Our politics is no longer fit for purpose.

Routinely we are told that trade liberalisation and openness is a universal good. Remainers will very often stick to the economic metrics rather than making the case for the European Union for what it actually is. I can't say I blame them. The "free trade" case for Brexit looks flimsier by the day. This is why I maintain the line that this is not primarily an economic question. 

There are questions as to the legitimacy of the EU as a democracy and the wisdom of surrendering ever more powers to Brussels where there is inadequate scrutiny from media and little public interest. The EU has insidious effects, many of them unquantifiable and hidden from view - not least how it influences the culture of government. 

But actually, the economic argument for remaining is not clear cut either. Both sides play games with statistics and issues are very often reduced to a single figure or GDP percentage which actually tells you nothing and is always arguable. Not least the net benefit of immigration. Often it overlooks that this is a question of what sort of society we want and whether the economic trade-offs are worth considering. In many ways radical changes have been made without a proper public debate and without consent. 

Moreover when it comes to the single market we talk about the headline figure and its overall estimated value (£270bn a year). Even I do that when warning of the dangers of a no deal Brexit. The EU also pulls this trick when it talks about its free trade deals with third countries without being entirely honest about the losses and the domestic impact. 

By keeping losses firmly in separate, unrelated categories, they can convince themselves that they are adding value. You never see them deducing the cost of negative externalities of trade and free movement. If you have a single market in goods, services and people then you also have a single market in crime - and one which asymmetrically affects the UK. 

For instance, organised crime is difficult to quantify in terms of cost to the economy. It's not uncommon for organised crime to target music venues as part of a massive black market in stolen mobile phones. I've had particular experience of this having had a phone stolen at a death metal concert. The miscreant was apprehended but that cost me a hundred pounds in train tickets to go and retrieve it from Camden police station. 

Then there's building site materials theft which is estimated at around £800m. For context that is worth more than the entire catch from the UK fisheries fleet (£774m). Not all of it will be attributable to migrants but the large scale organised crime very often will be, which in turn forces developers to beef up their security at enormous cost.

Meanwhile this report from the Department for Local Communities and Government on rough sleepers shows that second-highest majority after British nationals with 1,388 people this year is Romanians, closely followed by Poles and Lithuanians. The majority of rough sleepers are foreign nationals - and we can no longer deport them. This is where we see public spaces turned onto transit camps which diverts tourism. Organised begging is also a major problem. Ben Judah writing for The New Statesman describes his experiences masquerading as a migrant.

The worst-off migrants often spend their first nights like this – on the street. Today the majority of London’s 7,500 street sleepers are migrants, and a third of them are eastern European. Squats and doorsteps tend to divide into “English” and “Polish” zones. There are frequent fights.

How do you get into work if you arrive with nothing? No money or means, no proper address – and no proper address means no National Insurance number. This is why many head immediately to the illegal touting spots that mushroom outside the hardware stores along the North Circular ring road and the edge of London.

What Judah reveals is a black market economy based on exploitation. Then we have to look at the unmeasurable externalities. This report notes that around 9,000 illegal “beds in sheds” housing tens of thousands of people have sprung up across London over the last five years. This underpins an army of low wage workers placing stresses on infrastructure, not least London's sewers which weren't designed for these pressures. Investigations routinely show overcrowding in Houses of Multiple Occupation which allows foreign workers to undercut the market rate - especially when avoiding tax. 

The Landlords Association confirms "Councils are dreadful at prosecuting rogue landlords. The prosecution rate in 2012 was less than 500 out of 1.5m landlords". Councils often won't do anything about it because if they evict they have a statutory obligation to house them, adding to an already acute problem. The overcrowding and consequent crime it brings is what generates a great deal of resentment. As much as these are economic issues they are also quality of life issues.

Much of this started to balloon long before the expansion of freedom of movement. Fresh flowers and vegetables from UK farms are harvested by illegal labour which is trend going back twenty years. We didn't get adequate legislation until 2004 which is only as good as the enforcement and intelligence networks. Being that employees are very often complicit, it is difficult to bring a case.

The UK boasts of its services economy but the low prices we presently enjoy (so we are told) are very much the result of massive exploitation, meanwhile UK producers are having to compete with low quality, low price imported goods often based on stolen intellectual property.

It can be argued that all of this is resolvable without leaving the EU and in some respects I would agree. All of it, though, requires vast improvements in crime surveillance and enforcement - and somebody has to pay for that. There are already major stresses in the system and the justice system is gradually collapsing. 

What this government will not do, though, or indeed any, is take the necessary steps  because as remainers constantly remind us, this low wage exploitation economy is the only thing propping up the NHS and social care. 

Moreover, in the happy-clappy world of Westminster, immigration is a universal good and having taxpayer funded flats in central London, they will likely not see Afghan youths in Hounslow bashing each other with baseball bats in broad daylight. Just so long as immigration is still propping up anaemic GDP growth, they can keep telling themselves everything is fine and that a knife crime epidemic is culturally enriching. 

In previous blogs I have noted how the fundamental of the UK economy are not sound and that we are storing up a perfect storm of deferred problems. That is the fundamental issue here. Our politics is unable and unwilling to address the issues or take any politically brave decisions - not least because we have a self-entitled public and an infantilised media. The public have been having these debates while our political class is absorbed by trivia and beset by irrelevant tribal infighting.

Even now our political class does not seem to have grasped the seriousness of Brexit and at this point I think it will not have their full attention until they are dealing with the consequences. That, to my my mind, is what makes Brexit so very necessary. As much as the current economic paradigm isn't working, we will very soon see it collapsing altogether (as indeed it was always going to) and we are going to need a series of debates as to our national priorities and whether we can any longer lie to ourselves about the sustainability of our national habits and entitlements.

The EU has only one real function for our political class and that is to sustain the status quo. A status quo which allows them to indulge in hobby horse politics and shirk their responsibility for governing. They need not think about trade, aid and foreign policy. They need not think about agriculture or fishing or technical governance of any kind. There is no political reward or incentive to engage in the adult business of government. 

Before we can even begin to address our economic dilemmas we first need a major shake up of the political culture and to do that, only something as seismic as Brexit will do the job. This is why, incidentally, were there a re-run between remain and leaving without a deal, I would still vote to leave. Leaving without a deal will destroy the Tory party and that is no bad thing. If it takes a term of Corbyn for them to get their act together and present a serious proposition for government and ready to treat the public like adults then so be it. We need adults back in charge. 

One had hoped that the long awaited no-deal technical notices would have focused minds enough for the media to treat them with the seriousness they deserve. Instead the media has reduced it to a potential shortage of sperm. This is the all pervasive juvenility that runs deep in our media. It is no longer capable of treating the public like adults because it is no longer run by adults. This tells us quite a lot. 

The technical notices themselves have a number or important omissions which the media has thus far failed to detect. Moreover, it tells us a lot that it's only news now that the UK has published its own version of EU Notices to Stakeholders which have been online for a number of months. Nothing exists outside the bubble; not for our politicians and not for our media.  

Over the last ten years of contributing to eureferendum.com, one of our chief complaints about the media has been how coverage of EU affairs is slender and very often treated as foreign news and EU measures are only ever reported when they are turned into UK law. Even the remainers have now clocked this dynamic as the Tory party tries to take credit for EU measures on roaming mobile charges. This is partly why the public and politicians alike have no real idea as to the the extent of EU integration or how much of our laws it makes.

And this is the real danger of EU membership. Our media, demonstrably, isn't interested. Nor are our politicians. The European Scrutiny committee is one of the worst attended and EU affairs don't feature except in a major crisis. Meanwhile, because the job of MEP has no real gravitas or prestige, any hapless biped who fills in the form can become an MEP. We tend to get Ukip knuckle-scrapers largely because the electors are a self-selecting minority and euro-elections are viewed as an opinion poll on the EU rather than elections of importance.

British politics is uniquely remote from the people is nominally serves and all the while the real business of government is conducted overseas by anonymous officials and the presence of voting rituals is merely a bureaucratic formality to maintain the outward illusion of democracy. We are therefore in a state of political paralysis while the real economy stagnates and the levers of power aren't attached to anything.

Ultimately media follows power and the media has failed to detect the shift of real policy-making power and so it the Westminster bubble has becomes a three ring circus - more akin with a politics theme park for ambitious social climbers. When remainers said we would become inward looking they failed to notice that we already are, failing to notice that our global presence is gradually erased as the EU takes primacy and pursues its own foreign policy agenda. We no longer have politics of consequence. Brexit is the inevitable consequence of a two decade long hollowing out of politics.

