Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

And the man whose job it is to run elections around here wrote me a letter telling me how wrong I was, how people have campaigned and even died for the right to a free and fair vote.

A free and fair vote, eh?

When you’re in your mid-40s your memory isn’t always what was.

But I’m pretty sure the voting slips for the EU referendum in June didn’t have an asterisk after the question, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” to draw our attention to the caveat *Any result must first be ratified by the House of Commons, the House of Lords and be open to a legal challenge at the High Court by some very wealthy and powerful people.

But whaddya know, that’s exactly what happened last 
week!

It turns out that MPs, and not just the PM, must approve the Article 50 process.

During the dirtiest and most dishonest campaign in living memory, filled with even more lies and scare stories than usual, nobody thought to mention this.

There was a 72.2 per cent turnout, that’s higher than for any general election since 1992.

More than 33 million people voted Remain or Leave out of a total electorate of 46,500,001 (don’t forget the one).

Leave edged it by 3.8 per cent and most people thought that was that.

But no!

It turns out that the voters are too thick and too northern to fully understand the implications of what they’ve done and the rich and the powerful will drag this through the courts and both Houses until they get what they want.

At this point I must declare an interest.

I couldn’t give a stuff who won.

But I’ll say this, the Government asked us a fair question, the people gave them a fair answer and five months later here we are.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.