Brexit – the view from Hundon

In Hundon, Brexit just might not be happening. For us, travel to Europe is travel to foreign parts, whether or no we’re in the EU. France will remain across the channel; Germany the home of Steins and Frankfurters; Spain a land of package tours; and Italy will still be celebrated for creating pasta and pizza. For us, politicians are seen in the news, not in the village hall, and no debates were aired in our village. We see no immigrants, and export-import is a cover for James Bond. Prices go up or down on the whim of distant Sheiks, while cars are mostly what the local garage has available when the old one fails its test.

So what will happen after 2019? Passports will still be required to cross the English Sea; the queue at Schiphol will not shorten; the security checks not lessen; the wait for luggage as long as before. Perhaps the duty-free outlets will reopen at Callais and boats will sail full of day trippers flooding the on-board shop. All will be settled in the distant rules of London and Brussels. We shall have a new Prime Minister and cabinet, but in Hundon all will continue unchanged with the same dogs being walked and the same faces in the pub and the shop. The garden will need tending, the hedge cutting, the dustbins emptying and the cars cleaning, and in Hundon, Brexit will seem irrelevant.

Then why remain I so angry with the process? So wound up that I gnash my teeth at the childlike attempt at negotiation our government demonstrates? Perhaps because a better job could be done by any one of the Apprentice contestants, including those that leave in the first programmes. It is demeaning to see the total concession to every demand the EU makes. The rules should have been argued at the commencement: parallel talks, or no talks. Not all this rubbish about agreeing to everyone of their demands before they will move to Phase II. What negotiation is this? Ahhh – I feel my blood pressure rising again. I’d better sign off and sit down before I boil.