The technical debate in respect of how we leave the EU has been woefully shallow, lacking direction and we can see how badly competence has evaporated in the Westminster bubble. Our think tanks are rotten to the core and incapable of producing intelligent policy, our media is unable to prioritise and our politicians are coming to realise that perhaps they should have read the Lisbon treaty before ratifying it. 

We should not be at all surprised that Brexit is going to cost us far more than it ever should. Intelligent execution of the referendum mandate is simply beyond their ken. We are out of the habit of good governance and our politics places a premium on conformity over knowledge. We cannot, therefore, expect our politics to deliver now or any time in the future unless we have a political reckoning. That's what Brexit is and no economic metric can persuade me that remaining is the better option. If we do not take this opportunity to arrest the decline then we never will. 

Brexit: the canary down the mine

The Independent reports that "Dominic Raab risks a new row with Brussels on Thursday as he demands the EU do more to ensure adequate preparation for a no-deal Brexit. The Brexit secretary will say British and European institutions have not been able to work together in enough areas to guarantee the smooth continuation of life if negotiations fail to reach a deal".

"Mr Raab said there were some good examples of where that was happening, like discussions between the Bank of England and European Central Bank. But he then added: "There are other areas where such engagement needs to take place, whether between the UK and the EU on data protection or between the UK and EU member states, for example between port authorities".

Here I can only echo the disbelief of eureferendum.com. You do have to wonder what planet Raab is on. The only guarantee for a "smooth continuation of life" is to conclude a deal inside the construct of Article 50. That is the entire point of the talks. Raab, though, seems to think continuity is possible having made the conscious decision not to have a deal. Letting talks lapse would be the result of an executive decision not to extend Article 50 talks. 

Somehow he is suggesting that we have a no deal deal comprising of contingency measures presumably for implementation on day one. So in one stroke of rhetoric he is ditching Article 50 talks to talk about a deal or deal(s) without dealing with the EU's preconditions for a deal, ie the Ireland backstop and the financial settlement. He's effectively asking what we can have instead of a withdrawal agreement.

Criticising the EU in this regard, for the lack of cooperation, is totally bizarre. The EU has set up its own task force for Article 50 where it is willing to ensure business continuity just so long as the UK meets its most basic of political obligations. It is hardly unreasonable to expect the UK meets its closing financial obligations, ensuring the rights of EU citizens are safeguarded and respecting the political agreement in respect of Northern Ireland.

As eureferendum observes "Looking at this in the round, it is as if the last 17 months of negotiations haven't existed. Article 50 is no longer of any relevance and we are rebooting the inter-dimensional computer so that we can start again at year zero without regard to anything thus far discussed".

A kinder assessment would be that the government is seeking a backstop of its own should talks collapse, but if the UK is determined to let talks lapse then it must accept that no deal does in fact mean no deal. If we want a minimalist agreement with the EU, it is entirely possible and the EU will even accommodate such a thing, but not without settling the basics.

Some might be tempted to label this as arrogant English exceptionalism but really this is plain old cluelessness. Nobody in this government has the slightest grasp of what is underway and there's not many in the wider political scene who have a grasp on it either. Not least our media. 

At this point it's looking like no deal is all but certain. There are a number of variables in play and we have yet to see how the rumblings on the Tory right will play out in respect of the Chequers deal, which is made all the more surreal in that the EU will not agree to it. It will likely come down to the last hours and unless the government caves in, shunting the bigger questions into the transition as a fudge, it's hard to see this going well. At that point we crash out and we are in crisis management mode. 

A big part of me thinks that this needs to happen. I do not think a no deal Brexit is desirable but it might very well be necessary. The UK approach to the Brexit talks tells us a lot about the UK relationship with the EU. It tells us that our rulers in Westminster simply have no idea what they are dealing with or how to conduct a negotiation with the EU. That skillset is missing entirely. But what it really shows is that our politicians have involved us in something they have paid zero attention to.

This blog has detailed at length how our politicians have been sidelined from the important business of governance to instead fixate on their hobbyhorses be it junk foods, banning the sale of kittens, regulating London Underground advertising or fixed odds betting terminals. Our political machinery is absorbed with trivia - and so is our media. But there's actually a bigger problem here. You. Yes, you, dear reader. This is a bit of a Ratner moment. I hate my readers. 

Writing about the daily grind of the Brexit negotiations and the technical issues therein is as boring to write about as it is to read. Especially since we have made next to zero progress since December. If I want to drive readers away all I need do is write about Article 50 talks. The fastest way to do it is to write about the functioning of trade.   

Being the predictable bunch that you are, I can rescue my daily hits by churning out one of the generic "why we must leave" pieces I can write with my eyes closed. It's a sure fire way to get shares and retweets on social media. The rest of the time you couldn't be less interested.

I actually find this quite alienating. When you invest time and energy into explaining the issues and you think you're starting to make progress with people, and then you see them sharing a BrexitCentral, Spiked or Spectator article you lose the the will to live. It tells me all I need to know about media. People are not remotely interested in informing themselves and if you want an audience you have to pick a tribe and pander to their prejudices. The market for people who want to be informed and want to think is minuscule.

For all that I complain about the low grade triviality of the media, while it says stupid things, it is not run by stupid people. The media knows what I know about audiences, but unlike me it does not feel an obligation to inform or explain. Why would it when their motivation is their bottom line? We therefore have a society that chooses to be misinformed and can do so in comfort since it rarely has any consequences for them.

Being that the essentials are managed for us by the EU and the vast managerial machine it has created, the public, the media and politicians alike can engorge themselves on consequence free trivia, drifting from fad to fad, treating politics as a low grade sport and an adjunct to the entertainment industry. We cannot be at all surprised that governance is rotting from the inside out. 

One is therefore forced to conclude that we do not have the necessary equipment for a functioning democracy. We have a public who are simply prepared for the responsibility of self-governance and a political apparatus so heavily self-absorbed that only a shock to the system can bring it out of its stupor.

As a rule, government does not manage change well and stable government is government which frustrates change. This is why bureaucracy can be a good thing. The only thing worse than an inefficient government is a ruthlessly efficient one. This is something the EU has propped up for quite some time. We are not used to managing change because the EU ensures that change does not happen. 

Where we see government at its most effective is in the aftermath of a major incident. Reactive government takes far less talent. It is these such event in which lessons are learned and we reacquire knowledge in the process. It would be better if things were not that way but this is just how things are. It is too much to expect effective planned change. 

Following a no deal Brexit the government, and indeed the public, will have a sharp learning curve. The first and most obvious lesson is that you never believe the word of a Tory or a Tory newspaper. The lessons for the government, however, will be legion. The arrogance of all concerned will be richly rewarded. 

For whatever economic consequences there may be, I really can't help but feel like this is a country that really has it coming. When I see news media that gives air time to the "cultural appropriation" row and a public willing to expend a nanosecond of their attention on it, I see an electorate that should face the consequences of their choices. 

We could remain in the EU and continue to luxuriate in trivia but I think there is a longer term price for that. Every major policy we have is presently devoted to propping up a fragile status quo. Every time we have an incident like Grenfell Tower, it exposes yet more corrosion of governance. With something like Grenfell, it's relatively easy to sweep it under the rug as attention wanes, but there are other tells, not least the Birmingham prison riot, and the slow motion implosion of our so-called justice system.

I have long thought we are overdue a wake-up call. Good government in the UK is dying. And that means Britain as we know it is dying. This is a country gradually losing its grip on good civic administration - something we used to do better than anyone else on the planet. It is that very thing that feeds our sense of exceptionalism - but we are living on past glories throughout. 

Remainers often tell us how Brexit threatens "our place in the world" which of itself is a self-delusion. Brexit is not a global talking point, and if anything gives the UK an exaggerated sense of self-importance, it's the EU. The stark truth is that our "me-too" military adventures, meddling and preening on the world stage are a matter of supreme indifference to most of the world. I take the view that Brexit will be a much needed humbling national experience.

Many people have said they are shocked at how badly this government is handling Brexit. More shocked than I am, but even I've been surprised. Brexit has been a big reveal as it has shone a super-trooper light on to the ineptitude of our political class. But I don't think it's done with us yet. We're peeling an onion of incompetence, layer by layer and the worst is yet to come. 

There are big questions that we should be answering about the future of Britain. These are questions we continue to evade. Centrally planned spending and immigration are just about keeping the regions afloat but there are stresses on public services even immigration cannot plug and we have to ask questions about the sustainability of our entitlements. 

