I have lived happily under Conservative and Labour governments. But I’m glad voters pushed back against the growing appetite in some quarters for an authoritarian one.
Well done Britain.
Dare I hope for more than a recognition that we live in a multi-party democracy?
One Financial Times writer thinks so [Search result]:
The election throws up an even larger prize: a more moderate version of EU exit than the one envisaged by Mrs May.
Before pro-Europeans become delirious, Friday’s result cannot be interpreted as an equal and opposite reaction to the Europe referendum. The two main party manifestos did not differ much on the subject.
But the prime minister called this election to secure a mandate for her hard take on exit and failed to obtain it. Most of her plausible successors – Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Amber Rudd, the home secretary, who might take on Mr Johnson – are pragmatists.
They will also see where the Tories lost seats: cities, university towns. The bits of Britain that are at ease with the outside world.
We’ll see.
(We all know politics can get tetchy, so please everyone try to keep it civil and constructive if you want to comment. Thanks!)
What caught my eye this week.
From Monevator
Family Income Benefit: The forgotten policy – Monevator
Getting older? Admit it when you rebalance your portfolio – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Talking about money is like French kissing – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber.1
Average UK rents fall for the first time in more than seven years – Guardian
House prices set to keep beating wages, with RICS predicting 3.5% annual growth – ThisIsMoney
The heartening story of an everyday 98-year old who retired at 45 – Chicago Tribune
Insurance Premium Tax increase to 12% to push up motoring premiums [Search result] – FT
Products and services
First ever Lifetime ISA from Skipton pays just 0.5% – ThisIsMoney
Digital coins are making Bitcoin’s rip-roaring rally appear tame – Bloomberg
Atom Bank delays its digital-only current account on threat of new regulation – ThisIsMoney
Seedrs has launched the Beta version of its secondary market: ‘Trading Tuesdays’ – Seedrs
Comment and opinion
Thinking through a change in asset allocation – A Wealth of Common Sense
Confessions of a newly-minted gold bug – 3652 Days
What happens to bonds in a stock market crash? – Oblivious Investor
Small and value data for a big world – Portfolio Charts
A tale of two markets: Politics and investing – Musings on Markets
History lesson: Four unsung heroes of investment – Bps and Pieces
The financial pain equation – Tony Isola
David Stevenson: I got married for tax reasons [Search result] – FT
The easy way to buy quality companies at the right price – Richard Beddard
If this guy can cycle to work then you can probably cycle to work – Mr Money Mustache
Emerging markets are not all created equal [Curious if flawed chart] – The Big Picture
The state pension: Is it sustainable? – DIY Investor (UK)
General Election 2017
The results – Guardian
Was this the revenge of the Liberal Metropolitan elite? – Telegraph
How did Theresa May’s gamble fail? [Nice graphics] – Guardian
Theresa May’s failed gamble [Search result] – Economist
George Osborne savages May in four editions of the Evening Standard – Telegraph
“Yet another own goal”: EU braces for Brexit talks delay – Guardian
9 key questions for your personal finances – Telegraph
Post-election thoughts, and an encounter with an aristocratic Brexiteer – S.L.I.S.
If a ‘soft Brexit’ is back on the table, remind me of the options again? – Telegraph
The views of some professional investors – Telegraph
Liam Young isn’t pleased about the Tory’s bedfellows – Twitter
Off the investing beat
Experience is overrated – The Irrelevant Investor
Advice for new college graduates – Financial Samurai
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spend a day mattress testing [Video] – YouTube
Entropy: Why life always seems to get more complicated – James Clear
Ich bin ein f-cking Millwall now – Telegraph
And finally…
“But if cities are indeed some sort of superorganism, then why do almost none of them ever die? There are, of course, classic examples of cities that have died, especially ancient ones, but they tend to be special cases due to conflict and the abuse of the immediate environment. Overall they represent only a tiny fraction of all those that have ever existed. Cities are remarkably resilient and the vast majority persist. Just think of the awful experiment that was done seventy years ago when atom bombs were dropped on two cities, yet just thirty years later they were thriving. It’s extremely difficult to kill a city!”
– Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies
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- Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩]
I can’t think that voting for a marxist is remotely likely to lead to a less authoritarian government. Hell’s bells, he supports dictators in such places as Venezuela.
