Two minutes.

[Suff]

Senior Labour and Lib Dem MP's have been advising the EU that if they just hold fast long enough, they, the Labour and Lib Dems will be able to deliver exactly this.

Only in the fantasy land that is Brexfail could that be even considered when Tories who want to remain include:

David Cameron, George Osborne, Philip Hammond, Theresa May, Sajid Javid, Alun Cairns, Justine Greening, Jeremy Hunt, Greg Clark, Patrick McLoughlin, Elizabeth Truss, Oliver Letwin, Nicky Morgan, David Mundell, Baroness Stowell, Michael Fallon, Amber Rudd, Stephen Crabb, Matt Hancock,Greg Hands, Mark Harper, Anna Soubry, Robert Halfon, Jeremy Wright, Ken Clark, Dominic Grieve...

All of them ministers or former ministers or prominent Tories. Not a Lab, LibDem, SNP or Green among them. There are, of course, also plenty of Tory backbenchers, about another 160 or so, too many to name. Are they also advising the EU?

This is all very true. But it ignores one simple dynamic. 12%.

Why 12%. That is the vote for UKIP. That is the % of people who will be guaranteed to change their vote back to UKIP if the Government shafts Brexit and we wind up tethered to the EU in the most toxic environment.

The division of that 12% is quite interesting. Firstly it drove Every Single One of the Scottish Tory MP's elected in the last election. Secondly they are divided slightly unevenly with more Tory UKIP voters than Labour UKIP voters.

The Conservatives. All of them. Remainer and Leaver alike, are fully aware of what that vote will do to their party. We, the public, may, as a mass, forget the dynamic of the prior elections; but MP's do NOT. Cameron crushed Millipede at the elections for one reason and one reason alone. He offered a referendum on leaving the EU. For once, maybe the first time ever, the people of the UK voted very strongly on a single issue; leaving the EU.

No more clearly was that seen than in the next election. Where those single issue voters thought it was safe to leave it in the hands of the "Government" and could go back to voting on pure UK issues.

It is no wonder that Labour and the Tories are running scared of another election before Brexit happens. In their position I'd be terrified.

So what do we see? The Lib Dems have full backing of their leader to derail Brexit. Yet with 10% of the MP's it had before the Coalition. Labour is fractured on the issue with their leader issuing edicts to force a harder Brexit but most MP's wanting to Remain. However Labour is, in many ways, even more vulnerable to this issue as they have Remain leaning MP's who won seats with Leave majority votes in the last election. Talk about standing in a dangerous place.

So those who are trying to derail Brexit are working with the EU to this end. Guiding them, coaching them.

The rest? They're playing "Hold Fast" in the storm and trying to weather it with the tatters of their wishes and principles intact, whilst giving the people of the UK the weakest part of what they voted for.

How about we be brutally honest for a second.
The UK exports 58% of its goods to economies compromising 77% of the world's GDP. We export more goods to the US than any other country.
The UK sucks in imports of goods, primarily, from economies comprising 23% of the world's GDP tariff free. Yes the EU is only 23% of the world GDP, including the UK. Without the UK it's under 20%. The US, on the other hand, alone, is 26% of world GDP.

Those goods we suck in are expensive in terms of the world market but we don't buy from the world market because the EU raises punitive tariffs on them. Making goods from outside of the EU more expensive.

You honestly believe that those who are making trillions out of these inflated prices are not going to fight back? That it's all a Leaver plot? Now if I ever heard wishful thinking that is it. Money talks. It also kills.

I did a simple check. Without the UK in the EU, China overtakes the EU in GDP in 5-7 years. Nothing worth fighting for there is there??

[Workingman]

... once Brexit happens that will be it, no going back...

Not quite, but there are a few big problems. We could go back in using A49, but that would mean joining the queue, taking the €, joining Schengen, losing our rebate, losing our veto and joining all sorts of schemes we can currently opt out of.

However, if we revoke A50, as we still can, we can stay a member as we are and work on the direction we would like the EU to take. We might not always succeed as we will be but one member of a club, but we could try. Outside we have no say at all in what our nearest neighbours and biggest trading partner want to do.

There could be benefits of Brexit, I do not deny that, but for now they seem a long way off and ill defined. Another thing, if we stay in we can work privately behind the scenes on the details of how a proper Brexit will work should we ever decide to leave in the future. That has to be better than the make-it-up-as-we-go-along mess we are in at the moment.

[Workingman]

UKIP? You are kidding. It is no longer a functioning party... even its elected councillors are deserting it, and nobody, not anyone, anywhere, can guarantee, never ming guess, at what its former supporters will do.

Makes a good dream though.

We are in the here and now and in that version of reality, the only one that counts, we are in a mess of gigantic proportions. All this guff about us remainers and the press having some say in how the negotiations are going or that we can overturn anything is fantasy talk.

When it comes to the numbers we have had them ad nauseam. We know them off by heart, yet they change nothing - they are what they are. what they will become in the future is anyone's guess... (see the reaction to the latest government leak) unless they are a Brexit forecast, then they are 24-carat true.

[Suff]

Not quite, but there are a few big problems. We could go back in using A49, but that would mean joining the queue, taking the €, joining Schengen, losing our rebate, losing our veto and joining all sorts of schemes we can currently opt out of.

