I VOTED to remain in the EU, but not because of any fondness for Brussels bureaucracy and its pork barrel politics or the absurd spectacle of the Brussels/Strasbourg carousel.

No, I voted to remain because I foresaw the mayhem to come as a resentful and vindictive EU sought to punish the UK for taking away one of its main sources of income. Without the UK’s contribution, the EU is going to be considerably poorer and the EU is determined to make sure the UK is considerably poorer also, even if it is not in their long-term interests to do so.

Yes I know the EU claims to be negotiating in good faith, but actions speak louder than words and all the evidence so far is that the EU is intent on punishment rather than negotiation.

The EU has acknowledged that the trade negotiations are going to take longer and be more difficult than the so-called divorce negotiations so why was there a blanket refusal to even start discussions until the ‘blackmail’ over the divorce bill had run its course? A divorce bill that strangely includes payments for items agreed before the decision to leave but will not be actioned until after the UK has left, but does not include any compensation for the UK for the many capital projects the UK has contributed to since it joined the Common market but which the EU will bar access to after the UK leaves.

The EU sees it in their interests to string the process out for as long as possible both to keep the UK’s money rolling in and to spread confusion and despair among all who can influence the UK’s course of action.

And now of course the EU has chosen to delay the trade talks by focusing on the aspect that is in all likelihood going to prevent any final agreement at all given the Irish Government’s track record – the Northern Ireland border. There is absolutely no solution that will satisfy both the Irish Government and the vast majority of the UK citizens who voted to leave. All the waffling so far about the complexities around an open border has ignored the blindingly obvious – that an open border is an open invitation to illegal immigrants and control of immigration was one of the key factors in the Brexit debate.

Brexit is going to be a fiasco from start to finish. Cameron only called the vote in the first place because he was confident of winning. Likewise the EU saw no need to offer a few modest concessions on freedom of movement that would have kept the UK in the EU since they too were confident the UK would vote to stay. Since then May has shot herself in the foot by losing her majority and the warring factions within the Tory Party show no signs of presenting a united front. The battle over Brexit was always at least a three cornered fight. By far the largest faction, the remainers, lost by a whisker leaving the soft Brexiteers to fight it out with the hard Brexiteers over the way forward.

From the onset I have thought that a soft Brexit would be the worst of all worlds making the UK little more than a vassal state, still beholden to European law, still paying large sums to the EU every year without any say on how they are spent and being unable to strike independent trade deals with other countries. If we lose the option of walking away from a bad deal without a deal, that is what we are going to get if the EU’s fifth column in Parliament gets its way and ties the Government’s hands.

The trade negotiations so far at least seem to be all about the UK paying through the nose for the privilege of limited access to the EU’s single market. Since the EU sells much more to the UK than the UK sells to the EU why is there no demand that the EU pays for privileged access to the UK market? The EU seems to have got our negotiators on the ropes and are determined to press home their point of view before the UK wakes up to the absurdity of the EU treating a soon to be independent country as a supplicant at its gates.

Since I do not believe that there is any provision in Article 50 for rescinding the decision to leave let alone any chance of persuading all the remaining members of the EU to let us stay our only hope for the long term is a hard Brexit which is bound to be painful in the short term. Not an inviting prospect but we need to get on with it and make the most of the opportunities our newfound freedom will give us. Not spending our time moaning about the rose-tinted days when the UK was in the clutches of the greedy EU.

ROGER CHAPMAN Thwaites Brow Road Keighley