The problem with wanting a liberal government, as I do, is that most voters disagree, even Liberal Democrat voters.
Disagree. Electing a Marxist*, sure, would be problematic. But not *voting* for one.
If May had actually swung back into power with her targeted landslide on the back of a campaign kicked off by a speech condemning the opposition for trying to derail the Brexit process and so forth (when in reality just days before the House of Commons including the opposition had again voted through her latest bill on Brexit), aided by an increasingly emboldened nastier end of the right-wing tabloid press… Personally that is one campaign strategy I don’t want to see vindicated in the UK.
(*If Corbyn actually was such, which this incarnation at least isn’t. I’m no big fan but I think that’s hyperbole with regards to the platform he is now standing on.)
Although the Skipton’s Cash LISA is a paltry rate, I’m still debating whether I should use it for the retirement bonus. I’ve already got a S&S ISA for my Lifestrategy funds so this seems the best way to get the bonus?
Hear hear! I’m pleased with the result. Neither of the large parties has a majority (excellent), and the smaller parties I kind of like (Lib Dems, Greens) have either gained seats or maintained the status quo whereas those I don’t like (UKIP, SNP) have suffered large losses. This means that (a) the more objectionable bits of both the Conservatives’ and Labour’s policy aspirations are off the table for the foreseeable future, (b) Brexit will no longer be in thrall to the Brexiteers but will have to be more realistic, less needlessly confrontational, and consequently less damaging to all of us, and (c) Indyref2 is definitely holed below the waterline. And well done all those millennials who got themselves down to their polling station to do something about their woes instead of whinging about them! Long may that last.
Certainly one of the least worst outcomes. May’s authoritarian leadership fatally damaged, SNP separatism rejected, the arrogance of the right wing press barons checked, and a new batch of MPs that are (with a few exceptions) more liberal and internationalist than those they replaced.
However, I wouldn’t underestimate the problems ahead. The Tory/DUP coalition has an effective majority of about 15 (due to Sinn Fein’s absence) – more than enough to keep them in government for some time, many of the alternatives to May look even worse, Corbyn’s team lack competence, and none of them has much of a clue how to handle the colossally difficult Brexit negotiations.
From a financial perspective, I suspect this means continued stagnation for the UK economy in the short to medium term, higher inflation, low growth (already the weakest in Europe), less investment, slowly declining living standards. Difficult to see radical fiscal changes being made over the next year or two but that depends on how much of a hash the government makes of the Brexit talks.
Wonder why they can’t map out a couple of strategies with pros and cons (eg this requires free movement of labour but allows…..), then hold a referendum asking for choices including none of the above. Happy enough with the election though, maybe a bit more humanity will be displayed.
Great to see the far left lose again.
Hope for a great result from the centre and the centre-right.
When we rightly wonder about the competence of political leaders to hold Brexit negotiations, let’s just bear in mind that 99%+ of the work will be done by the (intensely pragmatic) civil servants. So as long as we don’t have a strong ideological political leadership (which we would have got if Mrs May had had her way) the prospects of a reasonable deal are pretty good. I’m hopeful and pretty pleased that prospects for an economically damaging hard Brexit seem to be receding.
Christ, Torygraph’s comments section is even dumber than Grauniad’s… never again.
This election turned out even better than I hoped. I’m very pleased.
I thought the Conservative majority was inevitable and hoped that LibDems as a sizeable opposition party could soften the Brexit (which Corbyn failed at completely with his whip on the Article 50 vote), halt the jamboree for the pensioners that the Tories have been presiding over, and promote investment in education (in my view our only hope if we are going to give up the safety of the single market and start competing with the US and China for the right to sell to the EU).
Very glad that the Millennials are finally getting off their backsides and making themselves heard in a way that makes politicians take note. No country can claim to have a bright future if it prioritises a triple lock on pensions over education.
From an utterly selfish point of view, a neutered Tory party will struggle to change much policy, so there’s probably going to be a lot less tinkering in general, affecting those aiming for financial independence by letting us plan easier. Probably this will translate into kicking the can down the road for the next 5 years, (hopefully there’ll be no more surprise elections making things worse) so the diligent grafters can get closer to freedom.
Other than that, the result was massive encouragement for any who believe in democracy, in that it was a victory against arrogance and negativity whilst birthing engagement of the young; it’ll be interesting to see if they sustain their muscle-flexing.
