The Brexiteers lied and lied time and time again during the referendum - they said a trade deal with the EU would be easy, they said there would be extra funds for the NHS, they said countries would be queuing up to do trade deals with an independent UK, they said money saved from the EU would be freed up to spend on other things. Well the truth is clear a new trade deal is certainly not an easy thing to do, the NHS will end up having less funds due to lower tax receipts, we are going to lose 60 plus trade deals with non EU countries once we leave the EU because their deals are with the EU not the UK and we are wasting huge amounts of money to deal with exiting the EU and by the way there is a £39 billion exit fee to pay.

There is now mounting evidence that the UK economy is suffering even before the planned exit 29 March 2018 LINK1. With GDP 2.1% lower, investment 4% lower and plenty of evidence that firms are facing big hits to their profits as they have extra costs to plan for a hard brexit.  These are costs before we leave the EU but lets be clear the longer term costs will be much higher let me explain why:

1) It we fall back to WTO rules the EU will have to impose tariffs on UK goods and treat us as it would third countries like the US and the UK will have to apply the same tariffs to the EU goods as it would on USA foods because that is what the WTO rules require.

2) Both UK domestic investment and Foreign Direct Investment in the UK will be severely hit as the UK loses its right to export goods tariff free to the EU. We will also find it much harder to sell services into the EU as we will not have the "passport rights" that depend upon membership of the the EU's single market. There will also be too much legal and regulatory uncertainty for businesses. They are already delaying potential investment on a large scale because of Brexit induced uncertainty.

3) There is a massive threat to the supply of labour from the EU that the UK requires due to labour market shortages where the UK simply does not have workers with the required skill. This means some business will be forced to seek to relocate part of their business to the EU and some business will have increased costs to both train and attract enough workers to continue their businesses.

4) With no trade deal in services the UK economy will be severely impacted because this is a traditional area of strength of the British economy and indeed services make up 80% of the UK economy. Selling financial products, tourism and education has been a strength of the British economy over the years but Brexit cannot but adversely affect these sectors due to their dependence of EU workers and the freedoms associated with the single market.

5) There is going to be  a severe hit to public finances partly because of the direct costs to the government of financing Brexit but also due to big hit to the UK economy upon which the tax revenue is dependent. THis means less money for schools, hospitals and public services and lower pay for workers in the public sector combined with high rates of taxation.

In sum, we need to get out of this potential disaster by allowing the people a second referendum, as it is clear the Brexiteers cannot deliver on the false promises they made during the EU referendum. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Gisela Stuart, David Davis, Jacob Rees Mogg, Liam Fox and Nigel Farage are among the most deceitful and disreputable politicians ever to be seen in UK politics. It is time for the UK citizens to be given a second referendum to see if the "will of the people" is really to follow this motley bunch off the Brexit cliff.