to conduct multi-site clinical trials. If the UK votes to leave, it would miss out; making the UK a less attractive place for companies to conduct their trials.
• UK companies would no longer benefit from Single Marketing Authorisations, which are granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and enable them, in one go, to market and make their medicines available across all Member States. The UK may instead have to create its own process.
• The EMA itself is based in London and would have to relocate, causing disruption to companies whose drugs are undergoing assessment at that time. The pharmaceutical division of the Unified Patent Court, which will make rulings on disputes, is also supposed to be housed in London when it launches next year. But this would also have to be relocated.
• Finally, Brexit would alter residency status for some EU pharmaceutical staff and reduce the size of the available talent pool for UK companies – damaging the UK’s long term competitiveness.

Early in 2016, the BioIndustry Association penned an open letter in the Financial Times, signed by 55 executives, in favour of Remain. Eli Lilley’s CEO and the Head of R&D at Merck in the US have also both said withdrawal would be challenging for their scientists. While the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), unsurprisingly, thinks the UK’s departure from the EU would threaten scientific research and jeopardise the Member States’ system of drug regulation.

The newly created British Biosimilars Association, has also said Brexit would bring significant uncertainty to approvals and launches of biosimilars for manufacturers and deny jobs to companies that want to compete in the biosimilars market.

And in the latest intervention, Sir Andrew Witty, CEO of GSK (plus 92 other leading life sciences figures), has published an open letter in the Observer articulating the ‘significant advantages’ of EU membership for the life sciences sector and the UK. In addition to putting forward conventional arguments about inward investment and jobs, there was a more overt reference to how UK and EU patients benefit from getting access to medicines more quickly, because of the harmonised EU regulatory approval system that aids faster dissemination.

If the UK does leave the EU completely (and fails to negotiate an EU non-member deal to stay in the EMA), it would miss out on access to other pan-EU projects designed to speed up patient access to innovation, including collaboration on health technology assessments.

At the same time, because pharma companies would then have to undergo a duplicative process for authorisation of their drugs in the UK, it may force them into a binary decision about where to launch their medicines first.

Since the EU would still be a larger marketplace than the UK, companies may legitimately decide to launch their drugs there first, meaning that UK patients end up waiting longer to get hold of cutting edge medicines.

There is one other nasty side effect. An adjustment in the launch sequencing for medicines in favour of the EU could lead to a consequent erosion of the UK’s status as a global reference price, reducing the UK’s ability to obtain discounted prices.

So, in layman’s terms, if the UK does vote for Brexit the cost of our medicines could go up and it could take longer for us to get access to new medicines.

The graphene effect

Graphene is the thinnest material on earth – almost a million times slimmer than a strand of hair. Graphene has exceptional properties: tougher than diamond, stretchier than rubber, and better able to conduct electricity than anything else. Its myriad possible uses include bendy touchscreens for mobiles, super-light batteries, artificial retinas, more effective drug delivery.

"Tomorrow's world is being shaped here in Manchester," declared Chancellor Osborne at the Conservative party conference in 2011. But our record with graphene has been dismal. One of our most significant discoveries is being developed to a far greater degree elsewhere, including in Europe. Consultants calculate that China has taken out more than 2,200 patents on the material; the US more than 1,700; South Korea is closing in on 1,200. And the country that discovered it? Just over 50.
True, patents don't equal profits, and some Americans can't arrange their alphabet spaghetti in a novel fashion without demanding copyright – but this wasn't the way it was meant to be.

On the one hand, Britain can't spearhead the work on a revolutionary material that was discovered at one of its universities. On the other, the UK can't break its pathological focus on property and credit – despite five years of post-Lehman handwringing by politicians of all stripes.

Competitors such as the USA, Japan, France and Germany have all maintained or increased their spending on research; South Korea and China have begun to spend a lot more. In Britain, however, there has been a fall in the proportion – led by the private sector.

Although graphene exploitation does not have directly to do with Brexit, the UK, once a research-rich economy, has fallen behind in other ways, with UK firms allegedly either incapable or unwilling to exploit inventions.

Yet, Alan Mak (MP), Chairman of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Entrepreneurship, speaking at the December launch of the UK Manufacturing Review, claimed that one of the benefits of leaving the EU would be that Europe is risk-averse in comparison to the UK. While this may be true of Germany’s financial community (although not of other European countries including the Netherlands), the picture is reversed when it comes to safer investments in developing established businesses. The UK is at the bottom of the league when it comes to the implementation of robots (Fig 1), or the development of IoT ready technologies (Fig 2).

In a globalised world, we need the UK's research community working with Germany's engineering businesses and the USA's software experts, all working together, not competing against one another in isolation.

Another historical challenge which faces high-tech start-ups is the ease with which they can be picked off by larger, predatory companies.

ARM Holdings, which describes itself as "the world’s leading semiconductor IP company", manufactures 40 million electronic chips, powering products including smartphones, supercomputers, medical devices, agricultural sensors, base stations and servers.