I never thought I would vote for Corbyn, but that is what I ended up doing and helped turf out our tory MP, Jane Ellison. It is a real shame as she was a good MP. I would much have preferred to have helped get rid of rabid Brexiter.
The reason I voted Labour was that it seemed the only way to curtail the more extreme and outright bonkers policies that were being proposed, both by the Conservatives and Labour. Anything too nutty now has a lower chance of even coming to parliament and we may even get a more sensible Brexit, although my expectation is we will still get a very bad deal from the UK’s point of view.
Mays weak mandate (assuming she even lasts) will just embolden the EU to be intransigent
It’s preferred version of brexit will be soft but not favourable to uk
Very encouraging to see voter turnout (especially amongst new / younger voters) increase.
I really hope politicians will in future see the merits of running positive election campaigns, rather than relying on negative personal attacks.
I for one am extremely happy with the result. It will be a softer Brexit. And I think George Osbourne was brilliant as a pundit. He’s rewritten the revenge punchline about dish and cold to include second and third helpings.
Best bit for me is the millenials came out to give the silver surfers a bloody nose. The silver surfers were the dynamic that caused Brexit despite handing the mess to others whilst inevitably pushing up daisies soon enough. Good for the young – I applaud you.
And selfishly for me my Tory MP was sacked with a swing vote of 16000 in 2 years. A true yes man who defended the Tory school policy despite having his 4 go through my kid’s school and seeing it go to ruin! Good riddance!
Once again, well done Millenials!
I cannot think of another election where I have been more tempted to put none of the above and now being well into middle age I have seen a few. I am pretty much a floating voter having voted for three parties in the last four elections.
There was no party who I felt particularly close to and ended up voting Lib Dem.
Lets hope for a soft Brexit and a competent administration we could do with one.
Never mind the election. There is more important news from UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/News/business/comment/energy-from-renewable-sources-has-passed-another-milestone-time-for-ministers-to-wake-up-to-its-a7779696.html
What exactly is this soft Brexit?
If it is single market access, the EU has made clear that freedom of movement will need to be maintained. Northern voters have shown they won’t vote Tory to secure control over immigration, but they’ll abandon Labour if Labour abandon it a as a policy. Brexit wise, Labour and the Conservatives are indistinguishable and the Liberal Democrats still irrelevant despite their better performance.
EU is going to insist on a hard Brexit no matter who is in No 10 if we insist on control over our borders.
The Corbyn alliance of students, urban liberals, Londoners and Northerners is a fragile one more based on old school pork barrelling and anger at the Tories. The myth of Corbyn will prevent Labour building a more sustainable centrist alliance. Third election in a row that Labour have failed to win a majority. Boundary changes will only make this harder. A valiant effort by the hard left, but likely to be a pyrrhic one.
Personally I’m glad that May’s lurch to left has failed and minority Tory government is a good result.
International diversification wins the day yet again investing wise.
@freemantle
Soft brexit with DUP = customs union but not single market
Turkey has this
Works for Ireland, works for Nissan and bmw
Works for immigration control
But no access to single market very bad for service exports from the uk to europe, so still pretty terrible
@Neverland
Customs union is unlikely to be on the cards. Nether Norway or Switzerland have that.
I’m pretty ok with the result. The Tories got the bloody nose they deserved but Labour didn’t actually get in. I’m normally a centrist Liberal/Tory but tactically voted Labour. Normally, the Tories prioritize winning power over ideology, but the moment Corbyn became Labour leader they really thought they had no opposition and couldn’t lose. They shifted toward UKIP with increasingly authoritarian stance. Those on the extreme right of the Tory party seemed to think that a hard Brexit might be an opportunity to push through their Ayn Randian ideological fantasies. So I’m hopeful that with an opposition to worry about we get a more pragmatic centrist approach. It’s highly regrettable that the DUP have been allowed leverage since their views are rather unpleasant but I think that six months working with them will only underline to the Tories the self-harm they did.
Labour did pull a blinder with their offer to give free uni education. It was a clear bribe but it’s only fair. Political parties have been bribing older voters for years. I hope the millenials keep that taste for voting since this country might actually move forward into the 21st century if the parties stop pandering to the retirees and boomers. I’m only bitter that I’m Gen X so I don’t get a bribe. Damn demographics!
