The 10 Year Plan

Tony Blair has announced to a grateful nation that he would have voted for the Brexit deal. That says all that needs to be said about anyone who did. But John Redwood is cleverer than the entire European Research Group put together, and Michael Gove's theatrical performance failed to give him the assurances that he had sought in his speech.

Redwood's consequent abstention will soon come to be seen, along with that of Tony Benn's Vicar on Earth, as one of the two events of any real consequence. Would that they had voted against. Like Jeremy Corbyn's Facebook post on the subject, Redwood's speech, in the absence of Gove's assurances, was a clear case for doing so.

The true character of this atrocious deal will be more than evident by 2024, when the refrain will be that "Brexit has failed". The plan is already well underway that in 2029, no matter who had won, a cross-party Bill would pass all of its parliamentary stages on one day in order to take Britain back into the European Union on any terms that the EU had cared to set. Of course there would be no referendum. Brexit would not quite have lasted 10 years.

If Remain had won, then within 10 or even five years, we would have been in Schengen and the euro. If Leave had won, then remaining subject to the State Aid rules would have ensured that nothing had got any better for the left behind areas. That would eventually have brought about reaccession, complete with Schengen and the euro. We have now begun that process. But I am the Independent parliamentary candidate for North West Durham. What are you doing?