This we will not do because it is politically inconvenience. As for bold and radical reform, forget about it. We are, therefore, coasting along, taking none of the necessary decisions, addressing none of the systemic failures and in so doing condemning ourselves to a gradual descent into anarchy.

The remain movement is only really concerned with avoiding the economic inconvenience of Brexit. I can sympathise. After all, who really wants the hassle of change? The point, though, is we cannot carry on pretending all is well. 

Long before Brexit we were on a trajectory of stagnation. Food prices were creeping up. The packaging gets bigger while the contents get smaller. If you didn't get on the housing ladder in 2007 then forget about it entirely. Real wages are stagnating, job security declining and social mobility collapsing. The only thing remaining in the EU would accomplish is to mask the decline, perhaps slow the pace but ultimately do nothing to remedy it.

We are told that Brexit is a dangerous populist uprising against the age of liberalism, but that liberalism is itself a conceit, one which becomes ever more paranoid, censorious and authoritarian, desperate to keep the lid on tensions growing just about everywhere you look. We are told it threatens the Northern Ireland peace process yet the settlement was already collapsing before anyone even mentioned an EU referendum. 

The debate is all too caught up in the present dangers of leaving the EU, where the inference is that remaining is somehow a safer option. Insomuch as the establishment is only just keeping a lid on public anger and only just managing to take care of the basics, I cannot think of anything more dangerous than for that same establishment to tell us that change is not possible with votes. 

One way or another Britain is a headed for a perfect storm. One which will redefine the country for decades to come. Irrespective of Brexit, it was always on the cards. Brexit just means we choose the timing and the battlefield. 

I can tell you for nothing that Brexit is not a free trade renaissance nor are there any sunlit uplands. All Brexit is is a window of opportunity at a pivot point in history. One which allows a fundamental democratic and economic correction. One which shatters the delusions of our rulers. 

That much is no bad thing. Most of what is wrong with out economy and indeed our culture boils down to a serious of self-delusions and an overweening sense of national self-importance. Only when our political class is capable of seeing the country as it is, rather than how it imagines it to be, can we hope to build a new understanding and a new political settlement. Only then can we address the economics, which is why the economic concerns of Brexit are secondary. 

That our whole approach to Brexit is so staggeringly incompetent is really just the canary down the mine. This is the sort of thing we should be handling well. That we aren't is an indication that the rot is too deep, and only a sharp kick to the head will make them realise. It may be depressing that it should have come to this, but it's necessary all the same. 

Greg Hands: Just another lying Tory.

BrexitCentral today features a thoroughly dishonest piece by Greg Hands on the EEA Efta option. It features all of the tiresome canards this blog has devoted countless posts to debunking, but repetition of the Big Lie is the sole function of BrexitCentral so we should not be at all surprised. I'm no longer prepared to write rebuttals of this pack of lies. The Brexit debate has churned over every facet of the argument and by now you believe what you want to believe.

Through a barrage of successful propaganda the EEA option doesn't poll well on Twitter, and remainers are too busy fighting a losing battle for another referendum to focus on anything that could work. It is, therefore, up to the likes of Greg Hands to supply answers. 

Thus far we find they do not have answers. To say that we can leave and function on WTO terms is to say that we do not need a formal relationship with the EU and that three hundred areas of technical cooperation will attend to themselves. But even the Ultras don't believe that. They are now talking about mitigating measures and "side deals" which is admission that WTO terms are insufficient. 

They therefore need to outline what will these deals be, how long with they take, and if they intend to walk out without resolving the Irish border question and that of a financial settlement, how accommodating do they expect the EU to be?

Having looked on Greg Hand's Twitter account we can see what he is not in favour of. He doesn't want a customs union, he doesn't want Efta, he warns against the Northern Ireland backstop, but then urges us all to "unite around getting the best deal".

He also says very little about Chequers. He has only tweeted once on the topic which doesn't look much like an endorsement. His only unambiguous tweet is from November last year where he tells us "Am confident of getting a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with EU. But of course WTO rules are viable. Work for US, China, Japan trade".

Of course, as any one who's done even the most cursory examination of the issues will know, China and America have dozens of agreements with the EU and Japan is about to conclude a formal FTA, itself already having eight bilateral agreements with the EU, as the EU Treaties Office Database will confirm. Japan is formalising an FTA because its current MRA is obsolete and not nearly comprehensive enough. It does not include motor vehicles. 

So what it really looks like is that Hands is just a creature of conformity who goes along with the Tory Brexit herd to denounce everything but propose nothing. If we take what is possible after taking off the table everything he's ruled out we are left with not very much and nothing nearly complete enough to resolve many of the intractable dilemmas created by Brexit.

It therefore does not matter what his particular foibles are about any one solution since he isn't prepared to engage. The fact remains that the UK needs a comprehensive relationship with the EU and if it isn't the EEA then we become a third country and subject the third country controls where eventually necessity will see us adopting EU rules with even less influence than EEA members. 

Moreover, it is up to Hands to outline what alternatives we should look to if we are going to turn our backs on a £270bn a year relationship with the EU. What is going to compensate?  He has clearly learned nothing in his time as a trade minister, especially so if he thinks WTO rules are viable. We can take his views with a pinch of salt. He's just another lying Tory signalling his position to the herd. He has nothing of value to contribute. 

When I voted to leave I chose democracy over GDP

Very often I encounter remainers exalting the virtues of EU funding. What they fail to realise is that this spending, very often match funded, is not chosen at random. Eligibility depends on how well it serves the long term grand designs of ever closer union such as the Trans-European Transport Network; a planned set of road, rail, air and water transport networks in the European Union. Similar initiatives exist to create a single European energy market. This ties in with EU research programmes; a major source of revenue for universities.

All of this is drawn up and passed down to quangos, councils and "local" enterprise partnerships. The development agenda is one drawn up by people you've never heard of, never voted for - and it's an agenda you have no say in whatsoever. We are told that it promotes growth and creates jobs, which is true, to a point. It creates any number of big ticket items politicians can take credit for. 

All of this then goes into the Official Journal of the EU, which is effectively a government procurement classified ads system in which local councils are compelled to advertise these very projects and consider bids from across the EU. The cheapest qualifying bid must win. 

And here's the thing about about government procurement. Wherever you find a big pot of money you can find all the top tier consultancy firms putting in a bid. The little guy can get stuffed. If he wants to put in a bid he has to prove conformity to a dozen mandatory standards and a supply twenty page company environment plan, along with water usage statistics and mindnumbing eco-reporting. 

As a data and software consultant I once made a living helping small firms jump through the hoops, finding that much of it is meaningless guess work and adds no value at all. More often than not these tiresome data chores are delegated to temporary admin staff who don't care and will probably just make it up because nobody is going to check. Not even the KPMG junior auditor.

This is less of a problem for the likes of Serco and Crapita who are well versed in producing meaningless paperwork which is what makes them preferred bidders. This how we have a contracting oligarchy in the UK. But it creates jobs right?

Well, sort of. These companies no longer bother to employ engineers and consultants. Many of them are in the business of bidding for the contracts and only crewing them up if they actually win. They'll employ contractors and take a cut from their hourly rate. We then see further subcontracting where the unskilled jobs are done at minimum wage, and freedom of movement makes that possible. 

Anyone who has worked in the consultancy sector knows this dynamic well - and they also know it runs like a mafia syndicate. The only difference between our system and the mafia syndicates in Italy is that we legalised the corruption. This notionally makes it more transparent. That's why we knew in 2011 that £38.1 million awarded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was misspent or unaccounted for, while a further £133.9 million was written off.

The EU development blueprint, however, is only part of the picture. Here's where we find EU directives become a vast contracting gravy train. Directives very often compel governments, councils especially, to draw up their own plans to meet targets on anything from wetlands quotas to recycling. Councils, therefore, are committed to implementing policy which is expensive, often inappropriate and in the case of the Somerset flooding, completely counter productive.

Moreover, being that the EU seeks to create a single market in services, much of the local rules which would otherwise prevent bids from other member states are steamrollered meaning incumbent suppliers who know the patch are chucked out in favour of fly-by-nights. 

It is oft said that the UK has been a reluctant member of the EU, but in actuality the UK has been the most ruthless in liberalising government procurement and implementing EU directives regardless of whether they make sense. That is why the public are a great deal more sceptical of the EU than our politicians.

Looked at in the round, what we see is the entire apparatus of UK government dedicated to implementing the grand design of the EU - to bring about a single marketplace with identical rules, with a high mobility workforce all working to the same terms and conditions and to the same labour laws. That, of course, can only happen if the EU controls labour laws. This is why we have seen the atrophy of trade unions. 

