Brexit is as brexit does

I am sick of hearing politicians bickering about Brexit. The media love a scrap. Especially one where there aren't many public facts that require leg-work to check. So expect months and months more of it.

People talk as if "the deal" for 2019 is going to be the EU / UK relationship set in stone forever. It isn't. Our relationship with other countries has evolved over at least a thousand years; and will continue to evolve for many more decades at least ... until Amazon, Facebook and Google own everything and nation states become irrelevant.

I would rather remain in the EU. But clearly that can't happen now, since we have already given notice (article 50) and there is no mechanism to cancel. If we did try to re-apply to the EU do you think they would let us back in? It would require a unanimous vote of the 27 ... so it only takes one to hold a grudge ... and France really took some convincing to let is in in the first place.

So we are leaving. People need to accept that and move on. We aren't going to make a good start out there on our own if half the population keep griping about the referendum for the next 20 years. "This is all because of Brexit" might be true, but you can't turn back the clock, and every journey has to start from where you are, not where you would like to be.

There has been a conflict in Britain for decades about whether we should be more like America or more like Europe. That's because we have unique ties to both of those continents. The people pushing for Hard Brexit are free market zealots who believe in a small state and a winner-takes-all society - that's because they already won, and want their families to keep winning.

Everyone else is either arguing for No Brexit or just slagging off the Hard Brexit people as stupid. They aren't stupid, they have a plan. What is a better plan? Where is the alternative vision? By the next election we will be out of the EU. If the opposition parties don't have a clear alternative to offer the people (52% of which wanted to be out) then we will be stuck on a path to Americanisation.

I really don't want that.