Conservatives are on their way out. And they know it – Christine Jardine

As the dust has begun to settle on the latest of this year’s budgets, it has become a little clearer exactly what the cost of the past few months of chaos will be. At least in financial terms.

The wider impact of not just 2022 but the past six years is only just becoming evident. As it does so, it becomes more difficult not to see our journey to this challenging place as having started the day the Leave campaigners jumped on that big red bus with the lie on the side.

I know it was a democratic decision and we lost the argument for a confirmatory referendum. But why can’t they see it yet? I have listened for months now to a series of Prime Ministers and Chancellors blame “global events”. The pandemic and its economic impact. The war in Ukraine and Russia’s weaponising of the energy market.

Even the calamitous misstep of their own colleagues’ while temporarily in Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street has been acknowledged. But there is still that one which they really don’t want to admit to. Brexit.

Yes, I know the B word is not fashionable these days, unless of course, you are a nationalist looking for a fresh false promise for your own disastrous Leave campaign. But I believe that it is time to say it loudly and clearly. Brexit was a mistake and it’s to blame for much of what we are going through just now.

Those who genuinely believed it was the best route for the country have been badly let down by the politicians who persuaded them that they could deliver. They could not and they have not. And all of us are paying a very heavy price for their miscalculation.

Like every other problem in life, the first step to a solution is in admitting what you’ve done wrong. It’s time the government admitted that shortages of bus drivers, baggage handlers, fruit pickers, care workers, doctors and dentists might not be so bad if it wasn’t making it difficult and unpleasant for our European neighbours to work here.

Ridiculous though this might sound, if we still had freedom of movement we might not be asking for special visas for so many employment sectors right now and there might be people to drive buses into the city from Queensferry. Businesses might not be struggling to replace both staff and export markets now made more difficult to access by leaving.

The winds of political change look set to blow the Conservative party out of power (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Of course, the impact might not have been as bad if it hadn't been for the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But this government cannot continue to hide behind them and use them like some poor taste disguise for their own shortcomings.

It is not simply that there have been crises to deal with but that they have dealt with them so badly. This past week has been a case in point.

On Thursday what the country needed to hear from the Chancellor was a fair plan to get us through this cost-of-living crisis. We are facing the biggest ever fall in our standard of living and the officials of the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed that we are already in recession. The economy is shrinking.