The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers (of BBC microcomputer fame), Apple Computer and VLSI Technology. I myself with colleagues pioneered the application of computer technology in publishing using Acorn products, and remember them fondly, before the momentum of the early IBM and Apple desktop machines took over.

In July of 2016, shortly after the referendum, the announcement that UK technology firm ARM Holdings was to be bought by Japan's Softbank for £24 billion caused some furore. Softbank is one of the world's biggest technology companies and is run by its founder, Japanese entrepreneur Masayoshi Son.

Although ARM said it would keep its headquarters in Cambridge and that it would at least double the number of its staff over the next five years, the loss of UK control of such a beacon of UK entrepreneurialism caused consternation.

Such announcements are likely to accelerate as a result of Brexit, if the fall in the value of the pound makes it cheaper to acquire British high technology assets. Conversely, German SMEs appear to be much more stable, with many based on a family-firm mentality, and exhibiting a lower willingness to sell.

A similar effect is being seen with the FTSE 100 index, which is at record highs because foreign interests are able to acquire shares of UK multinationals at bargain prices. But little of this wealth will filter down to the British man-in-the-street, with the profits going to those who sell the shares.

Oranges and Lemons

It is often stated that life outside the Single Market is a simple matter of falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules while we set up trading deals with individual countries. There is in fact nothing simple about this. Trade deals take years to set up - ask the Australians or the New Zealanders - and the more elements to the deal, the longer it will take.

Negotiations are also dependent on the relative strength of the hands of the two parties. Our hand is weak, because we are a small nation, attempting to do deals with countries such as the USA, India and China. They will have the upper hand.

A further complication is that individual countries with whom we have unrelated disputes (for example, Argentina and Spain) could make life very difficult by blocking deals which were otherwise attractive to the UK.

We will firstly need to do a deal with the remaining EU bloc. Again, because nearly 50% of our exports go to the EU, but only 10% of theirs come to us, they win. And incidentally, this process cannot start until we have left. So good luck with that.

All of this takes manpower and a skilled army of negotiators. And we do not have one, because they are all working for the EU (who until now have carried out all such negotiations on our behalf). So we either have to find new ones or pay megabucks to attract them back from Brussels.

Space precludes me from being able to expand on how complicated WTO negotiations can be, but I have included an article on orange tariffs in the references! The good news is that the UK’s orange tariffs could be settled in a couple of months. But only with goodwill (the main players are the EU itself, Argentina, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, South Africa and the US), and only if orange tariffs were the only issue to be settled. But there are also cut flowers, potatoes, tomatoes, and other fruits and vegetables to worry about. Many of the current regulations are designed to protect specific groups of producers who may or may not be equally spread between the UK and the rest of the EU, raising questions about how much tariff protection the UK and EU need to keep for each of those products.

Closer to our manufacturing economy, a recent dispute between Airbus and Boeing at the WTO found in favour of Airbus, condemning massive illegal subsidies to Boeing $26 billion in the form of wholly non-refundable corporate welfare. This is large enough to fund the entire development of the 777X and has already cost Airbus $50 billion in sales.

“The United States and Boeing picked this fight at the WTO, and today’s ruling is yet another blow for that strategy,” said Tom Enders, Chief Executive Officer, Airbus Group. “Those prohibited subsidies must be withdrawn immediately following today’s historic ruling, meaning that Boeing must give up these massive tax subsidies.”

The case for Airbus was fought by the European Commission and the Governments of France, Germany, the UK and Spain working together. How such a case would work out in a post-Brexit world remains to be seen.

The Four Freedoms

I am heavily in favour of the free movement of people and I believe that this country has benefitted enormously from an injection of young, vibrant talent from abroad at a time when the age profile of our own population is such that we need more young people to sustain the costs of their care, medical treatment and pensions. The immigrants to the UK are net contributors to the system. Those who come from the less affluent areas of the EU are actually well educated and often multi-lingual. They often out-skill the indigenous populations, which although disappointing, is not the fault of the EU. At the same time, the people we export to other countries in the EU are older and often leaving to retire to warmer climes, so they are net beneficiaries of the economies they are joining.

I cannot see a sustainable future for the UK which does not involve BOTH Single Market access AND Free Movement of people. We need both, not just one, or neither. I do, however, in a cursory nod to the concerns of those in the Leave camp, see that unfettered immigration from both inside and outside the EU needs some form of control in the medium term, but I believe that this is negotiable from within the EU, without the wholesale destruction of the economy which leaving will inevitably cause. This is the closest to Unity that I can come with those who voted differently to me.

Anyway, to quote from a recent William Keegan article in the Guardian, while wishing readers as happy a new year as events allow, I should like to end with this wonderful quote from Jan Kamieniecki in a letter to the Financial Times: “I suspect that what Michael Gove meant to say was that the people in this country have had enough of exports.”