A Year In Culan

So this is my 70th post and my final one on this platform written under the pseudonym ‘Tony Jemmett’.

From 1 January I shall be publishing under my real name on the Substack platform, writing a free weekly newsletter called ‘No Cat Left Behind’, which you can subscribe to here.

My plan is to publish a book or podcast series on my first year in France, which I shall be releasing through substack, as well as continuing to write regularly on our new life in France — so please sign up for updates!

I hastily published my first post of this series on 30 December as I wanted to write about the upheaval and turmoil of Brexit and COVID-19 and also record our own journey after we took the decision to leave the UK and live in France as a direct consequence of the UK voting to leave Europe in the referendum.

On New Year’s Day 2022 Britain will have been out of Europe for 12 months and ‘taken back control’ of its legal structures, finances, trading rights and borders.

‘Global Britain’ would prosper with its newfound independence, we were promised by a conniving Conservative government. It is patently obvious that has not been the case, as Brexit has so far failed to deliver on its promise.

Whitehall’s Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted that leaving the EU will reduce the UK’s long-term GDP by around 4%, compared to a fall of around 1.5% that will be caused by the pandemic.

Labour shortages, supply chain issues, rising fuel and heating costs has conspired to make the UK poorer, not richer and the country is in a mess, lacking a coherent leadership strategy.

With even tighter new rules on imports from the EU to be implemented in January 2022, food products from the EU will face extra physical inspections from the summer, causing more delays and extra added costs.

On the border issue, the Guardian has reported that refugees living in northern France have said Brexit has made it easier and more attractive for them to reach the UK in small boats, not less — and the fact that the UK is no longer part of the EU makes it more worthwhile risking the dangerous crossings because they could no longer be sent back to other European countries.

In an opinion poll published by The Observer over Christmas, figures showed that over 60% of people now think Brexit has either gone badly or worse than they expected. It also found that 42% of people who voted Leave in 2016 had a negative view of how Brexit had turned out so far.

The EU Referendum held on 23 June 2016 gave people a choice to stay or leave, the majority voted leave, an undeniable and irreversible fact that has been more damaging, in my opinion for the UK, than the EU.

The country, or the ruling class, got what it wanted, by its manipulative lying to the British people and the recently exited EU member state and the sixth-largest world economy is all the poorer for it, both financially and morally speaking.

We have settled well in France and have no plans to return permanently to the UK.

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