SO we have it — the EU countries have voted to give the UK the hardest and most vindictive terms possible for leaving the EU.

This despite the fact that for many years the UK has been the second-highest net contributor to the EU budget which has helped to transform the infrastructure and economies of many eastern and southern European countries, as well as funding the bloated and unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels.

There seems to be no appreciation or recognition of our past assistance or the democratic wishes of our people.

In many ways, it is almost akin to biting the hand that has fed you.

For many years during the Cold War, it was the bastion of American and British armed forces that kept Europe safe from Russian ambitions.

This is all forgotten in the rush to penalise us.

Unfortunately, when the chips are down, you sometimes find out who your real friends are and in the case of the EU, we don’t seem to have many.

Many people in the UK do not realise that the UK was already on the periphery of the EU.

We are not in the Eurozone, whose ambition is ever-closer union, a federal Europe, something we have never aspired to or wanted.

We are not part of Schengen with open borders to the rest of the EU.

As a nation, we have never sat comfortably in the EU and yet I would argue we are probably the most Europhile of any EU country.

We scrupulously enact EU legislation when most other EU countries do not. In the EU, we are the largest importers of goods from other EU countries. We holiday all over Europe and have the largest number of other EU nationals residing in our country.

Unlike most other EU countries, we are open for business and most of our utility companies are owned by our EU partners something Germany and France would never allow.

Our football teams seem to be populated mostly with EU nationals.

We provide the largest defence capability of all other EU countries. Currently our troops and aircraft are stationed in the Baltic states to deter Russian aggression. I could go on.

All this seems to count for nothing in the eyes of the EU which makes me wonder whether it is time for the ordinary man and woman in the street, those supporters of remain and Brexit (for we are all in it together) to get behind the government in a perhaps more practical way.

When it comes to our buying habits, we seem to like everything European.

We holiday in Spain, buy German cars and drink French wine, etc.

Perhaps we should review these habits now before the EU tries to penalise us further in the negotiations which are due to take place over the next two years.

If we are not going to be allowed free access to other EU countries for our goods, then perhaps we should show them what they would be missing.

For example, if at a stroke, we stopped buying German-made cars, it would soon have a devastating impact on the German car industry and perhaps make the German government, which holds the EU’s purse strings, take a different stance in these negotiations.

I am quite certain that the German car manufacturers would welcome this for in the long run if we do have a hard Brexit, their industry would be severely damaged anyway.

We need to make the bureaucrats in the EU to see that an amicable and fair separation is the only sensible option.

The population of this country must realise that these negotiations are not just between our government and the EU they are dealing with you and me and our future.

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