Last year we helped our daughter move house. She was downsizing from the flat she had been sharing with her brother, into a tiny bedsit in the city. We had hired a van so drove it down to Hampshire and when we got there we expected everything to be as it was when we last moved: everything all packed up in labelled boxes. What we found instead was that very little had been packed up. Instead of just loading up the van we had to spend hours packing things, taking legs off tables and so on.

Basically her level of preparation was on a par with the government’s preparations for Brexit.

Talking to her later, the reason was that she didn’t really want to move. She was going from a large, modern flat to a horrible room in a converted house that had damp, tatty carpets, dodgy gas and terrible on-street parking and so had no enthusiasm for the move. Maybe the government is in the same position. Maybe Rees-Mogg and the ERG are right when they accuse the government of not really wanting Brexit to happen? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

That is fine, but dishonest. Unlike that house move, there is a choice. Either decide to make the change a success or decide to not make the change. Just doing no work, hoping it won’t happen and then having to make the change without any plan or co-ordination is the worst way of all.

Personally I would like to be staying in the EU. I like my right to live and work wherever I want, even if I haven’t taken advantage of it yet. I like it that my (French-owned) company can run multi-national projects with people and components moving between France, Spain and the UK without an extra mass of paperwork and tarriffs at every turn. But if that isn’t going to happen then at least make a conscious decision to make the transition as smooth as possible. I consider Brexit to be a bad thing, but why make it even worse?

The good news: after putting up with the poky bedsit for some months our daughter was able to get herself in a position to move back from the city to a beautiful new-build house back in the town she had moved from. Perhaps we can make Brexit bearable if we focus on whatever positives there are (not that I can think of any myself) and apply ourselves to it instead of procrastinating.

Mind you, I am still keeping my fingers crossed that this is all a cunning plan from Mrs. May to keep us in Europe.