Whilst Conservative MPs try to present last week’s agreement with the EU as a success, the country knows the truth. This has been a catalogue of unforced errors of our negotiators own making.

23rd June 2016 marked a potential turning point in the future of the UK’s immigration policy. For decades, consecutive governments were unable to control our borders and reduce overall levels of net migration.

After my last two articles this year avoided the subject, I make no apology for returning to Brexit.

The party of business could reasonably be expected to know how to negotiate, or know which expert friends to bring in to help. Clearly not, based on progress to date on Brexit.

The Prime Minister’s carefully crafted speech in Florence rightly oozed warmth and partnership as one would expect. Ministers and Tory MPs were supportive for obvious party reasons. Business lobby groups…

When Napoleon Bonaparte brought France under his control a little over two hundred years ago, he came up with a simple plan for dealing with the pesky British, who were holding out against domination by a foreign power.

A year ago, the nation voted to regain its sovereign independence, to get its mojo back, to have a global vision. Brave people around the country chose to ignore the absurd, cataclysmic warnings from the Davos elite.

The failure of the Conservative Party to secure a majority at the general election was seized upon by anti-democratic politicians and the pro-Remain media to peddle a narrative that Brexit was finished and Britain would somehow remain subject to EU rule.

The Prime Minister’s invoking of Article 50 today is a promising start to a chapter that will define our national renewal, a destiny chosen by the British people on June 23 last year – but we must treat it with caution, knowing that the job of leaving the EU is not yet done, it is only just beginning.

It was clear to me in July, just after the Brexit vote at the Trump Republican convention in the struggling Ohio city of Cleveland, that the similarities were enormous and that Trump was very likely to win

The leaked Treasury paper suggesting a ‘hard’ Brexit could cost HM Treasury £66 billion a year in tax revenues is simply not credible. Indeed, the Treasury have got it the wrong way round.

So the political and corporate establishment’s recommendation has been rejected by the people and the recriminations are flying as I write.

The Leave campaign is stronger than ever and had a big boost last weekend, with six cabinet ministers backing Brexit, including justice secretary Michael Gove, together with London mayor Boris Johnson.

Markets are often wrong, particularly when the consensus thinking seems unstoppable.

So far, it has been Labour that has sought to make the UK’s membership of the European Union a General Election issue, using its commitment to remaining in and its rejection of a referendum on membership as evidence of its support for business. But is it really as simple as that?

Only real gamblers would bet on a majority government of either colour given the polls.

The scaremongering about leaving the European Union is unrelenting – and it is wholly wrong.

Despite all the sound and fury about the EU’s surcharge the truth is somewhat different – but no better for that – the UK’s net contribution is rising and will continue to do so.