We therefore find that policy is not devised locally, local businesses are shown no favour, the spending agenda is dictated to us, and councils are not free to innovate or refuse to implement unworkable or undesirable policies. Democracy is completely absent from this entire set up. Councils are demoted to the status of regional development agencies, unions become obedient cogs in the machine and local politicians might as well be mannequins for all the influence they have. We now have corporate CEOs setting the financial agenda. 

The effect of all this is to render politics redundant where we increasingly see politicians engaged in displacement activity or using what little powers they have to gold plate EU initiatives, often to suit their own vanity or peruse their favoured hobby horse - which is what has gradually hollowed out politics over the years. The results of which are glaringly evident right now.

Eventually this becomes something of a problem. You do not have to be a "climate denier" to be a sceptic of greenwash policy, very often mandated by the EU, not least insulation targets such as outer cladding on buildings and the wind turbines that intrude on our treasured landscapes.

Here remainers would point put that most of this is down to "Tory neoliberalism" but neoliberalism would imply there were some sort of political ideology at work. There isn't. This is largely a result of the drift toward managerialism and government by accountancy which is massively influenced by the EU in a hundreds of insidious ways.

The great genius of the EU of the EU though is that it does not intrude on the bread and butter of politics - schools, hospitals and welfare. This is why so many gullible remainers proclaim that we still have sovereignty. The effect is that social democrat consensus politics (the establishment paradigm we've had for the last thirty years), bickers in Westminster feeding the coprophagiac media, completely neglecting any form of technical governance or ambitious regional development. 

We get the occasional nod to the "Northern Powerhouse" and HS2 but the one thing that's been missing in all this time is a vision for the country. Politicians will happily cut the ribbon on EU funded projects, with parties taking the credit for it, but the grand design they are unwittingly working to is the one in the DNA of the EU... Ever closer union. The grand design never appeared on any party manifesto and consequently politics of vision has disappeared off the radar entirely, reducing politics to tribes buying off their respective voter bases with goodies. 

The EU seeks maximum harmonisation of rules to liberalise the European market, but more than that, it wants to create uniformity throughout for the sake of its utopian European ideal. EU academic programmes subsidising jollies for academics are there to brainwash the intelligentsia while social funds exist in order for the EU to get its tentacles into local politics. Civil society is bought and paid for because it needs a fifth column. 

The one thing the EU knows is that the utopian ideal cannot be realised if voters have a choice in the matter. The laws of nation states must be swept away and replaced so that no barriers exist. Consequently nationally, and locally, votes are meaningless. We cannot use our votes to shape our own laws, define our own rights and spend according to our own designs. 

It is one thing to have common standards on food labelling and electronics so that goods can cross borders and ensure that food is safe and products are fit for use, and if the EU were only a single market then there would be a balance of sovereignty, but the EU for as long as it exists will assume ever more competences and it will do so with the collusion of our own ruling class without us ever having a say.  

This is where we see the ultimate clash of values in the UK. There are those for whom economic growth is the only concern, where every political decision must be measured in terms of its effect on GDP from trade to immigration. That is the remainer mindset to the core which is why they only speak in terms of economic costs of Brexit and the GDP contribution of migrants. In their eyes any decision impacting on growth should be overturned. 

As a Brexiter my view is that we are not economic units to be farmed like battery chickens. We must have the right to self determination and the power to define our own rules according to our own values and spend according to our own priorities. Some things matter more than GDP and in respect of that, yes I did vote to be poorer.

What should be noted, however, is that being poorer is not assured over the longer term. If we are free to innovate, to set our own labour laws, to design our own frameworks according to our actual needs, what is to say an engaged public cannot design a fairer, better society than one designed by EU commissioners who have never even visited the places they rule over? We are told we should listen to the experts. When it comes to the way we want to live, we the public are the experts. 

The Brexit proxy war

One of my chief complaints is that many people would prefer to tune into the perpetual slanging match of the Brexit culture war than engage in the urgent issues. This is what has dangerously polarised the Brexit debate where the obnoxiousness of either extreme is equally repellent to the point where there is no middle ground. Many want a no deal Brexit simply because there is no trust that Brexit will be carried out and, things being what they are, any Brexit is better than no Brexit.

This is a toxic spiral where the worst elements of either side are making compromise impossible. The Ultras, having near total control of the Brexit narrative and the the pro-Brexit media are pushing for the most damaging Brexit imaginable and were I a remainer I would respond in much the same way the "#FBPE" crowd have.

But then the remainers are no saints either. They have lied through their teeth from the beginning. They are deranged, condescending, bitter, preening, vindictive snobby bigots and they have made this personal.

Moreover, what I'm not prepared to put up with is the perpetual slander from the remain camp. Take for instance the announcement that Nigel Farage is returning to frontline politics. This to the remainers is cause enough to redouble their campaign efforts. This tells you a lot about the ultra remainer mentality. The average remain activist thinks that Brexit is a populist "xenophobic" revolt led by Farage and that we are all hanging on his every word. They've never really understood the eurosceptic movement.

Farage was only ever tolerated because the party couldn't put up anybody better. If you went to any eurosceptic meeting at any time in the last thirty years you would have heard a procession of anoraks droning on about sovereignty, regulation, red tape, the Commonwealth and EU corruption. Ukip had people who could do detail but not without boring the pants off everybody in the room. Say what you like about Farage, he can knock out a rabble rousing speech on command. It's his only talent.

He was, therefore, the unchallenged leader of Ukip and though a great many knew precisely what sort of man he was, they put up with him because he was an engaging spokesman for the media. The exposure was welcomed. Immigration only ever became a theme in the run up to the 2009 euro elections largely because there were a million BNP votes up for grabs in the north (a symptom of white working class abandonment). It was electoral calculus. Nothing more.

When it came to the referendum, the lack of preparedness ensured that Farage was sidelined by the Tory Vote Leave outfit and short of one or two iconic moments, neither of which did him any credit, already having flagging public approval ratings, he was largely superfluous to the campaign effort.

Much noise has been made about the infamous "Boiling point" poster, largely because the media managed to manufacture outrage over it. Had they not it would likely have gone unremarked. Very possibly it alienated the ethnic minority vote and lost votes for leave.

By the time the referendum was over, Farage was a spent force and Ukip has all but collapsed. It's difficult to see how he can return to Ukip now that Ukip has been captured by the populist right and has champion the cause of Tommy Robinson over Brexit. Leaving the EU is no longer the primary occupation of Ukip and the current management would likely not welcome his return. they would rather grunt about Muslims than Brexit.

Bluntly, Farage was a leader of convenience, and though he had his personality cult for a while, the spell has worn off and his subsequent media appearances have been somewhat lacklustre to say the least. When it comes to the mechanics of Brexit he is totally out of his depth. He is, therefore, yesterday's man, now upstaged by Rees-Mogg whose own appeal is on the wane. The novelty act has worn thin.

The point here is that leavers do not care about Farage. We care about Brexit. Getting what we are owed. We did what we were supposed to do. We put up a twenty year long fight and we forced a referendum and to my surprise we won it. None of Vote Leave's shady shenanigans can take that away.

I still maintain that Remain has the likes of Geldof, Izzard, Lucas and the progressive luvvies to thank for their loss. I am of the view that Vote Leave and Leave.EU were a brake parachute to the leave cause and a perpetual source of embarrassment. Certainly not representative of many of the erudite and clever leavers I've had the pleasure of working with over the years.

Even now, when it outwardly appears that leave sentiment is weakening, what's shoring it up is the AC Graylings, Adonis's and Umunnas. It certainly isn't a phobia of foreigners. If anything it's a deep contempt for the sneering condescension of shallow opportunists who will stop at nothing to ensure the 2016 vote is rendered meaningless.

This is where there is no real disagreement on the leave side. Some want a Norway exit, some want a WTO exit but we can all agree that the continuity remain campaign are deeply obnoxious repellent people with values completely alien to the rest of us.

This is actually pivotal in that there is a political sentiment to Brexit that transcends the technical minutia of trade and it is fundamentally a question of who governs us. This is not just a question of ending the legal supremacy of the EU. It is also about ridding ourselves of the people who did this to us in the first place.

If, somehow, the Brexit vote is overturned (which it won't be) the politicians breathe a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, papering over the cracks and trying to pretend over time that nothing happened. We will go back to the tedious bickering over NHS funding and HS2 and Northern Powerhouse and we'll see elaborate "new deal" style initiatives to patronise the north of England while the progressive consensus maintains its grip on public discourse.

