Have you noticed that there has been little or no mention of the B word for quite some time, in spite of many across our community struggling to make ends meet.

Back in 2016 when the British people voted to leave the EU by 53% to 47%. There was great optimism at what the future outside of the EU would bring. This optimism was based around 15 pledges made by the Leave Campaign. These were:

1. Trade with the EU will be tariff-free and involve minimal bureaucracy
2. Northern Ireland border ‘absolutely unchanged’
3. End supremacy of EU law and the EU’s Court of Justice
4. Take back control on immigration and asylum, and cut migration to the tens of thousands
5. Britain will take back control of its fisheries
6. £350M per week for the NHS instead of being sent to Brussels
7. New trade deals, and access to a European trading zone ‘from Iceland to Russia’
8. Continue cooperating on security issues and counterterrorism
9. Financial protection for farmers who get cash from Brussels
10. Continued participation in EU science research schemes, deeper cooperation on scientific collaboration, plus increased funding for science
11. Wages will be higher
12. The union will be stronger
13. Cut VAT on energy bills to save the average household £64 a year
14. Scrap VAT on sanitary products
15. The new treaty should be ready within two years and before the next election (which was May 2020)

Here we are over 8 years from voting for Brexit (there I’ve said it, the B word), check down this list of pledges, see how many have been delivered? More importantly ask yourself how leaving the EU has made your lives any better?