Up to now, Brexit is the major concern of the day on which I have not blogged. This is because I have found it to be extremely complex, unlike the demagogues of the Johnson/Gove/Farage camp, who want everybody to believe it is simply a matter of getting out of the EU at any price, That is why, for the past 3 years, almost 24/7, we have had  Brexiteers bellowing their slogans at the TV presenters on the green outside Parliament. According to them,  the EU  is at the root of all our ills. In this great lie, they are backed by the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail, which is still in the hands of the family which owned it back in the days when it saw Oswald Mosley and Hitler as the saviours of Europe (Yes, the Rothermere family  would prefer that the Mail’s readers did not know that.)

In the referendum campaign, I teetered for ages and eventually voted to remain.

I noted the politics of those leading the leave campaign: Gove, Duncan Smith, Farage and ─ when he eventually decided what was in his greatest self-interest – Johnson; died in the wool reactionaries all. I had no wish to side with such distasteful people.

As a war baby I was aware that the EU was born out of the Iron and Steel Community, established in 1951,  between France Belgium, West Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Luxembourg, with the hope that such economic cooperation would make another war between the major powers of Europe not only unthinkable, but materially impossible, a most laudable aim.

During the referendum campaign all sorts of lies were told, presaging the approach shared by Trump and Johnson: for them, telling lies is legitimate. Provided each lie is big, it will shape reality.  If you want people to believe that Brexit will  yield £350 million a week for the NHS, just keep saying it.  It matters      not that it was total fiction.

This was the approach of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. It worked for him and it worked for Farage and Johnson, both of them inveterate liars.   Believe that reality is what you say it is and if you are saying what your listeners want to hear, they will believe you.

Johnson repeatedly claims that there are intensive negotiations going on in Brussels, but EU officials say there are no negotiations taking place, because Britain has put forward nothing to be negotiated.

Johnson repeats this bare-faced lie at every opportunity and he has now ensured that there is no parliament to call him to account.

Sajid Javed says the government is “straining every sinew” in Brussels, in order to get a deal. Again, the EU insists that nothing whatever is being negotiated, so Johnson’s representatives must be straining every sinew in the gym, rather than at the negotiating table.

Johnson and Javed are simply liars.

Why did the majority of people fail to see through the dirty tricks in 2016, voting for Brexit?

Did they consider and dismiss the idea that the EU could be a bastion against another war between the biggest states in Europe?

Did they want to break from the EU because it is based on ruthless neoliberal economics?

Did they dismiss such  Sun and Mail fiction as the EU dictating that cucumbers and bananas must be straight?

Did they know that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is entirely separate from the EU?

Did they know it was a lie that the judgments of the ECJ always go against Britain and that the opposite was the truth?

Did they want us out of the EU so that we could be free of its pressure to privatise basic industries?

Did they want us out so that a British government would face no impediment to nationalisation of industries?

Did workers in the car industry knowingly put their jobs at risk in order to get Brexit?

The answer is “No” to all that.

Majority support for Brexit was partly a consequence of millions of people reading the Sun, Express and the Mail, papers which consistently pedaled an anti–EU line. Why do so many people read such trash papers?  Firstly, they are cheap. Secondly, being comics, they seek to entertain, rather than drily and honestly inform.

Many wanted Brexit because they wanted curbs on immigration and they wanted that because they believed foreign workers took all the jobs and all the housing, depressed wages and got priority treatment in the NHS. These lies were a constant theme in the gutter press.

The EU was blamed for the loss of basic industries in the north of England and for austerity and its impact on the social services.  Of course, it was Thatcher and the Tories who were responsible for the demolition of our manufacturing industries and mining. It was Blair, Brown, the Tories and the Coalition responsible for the unnecessary and vicious austerity programme, as well as the bankers who crashed the economy in 2008. It was indigenous politicians that were responsible for the destruction of the industrial and social fabric of the midlands and the North, not the EU. Nevertheless, millions lashed out in protest by voting to leave the EU.

That in the country with 5th biggest economy in the world, there are 14.3 million people(1 in 5), living in poverty and out of those seven million trapped in persistent poverty, is not down to the EU. It is down to our home-grown politicians.  Of course, the Tories have had great success in passing the buck to the EU, when it is themselves who should get the sack for creating the most unequal society in Europe. It is not the EU  or immigrants we should blame for families being housed in shipping containers; Johnson’s Tories should carry the can.

Millions have responded to the atavistic appeal of Britain’s past imperial glory. The unstated message echoes Trump: “Make Britain great again.” Millions have responded to the demand, “Take back control”. Control of what? Control by whom? Unanswered questions of a meaningless slogan. But repeat the nonsense loud enough and often enough and many will be taken in. The unstated message echoes Trump: “Make Britain great again.”

Since voting to remain, I have had misgivings. The Eurozone’s appalling treatment of Greece drove millions into poverty at the behest of the IMF and the European Central Bank.

I know that Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for desperately needed renationalisation of the utilities and the railways would meet with strong opposition from the EU, despite the fact that, for example, our privatised railways are owned by nationalised railways in EU-member states.

Wars in the Middle East, pursued by Blair and the Tories have led to waves of migrants seeking safety in Europe, in turn leading to the rise of extreme rightwing governments and political parties in southern and central Europe and the Baltic states.  This cannot be blamed on the EU. It was Blair and George W  Bush chiefly responsible for setting the Middle East on fire.

In recent years I have had two lengthy spells in hospital. In one operation, both surgeons and the theatre nurses were from Poland. In another operation, the two surgeons and the anaesthetist were Asian and the recovery nurse was Afro-Caribbean. Take the immigrants out of the NHS and there would be no NHS. Nevertheless, the referendum result immediately unleashed a wave of race-hate and anti-immigrant fervor which has continued unabated. The social media have made it possible for anonymous, ignorant loons to pour out their hate in all directions.

The EU has long been the cause of divisions in the Tory party. It has lately been the cause of divisions in the Labour Party, too.