Brexit clown Farage finally admits it was all a dreadful mistake that’s wrecking the economy - Vladimir McTavish

The majority of people in Scotland were, of course, never in favour of leaving the European Union in 2016. Now, almost seven years later, it appears that a majority of people in England are also against the idea too.

Nigel Farage was the face of the campaigns to leave the EU in 2016. Picture PA.

According to a poll published in the I last week, around sixty percent of people in the UK believe that Brexit is leading to rapid food inflation, and that it has had a negative impact on Britain’s economy. Here’s one question which should have been included in the poll but wasn’t: “Now that the horse has bolted, do you think we should have closed the stable door at any time during the past seven years?”

Nearly half those questioned blamed leaving the EU for worsening public services and a decline in the NHS. Much has been written about the impact on health and social care of European doctors, nurses and care workers returning home. However, the experience of a friend of mine shone a whole new light on the folly of Brexit.

I ran into an old mate last week, whom I hadn’t seen for over ten years. Although only in his mid- fifties, he needs a hip replacement. He has been told he will have to wait as long as two years to have the operation on the NHS. As he’s not short of cash, he has decided to travel to Lithuania to get his new hip. While this is going to cost around eight-thousand pounds, it is less than half the price of going private here in the UK.

But here’s the thing. According to his consultant, were the UK still in the EU, the cost of the op in Lithuania would have been free. It would have been covered by the NHS, under reciprocal healthcare arrangements. I wonder how many daily Mail readers, having believed the lies that paper spouted in 2016, are currently sitting in agony on two-year NHS waiting lists for hip replacements.

More amusingly, however, it appears that even Nigel Farage thinks Brexit has been a failure. You read that last sentence correctly, but just in case you didn’t quite take it in, I will save you the trouble of going back to re-read it. Nigel Farage thinks Brexit has been a failure. In other words, the man who cooked up the whole botched idea in the first place has now accepted that it isn’t working.

If he don’t remember him, he’s the circus clown cum pantomime villain who spent his entire life campaigning against the EU. The man who was so anti-European that he still took his seat in the European Parliament so that he could be gratuitously rude to our continental neighbours, and claim expenses at the same time. He’s the guy who spent years having his photo taken in pubs drinking pints of beer and smoking fags, pretending to speak the language of the average bloke in the street. Who said the British people were sick of daft rules and red tape.

I reckon the average bloke in the street wouldn’t object to a bit of red tape if it saved him eight grand on a hip replacement. Next time you get a stupid idea, Nigel, keep it to yourself.