The response to that will, of course, be a Ukip on steroids more in the from of the Ukip that exists now than the one of yore. That really will be a xenophobic openly racist movement and it will be bigger than the BNP and Ukip combined at their peak - armed this time with the narrative that their votes were betrayed. It's too ugly to contemplate.

Brexit, if anything is a safeguard against that, and if one side has to lose then it has to be the incumbent establishment. And by that I mean the vice like grip of the politically correct consensus where even the Tory party investigated the comments of Boris Johnson and the Police even found the time of day to give it consideration.

Ultimately there are things we need to discuss. Contentious issues that require a policy resolution rather than sweeping it all under the carpet. If, however, anyone putting their head above the parapet is labelled "far right" then there simply cannot be a frank and honest debate. The more the left tries it on, the more the public concludes that they might as well say absolutely anything since everything is out of bounds.

This is where the EU and Brexit is a proxy issue for both sides in the culture war. The Remain movement is not especially interested in remaining in the EU any more than the current Ukip is interested in leaving it. This is a struggle for power. Presently the remainers are the incumbent power, they have full control over all civil society institutions and they control the agenda. For as long as we remain in the EU that status quo is propped up and though we can change the governing party it does not change who is really in control.

Here there is a distinct class divide between those who welcome immigration who are largely sheltered from its negative externalities and those who think perhaps freedom of movement does have an effect on the price of labour and that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be having an epidemic of Pakistani rape gangs molesting teenage girls. The latter happens to think sorting out these social issues is more important than how convenient it is for Nissan to export crappy rotbox hatchbacks.

These are people who are not going to be fobbed of with EU regional development funding, will likely never make use of freedom of movement, don't get foreign holidays and couldn't give a tinker's damn about roaming phone charges. The philistines!

So we have a clash of agendas between what is convenient for the pampered middle classes and those who the single market is of little benefit. Nuclear, tech and aerospace won't bother to train if they can cast the recruitment net from Amsterdam to Athens. All the while people who can't compete with immigrants living fifteen to a room in an overcrowded HMO are not than enamoured with the unfair competition.

Regular readers have noticed a particular schizophrenia on this blog in that I make damning critiques of the single market while essentially campaigning to remain in it. I happen to exist on a pivot point between to two camps and though my heart says dump the single market, my head says otherwise. We should at least try to make the EEA work for us before resorting to extreme measures.

That debate, though, seems increasingly redundant as the culture war rages on and the talks are at a standstill. It seems we are heading for an accidental Brexit and there's not much any of us can do about it. I therefore have to pick the side I would rather see win. And that isn't remainers. A no deal Brexit was always a risk and a risk I accepted when I voted to leave.

What Britain needs most of all, more than it needs trade, is a politics that better reflects who and what we are. For two decades our establishment has been carried away with the delusion that we share the warped "progressive" values of the media/Westminster bubble. It is that self-delusion that has allowed our politics to pander to its own vanity which in turn causes acute social issued to fester, ignoring the gradual visible decline just so long as GDP creeps up by 0.03% every year.

What we see from remainers is a vocal disgust that the public have been allowed to choose their own destiny and ever more disgust that they would choose something different. We are ruled by a class of people who actively despise us who think our grubby politics must be contained and that media must be turned over to educating us plebs. Radio 4 has become intolerable in its persistent condescension. Nor do we need TV dramas with shoehorned token ethnics to remind us we live in a multi-ethnic country.

Ultimately our ruling class think they are better than the rest of us; more enlightened, more progressive, more liberal, but in defending their grip on power they have become censorious, authoritarian and illiberal to the point of turning a blind eye to the monstrous and the depraved. There must be a democratic correction to this artificial distortion because nothing can be resolved unless there is. Unless we have government by consent then the social fabric will tear.

Brexit, therefore, is not so much uncorking a genie, as it is safety valve to allow politics to self-correct. No doubt there is a long and turbulent process to establish a new equilibrium, but that is essentially democracy warts and all. It is no exaggeration to say that if you defeat Brexit you defeat democracy.

Remainers continue to slander leave as a populist xenophobic movement, but at heart, Brexit is just a thirst for democracy and change. The remain message is all about preserving the economic and social status quo, but primarily it's about their refusal to relinquish power. That's what makes this an all out culture war. This is ultimately a test of whether votes really can remove regimes. If they can't, all bets are off.

Britain has forgotten what democracy looks like

The single market is a relatively new invention and though we'd been in the EEC for many years, the single market as we know it didn't really come into being until the nineties. This is when we began installing the many regulatory building blocks which in some instances required the hiring of thousands of officials and setting up self financing regulatory authorities. All of this was done without Parliament ever being consulted on the matter. We'd installed a new technocracy with more than three thousand new regulations arriving every year.

This in part explains the Tory phobia of regulation in that much of it was inferior to that which we already had and change was largely for the sake of European harmonisation rather than our of any particular merit. The costs of re-equipping and re-skilling for the new regime were devastating to many businesses, notably UK electronics and meat producers. Enforcement was unfair and particularly ruthless.

By the 1990's it became apparent that UK politicians had lost control of Britain's system of government where repeal of such regulation proved impossible and reform implausible. even minor changes to fisheries rules take anywhere up to a decade and more than ever before ministers and politicians were controlled by their civil servants.

This was not only obvious at the national level. It was just as evident in local government where councillors were more than ever run by their officials. There were several reasons for this shift of power, not least the hugely increased complexity of modern government, which favoured complicated bureaucratic responses to almost any problem, even if the problem was imaginary.

This in itself ensured the proliferation of an ever more bureaucratic system of government, encouraging ever more use of technical jargon, paperwork, committee meetings, fancy titles and acronyms, arcane management structures, all of which in turn gave greater power and control to those most naturally at home in such a milieu - the officials themselves.

But nowhere in this evolution in the nature of Britain's government show more clearly than in the spell cast by Europe. If the power of politicians was already diminished by the new bureaucratic ethos of domestic politics, this was nothing compared to the state subservience to which they were reduced by the all pervasive influence of Brussels. Across vast areas of government they were no longer able to act independently because they constantly had to account of the demands of Brussels.

For many ministers and councillors much of their working lives were dominated by the need to consider what that system compelled them to do. This placed much of the  power in the hands of officials and legal experts who instructed ministers not just what was required of them but also how their own room for independent action was now circumscribed. Politicians became a class of elected apologists.

The new function of politicians was to act as front men for the system to represent it to the outside world; to be interviewed on television and radio explaining and defending its actions; to appear in parliament giving answers to questions or reading out statements which had been drafted for them by officials; to put their signatures to the endless mass of letters the officials placed in front of them; in short, to give the system the appearance of democratic legitimacy.

By the late nineties this system was so entrenched it gave rise to a wholly new form of government. One of the chief functions of politicians was to pretend that none of this was happening and to carry on outwardly as if nothing had changed largely to prevent the public from knowing how deep and how far this revolution had progressed.

Fast forward to today and we now find that nobody is quite sure of the full extent of EU governance and who is accountable for what. Councils have become little more than regional development agencies and grant chasers who spend much of their time devising managerial systems to meet energy saving targets, habitats quotas, recycling targets and reporting systems to meet statutory statistical requirements all of which involved hugely expensive IT to produce dubious data and policy outcomes desired by nobody.

What we now find is that capable people do not bother entering local politics simply because the system is designed to prevent them influencing policy or innovating. It is a locked in managerial system where it doesn't matter who is elected. The system runs for its own convenience and does not welcome democratic intrusion.

Councils, therefore, are little more than agents of the Brussels machine with an ever more voracious appetite for taxpayer's money while gradually winding down the services that do actually matter to people. We pay ever more for increasingly less while social enterprise is gradually bureaucratised, regulated and snuffed out. Local democracy is all but dead and along with it any notion of community.

More disturbingly we have lived with this system for so long that we have forgotten what it was like to have any form of democratic control. Remainers will tell us that the EU is democratic because its functionaries are elected as though the presence of voting rituals in some way is empowerment. However, even if that could be described as democratic, if the system actively prevents the public from organising and implementing policy of their own design in their own towns and cities, then by definition we do not have democracy.

Over the years we have become accustomed to managerialism defined by Brussels, interpreted by Whitehall and dictated to local authorities. We therefore have a facade of democracy while the decisions are made by grossly overpaid council CEOs and quango bosses, whose loyalty is always to Brussels since EU funding buys the white elephants and regeneration schemes that keep the noses in the trough.

