As the Foreign Secretary took to the lectern at a right wing think tank yesterday to give his speech on Brexit, within a couple of paragraphs he had made a strong case for him and his colleagues to reverse their decision to hold such high profile events, promoting their ideas or in the case of Johnson their hubris over Brexit. However these first few words also explain how the Government which Boris is part of has lied to Parliament “The other day a woman pitched up in my surgery in a state of indignation. The ostensible cause was broadband trouble but it was soon clear – as so often in a constituency surgery – that the real problem was something else. No one was trying to understand her feelings about Brexit. No one was trying to bring her along. She felt so downcast, she said, that she was thinking of leaving the country – to Canada. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to be in the EU; she just didn’t want to be in a Britain that was not in the EU.”

I find such moments of clarity and transparency a mix of excitement and frustration. The frustration is caused by the fact that the speech completely failed to do what the constituent wants. Indeed the next paragraph was the end of any bright prospects for those sitting in the room with Boris.

“And I recognised that feeling of grief, and alienation, because in the last 18 months I have heard the same sentiments so often – from friends, from family, from people hailing me abusively in the street – as is their right. In many cases I believe the feelings are abating with time, as some of the fears about the Brexit vote do not materialise. In some cases, alas, I detect a hardening of the mood, a deepening of the anger. I fear that some people are becoming ever more determined to stop Brexit, to reverse the referendum vote of June 23 2016, and to frustrate the will of the people. I believe that would be a disastrous mistake that would lead to permanent and ineradicable feelings of betrayal. We cannot and will not let it happen.”

It seems strange that when politicians like Boris and Theresa May wish to do so, the concerns of people ‘on the doorstep’ can lead to policy decisions bring taken. However in the case of Brexit he and many of his colleagues are happy to refute the anger that many of us feel and the failure of his own Government to do the one thing that would have helped to satisfy the constituent he referred to. Indeed the concern that his constituent expressed is in part a reflection of a promise made to the country by a work colleague of Boris and Theresa. On 25^th October 2016 Lord Bridges of Headley spoke in the House of Lords. George Bridges served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union from 17 July 2016 to 14 June 2017.

“We have taken the conscious decision to build a national consensus to our approach to the negotiations. We are consulting a wide range of stakeholders in order to create a national picture of what people want from a deal on exiting the EU. This will allow us to deliver on what the country asked us to do through the referendum, by identifying the opportunities as well as the challenges.”

It is clear that 16 months after George promised on behalf of Theresa May’s Government to listen to us and work to achieve a sense of common ground, that nothing has happened that comes close to such a promise. Had the constituent of Boris along with many other people been listened to and their views taken into account, the position of the Government might well have been rather different. Had Boris ended his speech yesterday at that point with an apology and a commitment to do as George promised, despite the loss of 16 months, we might even have had something to be hopeful about. Sadly though, that is not the case!