I came across this little book in my library as I was going through things to keep, to give away or even throw away.

Its introduction says it all. It says what the UK has given away, indeed thrown away.

Does it matter that such a big fuss is being made about the UK signing a treaty to join an Indo-Pacific trade group? New data apparently shows it to be a major economic benefit.

The Far East is certainly an economically booming part of the world. It can produce more goods at a cheaper price than most other parts of our planet at an often technologically advanced level. Will the UK be able to match this productivity or, instead, be disparagingly smiled at?

Although Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has formally and optimistically signed the treaty to accede to the CPTPP trade group in New Zealand will this really be more than a drop in the bathwater which the UK has thrown away together with the baby in that infamously conned referendum of 2016?

Nothing is certain except the geographical fact that the European continent is just across the waters while huge oceans separate this island kingdom from the Far East. Transport and accessibility are increasingly important for commerce in a world beset by fuel and climate considerations.

I have met few people in London who consider Brexit other than a catastrophe: economically, culturally, politically. Even family relatives who had never been on a demonstration before took to the streets against Leave, not once but twice, because they knew they were being duped. On the other hand I am aware that the majority of those who voted to leave in 2016 lived well away from the Great Wen in areas rightly decrying the concentration of government funds in and around London and believing that all would change for the better upon leaving.

Political self-harm can take various forms: Weimar in 1933, Crimea in 1853, Mars La Tour in 1870 and so forth. Little did too few people realise it would take yet another form on 23^rd June 2016 in a country which only four years previously had welcomed Europe and the world to the Olympics, a country which had through the vision of its post-war leaders, in particular Tories Churchill and Heath, actually been prime movers in laying the foundations of the European Union.

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