27th December 2020

 In 2016 did you vote Leave or Remain? Since the narrow Leave vote,  Boris’s ovenready deal became a slow pressure cooker but finally on Thursday the deed was done. My mind goes back to my youth. Birmingham used to be known as the city of a thousand trades. We had British Leyland employing hordes of locals making Austin, Rover, Morris, Riley, Wolseley and many other British-made cars. Our clothes’ stores stocked woollens made on Lancashire looms, there were huge iron and steel works and prosperous ship building industries. Britain used to be the biggest manufacturer in the world and the most technologically advanced. By the time I was born, home-grown manufacturing made up 50% of the UK economy and exporting was a major industry.  But, no longer. Well, a new year and new self-sufficient era dawns on the horizon. Boris now needs to forget ovenready deals and work on bringing back old-style, home-based industries which employ lots of local people in cooperative, innovative ways. That’s the winning recipe for a newly-independent Britain, Boris.