What did we vote for?

Once upon a time, as all good stories begin, there was a referendum.  It had been called to see if people wanted to stay in or leave the European Union.  Lots of people said, it will be good to get out of what had become in effect a parliament and legal system that was above our own UK parliament and those of the devolved nations.  Others took a different view.  They thought staying in this new super state was actually a good idea.   

Which was fine.  It gave a very clear line of what this was all about.  Sovereignty.   But the remain people decided that this wasn’t enough. They wanted to make a second case.  They wanted people to think that leaving was economically bad too.    

Indeed, using taxpayer’s money, the then government lead by David Cameron, aided by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, spent £9m of our money to lay out reasons other than sovereignty as to why we should stay.   So what did they say?  Well, one thing they said was voting Leave meant leaving the Single Market, including  introducing potential trade barriers, paying tariffs and even reverting to WTO rules.  There are countless examples of Messrs Clegg, Cameron, Brown, Osborne and Ms Sturgeon saying just that.   

Look at the words they used about the so called Single Market.  Voting Leave meant “less access”, “losing full access” and “uncertainty and risk”.  Or as Will Straw put it such easy to understand language, “we must be absolutely clear about what this means: Britain would not be part of the Single Market”.    This was echoed by former chancellor Alistair Darling:  “those wanting to leave the EU want to pull Britain out of the Single Market, which would mean introducing tariffs and barriers to our trade”.   

And even the then prime minister had his words of doom that “What the British public will be voting for is to leave the EU and leave the Single Market”.     

To be honest, I am not really how much clearer those in power could have been.   Leave meant Leave.     

So those who now say we didn’t know what we were voting for, really?  We knew exactly what we were voting for.