The real problem is that we are having to play with fire and narrow margins; the aim is surely to keep the Brexit headbangers in check while not allowing in Corbyn’s hard-left henchmen. In that context, the election was as good as it was going to get. How much real good will it do in keeping the Brexit fanatics from ruining us? It ought to have done a lot in terms of confirming that there is no mandate for a hard Brexit – but they are quite prepared to risk burning down the whole UK edifice in order to get their ideological way, so we will need to watch, bellow loudly when needed, and see. Good news in Scotland; at least the risk of IndyRef2 has receded.
It’s ironic that we now have the ‘Coalition of Chaos’ that Theresa May warned us about!
The only advantage is we might now get a ‘Sensible Brexit’ instead of an ‘Extreme Brexit’.
@ Fremantle
“Customs union is unlikely to be on the cards. Nether Norway or Switzerland have that.”
But Turkey does, so it’s hardly impossible.
It’s an indication of the low level of political discourse in this country that Corbyn is derided as a ‘Marxist’ (by people who have probably never read Marx) and Labour’s manifesto as ‘hard left’.
The Labour manifesto promised the electorate a Scandinavian-style society of well-funded public services and greater economic equality. The Tories want to take us towards a US-style economy where to be poor is to have failed and be the individual’s own fault. I know which kind of country I would rather live in.
One thing I have wondered. Everyone is panicing about tarrifs and business fleeing the UK under Brexit. What would Corbyns 27% corporation tax increase look like?
@Richard — It would look slightly better than 2011, when the UK corporation tax rate was 28%.
So it wouldn’t be of concern then? We wouldn’t expect business to flee? Is this because it only applies to profits while tariffs to the full price. So a 10% increase in tariffs is a lot more painful than a 10% increase in tax?
I loved the Chicago Tribune article about the man who donated $2 million in shares to charity. In addition to being absolutely heartwarming, it reminded me of your post a few weeks ago about remembering your can opener. He clearly had his can opener and his motivations for his financial actions worked out – to live a life he could enjoy, and to leave the world a better place than he found it. (Mind you, that seems to be a theme in many of my favourite places in the Personal Finance webspace – such as this very site! 😉 )
‘2011, when the UK corporation tax rate was 28%’
Wow, how quickly it can be forgotten, it shows the insidious venality of the neoliberal mission that someone today can be demonised as a marxist for epousing what were the views of the centre a mere few years ago. How scary it is that far rightwards the entire political spectrum has shifted in such a short time and yet is quickly regarded as normal.
I thought parts of the nominally privatised UK rail segments are actually run by their German and French government equivalents and no less badly at that than the privateers in the same game profiting off the taxpayer?
wrt earlier posts on investment trusts, aiming for income vs total return, etc, interesting article from Money Observer:
http://www.moneyobserver.com/our-analysis/how-to-avoid-being-tricked-high-dividend-yields
@FI Warrior – agree with that, how quickly we forget. Though in my defence, I was only just in the workforce at the time and tax hadn’t really become ‘interesting’ for me.
I suppose if corporation tax went up to 27% and the dividend tax rate was 7.5% after allowance (did Labour plan to axe this tax?), LTD contractors would be getting a lot closer to PAYE tax rates (though still short on the employer NI). IR35 could basically vanish, making it a lot easier for contractors generally.
@Colin
I’ve read Marx.
Labour’s manifesto did not promise the electorate a Scandinavian-style society. Few people realise it, but the top effective tax rate in, say, Norway, is lower than in the UK. The Scandinavian tax system does not rely on taxing the rich (although it does tax the rich heavily, especially in Denmark) — it relies on taxing everyone. The benefits are obvious: a very wide tax base, a more equal society, and no subsidising of corporations who refuse to pay their employees a decent wage.
Labour could have taken a step in the right direction by, for instance, promising to raise the rate of employer NI contributions (that’s not the sort of a manifesto pledge that takes huge cojones, is it?). They did not. So here we are again, a comparatively small base of income earners – who are by no means rich – subsidising the bleeding corporates and hence their investors through the benefits system. And then people ask why our productivity is so low compared to the rest of Europe. I’m sure the reasons are legion, but one of them is definitely that corporates are finding cheap and (esp with zero hours contracts) flexible labour to throw at whatever problem they come across. They don’t need to invest in technology that would improve productivity.