And they would be VERY VERY VERY happy for us to do so. Which should giver everyone pause for thought on that.

However, if we revoke A50, as we still can, we can stay a member as we are and work on the direction we would like the EU to take. We might not always succeed as we will be but one member of a club, but we could try. Outside we have no say at all in what our nearest neighbours and biggest trading partner want to do.

Please. PLEASE. Do not repeat that Arch Remainer stuff. You know, exactly as I do, having actually read the treaty, instead of reading the Guardian, or Independent or, god forbid, the Mirror, version of it; that there is no Unilateral Revoking A50. The process is quite clearly defined.

First of all the Member State see's the error of it's ways
Then the member state, respectfully, submits the intention to withdraw from A50 to the Commission
Then
And ONLY then
Will the commission put the proposition to the other 27 Member states.
Those 27 Member States are going to look at it as a Golden Opportunity. There is no way on earth that all 27 states are going to take back the UK under the same terms as it triggered A50 and that vote has to be Unanimous.

So let us not talk about Revoking A50 as if we can "just do it" and that we'll end up just as we left. The reality is somewhat different. When Juncker, Tusk and Verhofstadt told us that triggering A50 was an unrecoverable step, they were not saying we could not undo it; that is already written as a possibility for the member state in A50 process. What they were saying was that our relationship with the rest of the EU would be fundamentally and irretrievably changed.

About the most honest and forthright things they have said about the whole process.

There could be benefits of Brexit, I do not deny that, but for now they seem a long way off and ill defined. Another thing, if we stay in we can work privately behind the scenes on the details of how a proper Brexit will work should we ever decide to leave in the future. That has to be better than the make-it-up-as-we-go-along mess we are in at the moment.

Let me see. Simplest is best.

We do 58% of our export trade with 77% of the worlds money/markets, the rest is done within the EU. The EU is a closed market. Simply put you trade with them on their terms. So when we leave, 58% of our exports will face the barriers we can negotiate and 42% of our exports will face WTO rules with the EU. Moving that 42% away from the EU, for me, is a major benefit.

How about Imports... Well we import the larger part of our goods from the EU. Especially vehicles and food. It's not that the food is more expensive in the rest of the world, it is not. It is that agricultural products carry the highest tariff barriers of all imports to the EU. Up to 35%. On leaving the EU, the UK opens itself up to imports of goods and foodstuffs which can be, I'm not saying they will but can be, cheaper than we pay today. Also if you want a BMW x series, you already import it from America. America is our second largest import market and continues to grow as Brexit unfolds. It was ~£10bn less when we voted for Brexit.

The USA is our single largest trading partner at £164bn. Germany, our second largest, doesn't even come close at £124bn. Worse is that our trade with the US is a surplus trade of some £29bn and our trade balance with Germany is a deficit of £26bn.

Worse that this is that we, currently have Japan as our #11 trading partner and we have a Trade Surplus with Japan and that is without a trade deal with them. Something the EU has significantly failed to do because of the determined focus on selling German and Italian goods into Japan whilst blocking Japanese goods unless they are manufactured in the EU.

When we look at Japan, in terms of exports, only 7 states in the EU rank above Japan for our goods exports and only 4 states of the EU rank above Japan for services exports. In fact in terms of service exports, there are only 3 EU states above Guernsey and 4 EU states above Jersey.

Lest we forget, Japan is the third largest economy in the world at nearly 1/3 of the EU. Once the UK leaves the EU it will be 1/3 of the EU.

If we want to dig even deeper into those figures, our exports in services to the US are larger than our manufactured goods. At £52bn and £47bn respectively. On the other hand our services exports to Germany are less than half our goods export. For an economy heavily focused on services, that is a MUCH better deal than sticking it out in the EU.

Leaving the EU, we would be doing our imports and our exports in a market which numbers 80% of world money (including the UK), leaving the other 20% to the closed market of the EU.

Benefits? Maybe not immediately. Opportunity to benefit? At least 4 times what the opportunities are in the EU today.

I did say opportunity. You have to work for it. The EU is the opportunity to have bread and gruel forever with minimum effort. The rest of the world is the opportunity to have meat and specialist salads and fruit and vegetables. But you have to damned well work for it!

That's the bad part....

[Suff]

UKIP? You are kidding. It is no longer a functioning party... even its elected councillors are deserting it, and nobody, not anyone, anywhere, can guarantee, never ming guess, at what its former supporters will do.

Makes a good dream though.

No it's not a dream. It is reality. Reality is that 12% of the UK population changed their vote on a single issue because they believed they had a credible chance of changing things. They were right.

It changed UK politics forever. Just as Trump has changed US politics forever. If Trump runs again and gets in again, you can double down on that.

I'm not talking about the UKIP. I am talking about how much fear of god 12% of the UK voting population puts into the organised parties. That is not in doubt at all. The fact that they voted for Farage's party just makes it even more of a train wreck for the Tory and Labour establishments.

Don't think they have forgotten. They have not. Deliberately screw up Brexit and the 20 years in the wilderness for the Tories after Major will look like a very short time indeed.