The consequences of this are remote and disconnected local authorities where residents have no control over their communities and no say in how things are run. That which isn't farmed out to Capita is working in the service of an EU directive.

This is where we encounter a number of intractable Brexit dilemmas. Our choices are few but the essential ultimatum of the system is that you can have trade with the EU, but not democracy and not control over who comes into the country. Being that for the comfortable middle classes the system works quite well, being so self-absorbed that they do not wish to participate in governance they prefer managerialism. The lack of democracy, though, is more acute for those whop bear the brunt of post-democracy government.

But then to an extent the remainers are right in that being answerable to unelected officials in Whitehall is no better than being told what to do by Brussels. If we really do want to take back control then we have to take back control from the council CEOs and Whitehall mandarins. Cutting Brussels out of the loop is not going to be enough.

What was done to the UK was done silently and slowly and now it's impossible to tell where the Brussels machine ends and the Whitehall machine begins - largely because they are one and the same. They have shaped each other in their own image and now we are naturalised to it. It is, therefore, difficult to make the case for democracy to people who don't even realise we've lost it, and in all likelihood, never had it at all. 

Brexit is the political enema we've all been waiting for

Right now we need an effective opposition more than ever. Whether or not Mr Cobyn is pro-Brexit is neither here not there. A bungled Brexit has severe consequences for all of us - and if it's one that hits UK trade badly then it scuppers any future spending agendas. Labour has picked the worst moment possible to vacate the field.

Whatever your views on Brexit, if you have understood the gravity of it, you know that it is the single most important issue on the horizon. Labour, though, has other priorities. It is singularly incapable of connecting with what matters much less forge a coherent position on it. Politically it is a dereliction of duty.

What's worse is that the party has never in my lifetime been so short of talent. I didn't like Blair's gang but David Blunkett, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw and Margret Beckett were at least people you could take seriously. You didn't have to like them or their politics but they were titans contrasted with the human detritus offered up by the current incarnation of Labour.

Moreover there isn't even a common agenda. McDonnell is a revolutionary psychopath, Thornberry is is a bossy housewife, Abbott is thick as a box of hammers and Corbyn is a shifty old man with deeply dodgy associations. David Lammy is an obnoxious race baiter and the hard left influencers these days tend to be know-nothing children.

What they all have in common is that they have virtually nothing in common with the average voter. The average voter is not obsessed with Israel and is not salivating at the thought of overthrowing capitalism. All the while the "moderate" faction of Labour is a distinctly out-of-touch middle class London liberal constituency mainly motivated by a desire to remain in the EU. Given the splits in the Labour demographics, this is an unbridgeable divide.

The party, therefore, is caught in a pincer movement between the standard tribal opposition from Tory activists and its own liberal wing - gradually eroding the cult of Corbyn. Some have suggested the party is poised to split, but I don't see that happening. These days the parties are just trademarks and without a mainstream trademark a breakaway movement gets nowhere. Labour moderates will cling on to the last, waiting for the opportunity to steal back the trade mark.

This is the essential problem in our politics. Politicians don't feel the need to build movements or  spell out policies based on credible research. So long as they have a known trade mark all they have to do is wait until the public are sufficiently sick of the incumbents. If Corbyn becomes the next PM it will be through an accident of numbers, mostly a result of voters staying at home. I know I will if the choice is between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. They are equally repulsive and both will open the door to uniquely damaging policies. In all respects what is true of Labour is also true of the Tories.

Right now anybody remotely sane is not planning on voting at all so the next election will come down to whoever the broader public hates the least. Everyone I talk to wants an alternative but nobody can say what form it will take or where it will come from. There's plenty of chatter about a new party but that's either going to be a deadbeat liberal europhile effort or a foaming right wing populist movement. Neither can win because we are still hopelessly trapped in the two party system and first past the post.

For the foreseeable future the outlook for British politics looks bleak. Even remaining in the EU wouldn't fix this. Brexit has exposed the fault lines. Where policy is concerned the cupboard is bare and no politician stands untarnished. Even those we thought were good eggs have turned out to be either duplicitous or out of their depth completely. We're now so desperate that any functioning adults would do.

This is where I see Brexit as a healthy process. For years we've had relatively stable government and for the most part we dodged the bullet of the financial crisis. It could have been a lot worse than it was. Ever since though, we've had tiresome prattle about "austerity" exploiting edge cases to paint a  picture of a broken Britain teetering on the brink of destitution. Meanwhile the Tories have been cowed by the progressive orthodoxy, too afraid to assert anything like a conservative agenda.

Our politics has become self-involved and timid and we've slipped into tiresome routines of manufactured conflict between equally cretinous extremes. Since the status quo only really requires managerial adjustment, politicos can pretty much abandon policy to indulge their hobby horses. Brexit will sweep them out of the picture the moment it becomes obvious that these people have nothing worthwhile to contribute and no answers to difficult questions. People will want to know why things aren't working.

I take the view that Brits do not yet know what they want from politics in a post-Brexit Britain. But I do expect they will know it when they see it. As much as Brexit has exposed many of the political fault lines it will also expose some of the structural defects in governance which is only just holding together. When things start breaking down anyone with coherent answers and new ideas will have our complete attention. It's not going to come from Labour and it won't come from the Brexiteers. All we know is that this political vacuum cannot last forever.

In a way we should be glad that no party presently enjoys the backing of the country. It tells us that the average voter is better than what our politics offers. We are not taken in by the Brexiter fantasies any more than we buy into Corbyn's throwback socialist ideas. Britain does want to break from the status quo but we're no fools. When something worthy comes along we grab it with both hands.

Britain is on the verge of a new era. The turmoil we are now experiencing is democratic correction. We have lived for thirty years under a consensus regime where the authentic voiced of Britain has been silenced. We now need to go through the process rediscovering who we are as a country and seek a new, more inclusive settlement.

Brexit is not the cause of this turmoil. Brexit is a symptom of a political order artificially held in place for too long and one which has, by more than a decade, outstayed its welcome. In that time there have been transformative changes which changed Britain beyond recognition.

Twenty years ago we didn't have Amazon. Ten years ago we didn't have smartphones. These innovations have transformed high streets and our homes. Instead of having a hi-fi, a PC, a VCR and DVD player and a telephone, it's all now in the palm of our hands. The traditional bank branch will soon vanish and retail as we know it will be dead. Soon our supermarkets will be fully automated. The next major revolution is only around the corner.

Even the order of 2008 is vanishing as traditional modes of retail dies. Our towns and cities are changing. Internet has changed the way we socialise and do business. It is changing the nature of work. We are reverting to a state prior to mass employment. Our working modes are no longer sustainable. We have different expectations and different preferences to the previous generation. We want flexible hours and working from home.

All of our labour laws are obsolete, as are our political institutions and community facilities. Something more seismic than Brexit is happening. Something wonderful and terrifying in equal measure. The internet multiples our influence and we now have a weapon against media manipulation and political lying. Nothing stays a secret for long and we know where the bodies are buried. They can't pull the same stunts anymore without us getting wind of it.

As much as the EU isn't capable of responding with the kind of tailored policies we need - and certainly not inside a decade, Westminster isn't either. This is why a new party isn't the answer. We do our politics through an ancient institution with habits and procedures stemming back to the bubonic plague. Our political machinery simply isn't cut out for the digital age when we demand more say in what happens to us, more transparency and more control. We get to elect a representative once every five years and if you live in a safe seat you might as well not bother voting. This isn't meaningful democracy.

In the last three years I've had thousands of conversations about Brexit with remainers and leavers alike. I've had furious arguments with both over the nature of government and democracy, and if there is one thing nearly all of us can agree on is that the UK's so-called democracy is nothing of the kind. If the people we elect act without a legitimate mandate then our participation in the EU cannot be democratic either. It is that lack of democracy which drives the fundamental disaffection and apathy.

This current breakdown of politics is the death throes of a system that simply isn't appropriate for this new era and its denizens are never going to be able to fix the problem because the one notion truly off limits for them is that they are the problem. If you put six hundred and fifty ambitious sociopaths in the same room and give them power without being accountable in any meaningful sense, they will do exactly as they please and sign away vital powers if it suits their vanity.

Politics as we know it has a way to go yet before it is entirely expired but Brexit is going to give it a little shove off the end of the pier. The status quo has for some time been propping up a zombie economy and the EU has propped up our zombie politics. Of course they want to put the genie back in the bottle, but nearly everyone knows we cannot go on like this. If we are to rebuild Britain we must first rebuild our politics from the ground up. Unless we do we face only stagnation and decline.