Anyway, that’s just my two pence.
@Richard, that wasn’t a pop at you by the way, I was just shocked because I hadn’t realised the speed at which the corporations managed to dictate actual policy and how worrying it is that we humans are so easily habituated even to ugly change. By dodging taxes, they destroy our society, this (cartelism) is what Adam Smith warned against.
@hosimpson, everything is linked, when the powerful companies get away with not paying tax, the funding of entities for the national good is harmed, like research institutions whose discoveries are open to all. There is a good case that a contribution to the lack of productivity is that companies only invest in research if they think they can profit and if it pays off the patents mean it wont directly benefit the common people. Great countries publically fund their research institutions and the discoveries leading from that then benefit all. The UK used to be very good at this and it’s suggested that the recent relative lack of cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs (which impact directly on productivity) in general is a result of the drying up of such non-specific public funding.
I had assumed/hoped May’s hard position was a negotiating stance. e.g. ‘If that is all you are offering, we will take hard brexit and you will suffer as well’ to get Europe to offer the best possible terms. I do not really think saying ‘please be nice, we need a good deal’ is a very strong position to adopt……
@kraggash – United we stand divided we fall. We are very divided and both sides of the argument will gladly let the country burn just so they can be ‘right’ and can get one up on the other. Hard Brexit will be a disaster, but the threat of hard Brexit ensures we can get the best deal. Without that threat, the EU know they have us over a barrel. It wouldn’t surprise me if the deal we get is dreadful. That will force us to either remain or to hard Brexit. Which will depend on what the EU wants, either will be in their power (though the disposition of whoever is negotiating may result in a hard Brexit, but the EU can always give more time).
I cannot see how any government would be able to accept a Brexit deal, without expecting to be blamed for the repercussions for a generation. The only alternative would be to go to the country with a referendum: do we take the offered exit terms, or stay in under existing terms….
True, but what options will the (binding?) referendum have? Remain, an unacceptable deal, hard leave. Seeing as it is unlikely the unacceptable deal will win, the other two lead to a mess. If remain win the whole process starts again, Farage is back and the UKIP vote starts to climb. Maybe the saving grace here is new brand Labour will give people something else to focus on. A different hope. If leave win then economic mess, though it does kill off the question at least until a movement to rejoin starts again. Maybe they will take the unacceptable deal…..
This is the problem, and with both sides doing everything they can to sabotage the other, it feels like we edge closer to hard leave.
@Richard — Why are you using the word binding? Everyone knows it was not a binding referendum, but an advisory one. Perhaps the extreme and immediate lurch to embrace it by Theresa May and others in the febrile aftermath of the Referendum has slowly enabled this fact to be forgotten.
People ask me what I think should have happened instead, given the Referendum result. While in some ways I’ve also become acclimated to the public’s extremely poor decision over the past 12 months as the shock has worn off, with hindsight it’s also even clearer how the supposedly all-powerful elites should have responded to the (special-interest driven) Leave decision.
I think the correct response would have been something along the lines of:
Something along those lines, anyway.
Instead we got, on the back of that slim majority:
Mildly amused that the general consensus from pretty much everywhere is that the electorate cannot be trusted with a referendum but is able to navigate through complex party manifestos in order to arrive at the correct answer at the General Election.
@Gizzard – They are not comparible:
1) GE is not a binary choice – there are often 5-6 parties (and manifestos) on the voting paper
2) GE is not a ‘forever’ vote – get it ‘wrong and you can try again in 5 years (or less…)
3) Most of the electorate have experience of life under both major parties, and can make a more informed decision. (Mind you, the ‘young vote did not experience life in the ’70s which may account the popularity of some of Corbyn’s policies….). Brexit is a leap in the dark.
The Economist article below is worth a read, on the post-Election ‘value based’ divisions that have become so much clearer than in the aftermath of Brexit when (sadly) I fell out with a bunch of hitherto happy readers, seemingly out of nowhere:
Link to Article.
(FWIW and off-topic to the rest of the article it thinks Corbyn is a Marxist, too. I don’t agree, as I’ve said, and moreover I think his manifesto is just (too) left of center rather than at all Marxist).
