Brexit was stressful, wasn’t it? Not in a losing your job or your home sort of a way, but in the sense that we woke up on June 24, 2016, and learned our future had just been entrusted to certain utter charlatans who wouldn’t recognise the truth if it came to their front door with a passport, driving licence and a reference from David Attenborough.

Ten years ago, facts and expert opinion were famously treated by Leave campaigners as if they were elitist fetishes, to be sneered at like veganism or Radio Four. Warnings from pretty much the entire UK community of economists, predicting a detrimental impact on the UK, were ignored or treated with contempt. Remember all that Johnson guff about how Brexit would unlock our “buccaneering spirit” and allow for glittering international trade deals that would stuff the Bank of England’s vaults with more gold than Donald Trump’s bathroom? Remember how it was going to drive down immigration and boost youth employment?

Instead, it has stymied growth, driven business closures, led thousands of businesses to stop trading with the EU, reduced the tax take and created labour shortages. Prominent studies say growth is between six and eight per cent lower than it would have been without Brexit. Immigration was not reduced (it soared to unheard-of levels three years ago) and there are nearly one million 16- to 24-year-olds now classed as Neets.

Brexit has hampered everything from international academic research to sending parcels to Europe. The bitter irony of Brussels-phobes like Nigel Farage creating in Brexit a job creation scheme for bureaucrats (so many parcels to check and border checks to conduct) underlines the problem: we........

© Herald Scotland