Brexit is the only way to repair our zombie politics

By all rights we should have been where we are a lot sooner than now. Politics should have already disintegrated. The 1997-2010 regime was a freak series of events; a new experiment in political media management. New Labour was adept at it. They call Blair "Teflon Tony" because the sort of sleaze that gradually brought down the Major government didn't seem to impact Blair at all. The administration was no less incompetent or any less corrupt. They simply worked out that so long as nobody resigned they could wait out any media storm.

Conveniently for them the Tories were unable to put up anything remotely inspiring. Hardly anyone remembers that Michael Howard was Tory leader and nobody was going to vote for Iain Duncan Smith. Meanwhile the economy was doing quite well so far as the average punter cared. Cheap credit and an endless supply of cheap goods from China. There wasn't much of a reason to kick Labour out.

The only reason David Cameron took office was because Labour had simply run out of steam and even then, having buried the right wing elements of his party, he was little more than an extension of the status quo - and couldn't win outright. Had we not gone through the cycle of boom and bust our politics would have imploded long before now.

Fast forward to today though and the names are pretty much all the same. Those we laughingly call statesmen have moved into other arenas but the personalities on both benches are pretty much the same dregs we've had for the last twenty years. Now the dregs are in charge in the dying days of the old establishment. The one that would rather send people on sensitivity training than address an epidemic of Pakistani rape gangs.

Were it not for Brexit it could undoubtedly limp on for a good while longer. Government can just about cope by limping from crisis to crisis. Most of what it does is reactive and doesn't require detailed thinking. Most of the problems we have from flooding to a tower block fire are resolved by throwing money at them. That takes no particular ability.

The reason it's all going wrong is because these underwhelming individuals have been tasked with implementing a massive change - one that they never wanted, have no idea how to approach and one that involves taking responsibility - which they do not want to do.

Westminster for the last twenty or more years has been a politics theme park where the ambitious build media careers. Nobody goes to London to fix problems. Being that we have regional development agencies masquerading as local government, robbed of any semblance of democracy, the whole system has found a comfortable managerial groove where things just about hold together but is incapable of observing the more subtle long term neglect.

Regional development largely involves big ticket town centre remodelling and sticking plasters here and there but we don't see ideas to address the underlying collapse of social mobility and increasing economic exclusion. All the while we see a self-indulgent politics in London that simply doesn't reflect the values and concerns of the broader public. The politicians think we are impressed by hashtag gesturing. Turns out that after the suicide bombing of a children's pop concert "Refugees Welcome" is not a vote winner.

Now we find hand wringing from our political class who ask "what happened to my country?" when in fact nothing much at all has happened. The establishment orthodoxy is largely a self-delusion - the belief that the public shares their "progressive" attitudes. That they can be so completely absorbed by this delusion is a testament to how well the authentic voice of Britain has been frozen out of the political apparatus.

This above all explains the desperation to stock Brexit. Brexit is messy, inconvenient, expensive, but above all it shatters their self delusion and gives a voice to the political excluded. The very people our "elites" not only wish to silence, but also actively despise. Of course there's all the perks of the EU which has formed the basis of their campaign but must of the stated benefits are of little use to working class Brits - and in the absence of a justice system our rights are not worth the paper they are written on.

As it happens they have not learned a thing from the referendum and have been largely tone deaf ever since. We are told that Brexit is a distraction that stop politicians dealing with "real problems" which in their eyes always involves fire-hosing more money at the NHS. Standard fare for the Westminster bubble.

The question for us is whether we can afford for politics to carry on with business as usual. Brexit, whatever form it takes is going to cause a great deal of expense and inconvenience. Already it has done a light on the dysfunction of our politics and how badly we are served by the two party system. It also shows how tribalism and media ineptitude distorts politics. The near total takeover of Labour by Momentum is a symptom of the malaise in politics.

So we can either pull back from Brexit and leave them to it, allowing them to slip back into old habits or we can have this out now. Certainly remaining in the EU is the more convenient road. We could all do without the hassle and we can carry on gritting our teeth at the inanity of the Westminster bubble, but in so doing we send out two gravely depressing messages.

Firstly, it says that votes can't change anything. Don't bother campaigning and mobilising because even if you win it they will ignore your vote. Secondly it says we are content to abandon any hope of good governance. It says we'd rather just let things slide leaving the same band of quarterwits to run things under the same regime, and return to their insular tribal games.

Brexit of itself is no cure for anything. What it does is force a system wide audit of all the rules we've installed without public scrutiny. It will force us to ask questions as to why we do things the way we do, and if we need to change things, this time there is no excuse. Brexit creates the space and the opportunity for meaningful reform.

The point for me is that without Brexit all of the things they say we should be fixing instead won't get a look in. The referendum has not taught them any lessons nor has it shaken them out of their complacency. If we let them go back to business as usual then they will and all of the things that caused the Brexit vote will get gradually worse. Only something seismic will dislodge them.

What Britain needs before it can even begin to address the acute national issues is major political reform. There's a lot of political and philosophical questions we should be asking here. Thus far the debate is dominated by the cult of GDP when we should be asking what kind of society we want.

Recent "no deal" warnings about sandwich production in the UK (an £8bn a year industry) have put the immediate GDP question front and centre but don't we need to ask if it's right that we've created a throwaway society that lives on convenience foods sourced from afar and prepared by low wage imported labour? Why are we allowing public spaces to turn into transit camps for those same workers?

We are told that EU labourers will do the jobs that Brits won't. That's because people who aren't sharing a house with fifteen other people and have kids can't afford to take jobs with exploitative pay. British workers are far less likely to up sticks and make use of freedom of movement not least because the opportunities are asymmetrical - not least because of the language barrier.

As to trade, do we want people to buy high quality UK manufactured goods and look after and maintain or do we want people buying Chinese knock-offs that can be replaced when they break? Availability shapes attitudes to goods and their value. Over twenty years we have built a consumer society based where every whim is catered for and people are encouraged to spend frivolously - and then we have a generation who complains they can't afford a housing deposit.

Remainers tell us that Brexit will cost households £4200 each which may or may not be true but people adapt to new norms and eventually the economy will adapt to new norms just as production adapted to take advantage of frictionless trade. Brexit will change individual and business habits. Business will have to re-evaluate pay along with their abysmal recruiting practices and individuals will have to reconsider how they spend.

The point here is that different consumer choices will create new opportunities because change always does drive innovation. As to business, it will find ways to keep doing business. For all that the US has invested billions in combating narco-trade, the cartels keep finding ways to export their produce. Humans adapt.

One way or another Brexit is to shake things up. It  already has. We are already seeing industry associations being more vocal than ever and as the UK takes back control of its trade policy they will keep up the pressure. So too will individuals make their voices heard. This time, though, ministers can no longer simply shrug and say that their hands are tied. Politics is making a comeback - and that above all is how we address the litany of neglected issues.

Much of our political malaise stems from the fact that we no longer bother with politics. Our political parties are burnt out husks easily captured by their extremes. They only succeed because we let them. Brexit will be a teachable moment as to why political participation is necessary and why their is a high price for turning over politics to managerialism. Ultimately it is we who have to take back control. Brexit is that window of opportunity.

Brexit: the only certainty is incompetence

"Boris Johnson is to spearhead a pro-Brexit push at Tory party conference in a move that threatens to humiliate party bigwigs" says The Sun. "The Sun can reveal the former Foreign Secretary has signed up to give a keynote speech at one ‘fringe’ meeting over the four-day event in Birmingham next month".

This is, of course, not news. The ultras plan to release a "no deal" Brexit plan to take back the initiative. More than likely it will be a rehash of prior works from the ERG's Brexit guru, Lee Rotherham, whose most recent report pulls the same old trick. 

The default scenario of a set of ad hoc arrangements means No Deal coverage should be more honestly discussed in terms of delivering a Strongly Mitigated No Deal. The exact level of mitigation cannot be predicted and is a significant variable.

So what they actually mean by no deal is a "mitigating" padded no deal. Which is not "no deal". The absence of a deal is "no deal". This is an admission that there is no such thing as reliance on "WTO rules" contrary to everything the Tory propaganda machine has said.  

Essentially the "no deal" scenario doesn't exist. It's a choice between a single, coherent deal before Brexit day, or multiple, ad hoc deals after Brexit day. Even at its simplest, however, it is going to take days, weeks and even months to put together the whole range of deals. 

The "no deal" as envisaged by the ERG could never be part of the Withdrawal Agreement since they reject the backstop for Northern Ireland and have designs on paying nothing on exit. They would be seeking mitigation after the fact, having dropped us all in it. It all then comes down to what the EU needs to do out of self-interest and whether it is prepared to show any mercy. This is not what you would call an intelligent plan. 

