This summary of the aims of the leave camp during the campaign is worth revisiting. I'll be honest and say that not much of it appealed to me in the first place. But someone who regards that as a decent shopping list might well be getting uneasy. The first item looks safe enough. We are going to lose access to the European Court. So that is one less layer of protection, but is nonetheless what people were voting for.
Item 2 was never a starter anyway. The idea that we would be granted free access to the EU's markets while also being able to do better trade deals on our own elsewhere was always fanciful. It isn't going to happen and was never going to happen. We are in fact losing trade in many areas and I'm not aware of any advantages elsewhere to offset them.
The idea of having control over our own money sounds good until you remember just how tiny a proportion of our taxes goes towards the EU. It is in the region of 14p a day per person, way below what we pay in tax.
Migration was a big issue in the referendum and the one that probably swung most people. The leave side were well aware of its potency and did its best to keep it foremost in people's minds. This was done explicitly by Farage with his deliberately provocative poster timed for maximum impact. We all fell for that one by talking about it for days. It was also done with more subtlety by complaining about metropolitan elites looking down on ordinary people for their racism. No doubt there were some metropolitan elitists doing that somewhere or other - but as I don't know any of them I can't confirm it. But framing the argument that way was a brilliant rhetorical trick for avoiding the actual debate. For example, it was rarely pointed out that most immigration comes from outside the EU. I did see Farage being challenged on this on the television. He had an answer ready as he always does. He said that if the country was already challenged with immigration from elsewhere then it was mad to make it even worse by allowing it in uncontrolled from Europe.
The fact is that immigration is an intractable problem because as long as Britain is economically successful it will attract immigrants. It is a mutual attraction. We need the workers. They need the work. If you want to keep them out there is rather more to it than just closing the gate. We don't of course have to do things the way we are doing them. But we do need to decide what our priorities are. One option that was never discussed was keeping free movement for Europeans but restricting migrants from outside.
But the fact remains that as it is currently setup, Britain needs migrants and they are going to continue coming. If we are serious about changing that we need to make some pretty serious changes to the way we work as a country. That's a perfectly legitimate political project. But leaving the EU is only a small part of it. As it happens, insofar as you can tell anything about these things, it looks like the Johnson government is planning the exact opposite. All the indications I've seen are that immigration is if anything going to be encouraged - though it will probably be made more expensive for the migrants themselves. This is probably the optimum policy for economic growth, but it is hardly what many leavers were voting for.
As to regaining our seats on international bodies, what does that even mean?
The next item is even worse. Unless you are a big fan of mixing megalomania with muddled thinking, it is hard to see how anyone could imagine the UK on its own would be able to set up a European wide structure to ensure everyone trades freely with each other. There is a structure that is a long way to achieving that of course. The one we are just leaving!
The penultimate point is just about the only reasonable one. If you for some reason don't want a court that has jurisdiction across the whole of the EU for some reason, well that's at least a point of view. I personally regard having another level of court is a benefit. I regard the rule of law as an important matter and the European Court seems to me something that strengthens it.
And finally, Article 50. No we didn't need to use that mechanism to leave. We could have taken our time and done the job properly. Why didn't we?
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