• I DON’T really need to ask who is paying for the Brexit adverts, such as the wrap around four pages on the New Journal of September 19, reminding any people from European countries other than Britain to apply for “settled status”: we are!

And we are also paying for all those other adverts in almost all national newspapers, telling businesses and others to make sure they too fill in all the forms needed in order to be prepared for Britain leaving the EU.

The costs, including all the efforts in preparing government websites and all those forms, which then have to be checked and analysed to be sure they have been completed correctly, must run into millions.

And we Brits are being reminded that we too have to be prepared if we ever want to visit Europe, even taking your dog on holiday will require forms to be filled and submitted and the website says: “you need to contact your vet at least four months before you go”.

I just visited the www.gov.uk/brexit website and pretended I was running a business and, after asking a couple of dozen questions, was confronted with a long list of actions needed, each one saying: ‘” it as soon as possible”!

Long? Yes, there were 27, and many of them were links to documents with dozens of pages and requiring all sorts of highly detailed paperwork, certificates and forms.

The cost of this Brexidiocy is boundless, and will mount higher and higher as Brexit bites. But what sickens me is that this could all have been avoided if David Cameron and the Tory government had dealt with their internal Brexitheads and either shut them up, sacked them (as Boris Johnson has just done to over 20 long-standing and loyal MPs) or, if there were any negotiable issues, perhaps he could have asked the EU.

In addition, if our MPs had even thought for 10 seconds about the referendum proposal; they should have set two basic requirements for such a monumental change in our interactions with our nearest neighbours and the outside world: requiring a minimum electoral turnout, say 75 per cent and a minimum majority for action in either direction, say 10 per cent, would have been reasonable.

As it is, the 1.2 per cent leave majority which resulted has set us on this cretinous road to disaster. And I can argue with that result: the truth is that only 38 per cent of the electorate voted to leave, the other 62 per cent voted to remain or sat at home. Well, they might be sitting there for a long time, unless they have filled in all their forms correctly.

While Jeremy Corbyn has tried to accept the result of the referendum, many in the Labour Party knew that this was a Tory ploy to solve a Tory problem and, like much else the Tories have done, has become a disaster. Hence the internal debate now going on. When the election comes, don’t forget who did it!

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3