@TI – I was talking about a new refurrendum on the Brexit deal. Otherwise I agree, but that was only possible if both sides hadn’t turned the debate into a ‘if you vote leave then we push the button next day’. By doing this they really removed any chance of moderation off the back of a leave vote. Or at least moderation that wouldn’t have toppled the Tory party.
@Richard — Fair enough, and agree Cameron did spout such stupid nonsense. On the other hand Farage said “If we lose we will need to have another Referendum” or words to that affect when he thought he was losing towards the end.
At the time I gave the Tories *some* benefit of the doubt, given how febrile the atmosphere was in the immediate after-Referendum days and weeks.
But in retrospect — especially in light of the calling of a general election on purely political grounds yet stoked on false premises of opposition, never mind the rest of the rhetoric — it now seems like opportunism.
Not a good way to make massive Constitution and rights-changing decisions that nearly half the electorate disagreed with.
Twelve months on and the richest area of the country just elected an MP of a party that is supposedly led by a Marxist. It’s hard to imagine deeper divisions, yet May’s approach was supposed to have “healed and united” the country. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
I wouldn’t have run the referendum. Given we did, my proposed alternative response above is not perfect, and might still have resulted in a Brexit that would hurt far more than it helps. (I still don’t know who it is meant to help, apart from UK politicians and racists. I guess it might make a fair chunk of the 52% happier even if it doesn’t help them, if they are particularly nationalistic and Euro-sceptic.)
But at least it would have been a response appropriate to the magnitude of the decision.
@Marked: Labour’s platform is more generous to pensioners as it involves keeping the unsustainable triple lock among other things. The close result means that all those plans to reduce spending on pensioners will never happen now, so I don’t see how the result is somehow bad for oldies 😉
@Kragash But what’s a political parties alternative to Brexit? If you run on a manifesto saying you will ignore the Brexit vote you’ll lose a big chunk of the electorate, if you promise a second referendum you’ll lose as many or more, and if you don’t put it in your manifesto then you’ll be considered to have lied if you don’t then follow through. Not only that but when you finally admit you won’t Brexit other parties can claim whatever they like about how good Brexit would have been without any risk and blame you for missing the opportunity.
When is the Accumulator coming back?
@John Graham – You go into negotiation with a (public) hard brexit stance, and try and negotiate the best terms you can. You do not/cannot say you will have a second referendum ahead of time, because that would only drive the rest of the EU to give us worse terms so that the vote would more likely be Remain. You also probably do not say there will NOT be a second referendum (May’s stance, I think).
Once negotiations are done, the party in power says they have got the best deal they can. They say they could not be completely open before, as it would have undermined their negotiating position, but now the options are clear, the public need to decide in a second referendum. It is the only democratic way etc….
@Dean — Still writing the book. Final 10% apparently. Agree he’s missing.
@richard “I suppose if corporation tax went up to 27% and the dividend tax rate was 7.5% after allowance (did Labour plan to axe this tax?), LTD contractors would be getting a lot closer to PAYE tax rates (though still short on the employer NI). IR35 could basically vanish, making it a lot easier for contractors generally.”
It wasn’t widely carried in the news, but the lower rate of corporation tax, that is businesses with less than £300,000 profit, and that’s most businesses, would only see their rate rise to 21%. It’s been 19% for 2 months. It was 20% for the 6 years before that, and 21% as recently as 2010. So all those small business owners complaining on tv are either unaware, or have £300k+ profit per annum after extracting salaries and dividends for each member of their family. Poor them.
What a shame politics has been brought here. As far as I am concerned, not big, not clever, just someone else sticking their oar into something about which they can do nothing to affect the result. It’s called democracy, get over it or go live in North Korea.
Yes, that’s exactly the spirit that gave us democracy and preserves it.
Surely there has to be a fix coming down the track, along the lines of going into the EEA and forgetting this nonsense of controlling “freedom of movement”; I say nonsense because as I understand it the same foreign workers will be here as before and more will come, because needed, in the future. So what are we doing this for? To regain “sovereignty”? I was not aware tanks were on our beaches. To trade with distant places? Why do that at the expense of trading on our own doorstep? Lastly, who can possibly think that our leaders should even try to obey the wishes of the least bright half of our population? That is, almost by definition, a road to hell.