Weekend column: It's same old, same old with Brexit – but here's what we've learned so far

We’re just going to have the same old, same old for the next three weeks, or 20 weeks, or sometime in a future most of us now cannot contemplate.

Which gives our politicians plenty of time to start counting again how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Or telling lies about what the outcome might be. Or putting the fear of God into people.

However, it does give the rest of us a chance to have a little think about all the lessons we’ve learned so far from this fiasco. And what I’ve learned is this...

First, that whatever they tell you, our politicians don’t have a bloody clue. If more of them were actually connected to the people that voted for them, and less contemptuous of the people that didn’t, they would have seen this coming. After all, it’s not as if people weren’t complaining for years about their rubbish lives in towns no one in London has ever heard of, with difficult existences compounded by the horror of austerity, is it?

Secondly, it’s become obvious that for years we’ve been lied to. As a committed watcher of news and reader of newspapers for more than four decades (I used to watch Panorama for entertainment when I was seven) I have heard politicians and vested interests from big business, trade unions and everyone in between telling us our health service is rubbish, our world influence was waning, we were the ‘sick man of Europe’ and all the rest of it. Now those same folks are on the telly telling us that ‘people used to respect the UK’ that our civil service/parliamentary democracy/ insert random other national institution, was ‘the envy of the world’. But, because of the Brexit fiasco, now it’s not. Apparently.

Who knows what the truth is? Certainly not me. Which is why I’ve come to a third conclusion...

And it is that the actual effect of leaving Europe will – trade and business aside – probably be almost negligible for most people.

Why? Because almost everything that really touches our lives is decided by the local council. Which is why, even if you think it won’t matter, the coming together of the councils in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole will probably have a far greater impact on your existence than whether we stay or go from Europe.

Will the bin collections change? What will be the school and social services policies? Will the new authority take a different view on planning rules? Or designate that nice area of wild land near to you for a new housing estate? What about fines for low-level misbehaviour, like parking in the wrong place or putting out the wrong bit of recycling?

For various reasons – mainly because of the horrific death from a brain tumour of my beloved sister and all the ghastly business of sorting out her estate – I haven’t bothered much with the Europe debate. Real life has taken precedence and this is the first time I have written about it for that very reason. Like most people, however, I’ve been astonished by the vitriol I’ve seen from both sides – the racism expressed about so-called ‘foreigners’ who have made their lives and contributed here. And, equally, the vile attitudes of some towards ‘old people’ who, if they had applied the words they spat at whose who voted Leave to Muslims or gay people, would probably have had their collars felt for a hate crime by now.

I’ve also been amused by those who don’t realise that whatever they voted, of course we will still be welcoming in refugees and asylum seekers, in accordance with our responsibilities under the United Nations. And we’ll still be asking foreign people to kindly do the jobs we won’t do ourselves.

Equally it’s been hilarious to hear people like my Remain-loving friend, who insisted he was moving to France to escape the Brexit madness, discover it was to the very region represented by France’s arch right-winger Marine Le Pen. It’s also been fun asking people, whatever they voted, if they could name any of their MEPs – where I come from they are rather shocked to learn that one of them is a bloke called Nigel Farage.

In the end I’ve concluded that people’s lives are far more likely to be affected by who they elect to run their own bit of Europe than Europe itself. Our day-to-day existence is not impacted by Europe in the way that having an anti-social neighbour is, or having super-fast broadband.

So I’ve concluded that whatever happens – and anything could happen, really – we should all just resolve to get on with it. It’s certainly not worth losing friends or ending up in a family row over, because life really is too short.

Just like no one ever went to their grave complaining that they didn’t spend enough time at the office, who of us are going to die saying we should have spent more time going on about Brexit?