The single most common thread in the history of UK involvement with Europe is the wish of politicians to obfuscate, confuse and plain lie about the ramifications of our membership thereof. Grumpy read the Theresa May agreement for Brexit with a mixture of irritation and resignation. Some 17 years ago Tony  Blair and his odious henchman Keith ‘Beano’ Vaz sought to persuade the populace is that the words in the Charter of Fundamental Rights did not mean what they say. In the Alice in Wonderland world of Westminster, the logic of Humpty Dumpty applies – “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Commission Regulation (EU) 666/2013 on vacuum cleaners limits (amongst other  things) the power of cleaner motors to 900 watts. When the UK  ‘takes back control’ of its own laws and regulations will it be able to legislate to loosen this restriction or not ? Alternatively, if the EU changed the regulation to 750 watts would the UK be  bound to follow this, post Brexit ?

If not, and ‘regulatory alignment’ means what it says it means,  the UK will be forever bound by EU law, and the whole exercise has been  an utterly pointless exercise leaving us without any control of our lives, and with no EU representation to change this – we have become a vassal state of Germany.

However, if so, and UK shops were then able to  sell cleaners with an increased limit of motor power of (say)  2500 watts , how does this play with no hard border with the EU ? So in one of the oft quoted Irish farms with the border running through the house, would it be ok to vacuum the living room but be subject to a Gardai raid if the owner moved on to the dining room ?

It’s a logical nonsense. It won’t work. Everyone knows this, and yet politicians persist in trying to fudge reality.

We all now know that the price ‘independence’  is to become an irrelevant excrescence off the shores of Europe. If that’s what the UK wanted, fine. But what we seem to have negotiated is neither fish nor fowl, and now that die is cast.