Our fate now rests on whether the performance in October is enough to de-throne Mrs May and whether Johnson carries enough support to win the day. Since none of the factions can command a majority May is probably safe. A leadership contest would be a huge distraction at a critical period, with a completely unknown result. Your guess is as good as mine. 

There is only one way to avoid becoming a vassal state

In principle I agree with the Brexit hard liners. It would be a pretty poor show if the UK ended up as a vassal state on a tight EU leash. This explains the phobia of any kind of agreement with the EU. The point they miss, however, is that regulatory harmonisation is the WD40 of modern trade and there is no scenario where the EU, our nearest regulatory superpower, will not wield influence on the rules we employ for the production and export of goods.

Being that we are just a few miles off the shores of mainland Europe we will need formal arrangements for continued participation in the economic and social life of the continent. This is why no deal is something to be avoided.

As far as that goes, we have had the full spectrum of warnings, some more drastic than others. But nearly every analysis shows that we will be scrabbling around for waivers, temporary measures an interim fixes to avoid emergencies and critical shortages. Even those who advocate no deal end up admitting that we will need peripheral bilateral deals on aviation and nuclear safeguards.

These such deals are likely to mirror those held by other third countries so we have a fair idea of what that looks like but the point that seems to escape hardliners is that no deal cannot stay no deal. We will need to evolve from wherever our landing point is.

There are those who say the damage of no deal will be greater to the EU, but what they miss is that the effects are distributed and the EU is better able to absorb them, not least because the Commission is on the ball. The UK, however, will be in the midst of a regulatory minefield as we restore functionality to active regulatory systems. Our need will be more acute.

By that point we will be looking to enter talks in respect of a more comprehensive trade arrangement only this time the EU will not be waiting on the UK to devise a workable solution. The EU will have a take it or leave it deal waiting and whichever administration is left to clear up the mess left by the Tories will probably be compelled by domestic political pressure to sign it.

It is a certainty that any such deal will come with a number of up front demands, not least something very similar to the Northern Ireland backstop and where trade in goods is concerned, full adoption of EU rules with direct ECJ oversight. At this point the EU has it where it wants us. It will be calling the shots and we really will be a rule taker with no say in the rules.

Being that the UK will have a separate agreement to that of Norway and the Efta states the EU can very easily gang up on the UK and we are then little more than a background admin chore for the Commission rather than a partner. At that point we are certainly no better off in the sovereignty stakes in that every future concession we ask from the EU will come with a price, be it financial contributions or concessions on freedom of movement.

Over the years we could end up in a BRINO situation comparable with the so-called vassal state transition - but on a more permanent basis. The irony here is that no deal ultimately ends up with the UK being in exactly the position ultra Brexiters sought to avoid - having criticised the EEA option as BRINO when it is in fact nothing of the sort.

As this blog, among others, has detailed, the Norway relationship is far from a vassal state set up. It is not a passive recipient of rules and there structure of the EEA agreement allows for modifications and adaptations. The point, though, it that it's a mulitlateral set up rather than bilateral - and if the UK chooses to pick its battles well, combining its political capital with that of EEA members, it stands a better chance of evolving the EEA agreement into something more to our liking.

Here we cannot discount the role of Geneva in regulatory affairs. All you have to do is crack open an EU regulation or a trade deal to see how global standards originating from Geneva play a pivotal role in trade and from the backbone of much of the EEA acquis. It is a second nucleus within the single market. Efta+UK then becomes one of the major soft power and intellectual influencers of regulation and able to shape the rules in ways we could not as a "BRINO" vassal state.

Hard-liners imagine that Brexit is a total departure from the EU regulatory environment but this is on the assumption that we'll be setting sail into the wide yonder striking deals all over the world, obvious to the fact that other countries have their own regulatory and standards obligations with the EU, and will not seek to prioritise the UK.

The so-called WTO option would be a whole lot more convincing if the Brexiteers had a well defined trade strategy but as it stands we see no evidence they have even mastered the Janet and John basics. It looks less promising when they are relying on the disgraced Institute for Economic Affairs as their ideas engine. This is very much a suck it and see strategy.

Right now the UK is the position to design its future relationship in tandem with the EU, where the EU will be as accommodating as it can be so long as the UK is realistic. By crashing out, thus shafting our allies, losing all of our third country and inter-agency agreements in the process, the UK loses its bargaining power and much of the goodwill it presently enjoys. (which is rapidly running out).

Any intelligent trade strategy has to take into account that we do £270bn worth of trade a year with the EU. It is presently the backbone of our exports and safeguarding that trade really ought to be our number one priority. Only then do we asses how we approach our independent trade policy. We cannot engineer new agreements until the dust has settled anyway. We need to know what our own customs and regulatory regime is going to look like and how much room for manoeuvre we have.

We could easily jettison the European market in favour of absolute regulatory sovereignty but it's highly unlikely that any alternative combination of third country deals is going to rival our current single market trade, not least since single market participation is what presently makes the UK an attractive investment destination.

More to the point, total divergence from the European regulatory ecosystem makes no sense. There will be some sectors which are euro-centric where there is nothing to be gain from divergence. By the same token, there will be other sectors, most likely services, where our fortunes lie elsewhere. We need a relationship that enables both.

Being that the EEA is an adaptive framework and the UK is not entirely lacking clout, there is every possibility of persuading the EU to accede to opt-outs not least because it would be in the broader European neighbourhood interest. There is no reason why Efta diversification could not complement EU activities instead of going into direct competition. Our trade can be coordinated rather than dictated.

The Brexiter mentality is one of hostility to the EU where it seeks to burn bridges and seeks underhanded competitive advantages and expect that the EU will not respond. That doesn't end well for the UK. The EU can and will frustrate effort by the UK if we give it cause to. We have seen during the negotiations how the EU will stand by its underlying principles and uphold the sovereignty of its systems. Where the UK is concerned that much is not going to change at any time in the future.

Time and again the EU has re-stated that it will not allow cherry-picking of the single market, and it has seen through every deceptive attempt to do so. The only way to truly cherrypick the single market is by being in it and shaping it. Efta-EEA is our best vehicle for doing so. Should we do this, the EU will can and will be more accommodating and will likely not force us down the avenue of a customs union. It will use the structure of the EEA and we'll find alternative solutions.

When evaluating the EEA option most analysis make the mistake of examining Norway as a model - but the UK is not Norway. We are a bigger more complex, more diverse economy where there will necessarily be more input across more sectors and more of a need to participate in shaping the rules. So long as the UK government is a robust and active participant there is no reason why it should meekly accept diktats as Norway often does. Efta+UK is a power in its own right.

In designing our future relationship the government needs to consider our geo-strategic position in Europe and the longer term developments. Being that any buccaneering "fwee twade" adventure is already showing signs of falling flat on its face, the more prudent move is to ensure we remain a power in Europe. Burning all of our bridges ensures we end up on an EU leash and unable to exert any influence.

The facts of life seem to escape the ultra Brexiteers. Leaving the EU does not make the EU vanish and despite the UK's departure the EU is still a superpower able to wield extraordinary regulatory influence far beyond the confines of Europe. The UK is no competition and attempts at a "Singapore on Thames" runs against the grain of building a level playing field through the multilateral system We'll get a frosty reception from our allies and the EU will use its power to isolate us.

A no deal situation really helps nobody. Dubbed the "WTO option" it should really be called "The Failure Outcome". If you're planning for such an eventuality involves stockpiling and civil contingency measures along with emergency waivers from international rules, that really ought to be a clue that it isn't a good idea.

Moreover, much of the trade and regulatory integration has physical infrastructure because it is optimised for European trade and it works. I'm all for ending political union to stop the EU telling us how to run our own affairs, but as far as trade in goods goes, if it ain't broke, why fix it? The ultras in their determination to leave as quickly as possible will end up wrecking supply chains, throwing regulatory systems into chaos and hitting us so badly in the wallet that we lose a lot of the economic clout we'd enjoy were we simply to join Efta.

The Ultras demand a "clean Brexit" but it's no more clean than if I carved my arm off with a chainsaw. A clean Brexit would be an amputation with careful surgery. A careless and hostile departure now creates a cascade of immediate problems but stores up far more serious geopolitical questions for the future where the UK finds itself weaker and less able to withstand the demands of the EU. That would certainly be what our shortsighted Ultras deserve, not least as payment for their weapons grade lying, but that would be a very sorry end to the Brexit saga and nobody wins from it.