The Covid Inquiry teaches us something much bigger than Covid. It is showing that an official story can survive for years, until somebody finally gets access to the documents, correspondence, advice and decision-makers and asks: what did you know, when did you know it, and why did you do what you did? My mother-in-law died of Covid at the beginning of lockdown. Her care home had already stopped families visiting, supposedly to protect vulnerable residents. Yet patients were being discharged from hospitals into the care sector when testing was grossly inadequate. Within days she was dead, alone, and we couldn’t be with her. I always believed that this was part of what had happened in Britain’s care homes. We were repeatedly told a different story. Now the Covid Inquiry reconstructed what actually happened. Brexit requires exactly the same forensic examination. Article 50 required two things: a constitutional decision to leave and notification of that decision. Parliament’s 2017 Act authorised the PM to notify (a power she already had!) It did not expressly say: Parliament hereby decides that the UK shall withdraw from the EU. The court subsequently treated Theresa May’s Article 50 letter as embodying that decision. So we need to know what the Prime Minister knew when she made it. What did the Government know about unlawful referendum campaigning? What did it know about Russian interference and influence? What intelligence existed? What concerns about political funding had been raised? What was investigated and, crucially, what was deliberately not investigated? Those questions were never subjected to the kind of forensic public examination we are now seeing over Covid. The litigation challenging Article 50 was dealt with through permission hearings and judicial-review time limits. That is not remotely the same exercise as an inquiry compelling documents and witnesses and reconstructing how one of the most consequential decisions in modern British history was actually made. We cannot bring back those who died during Covid because terrible decisions were made. Nor can we simply erase the years since Brexit. But if Britain left the European Union through a process that failed our own constitutional and democratic standards, establishing that truth matters enormously. Because understanding how we left may ultimately be part of determining how Britain rebuilds its relationship with Europe. @ricsallustio @CitoyenBrexile @_Tim_Ashton @JMPSimor @andyburnham @HFalconerMP

🚨 LISTEN 🎧 Extraordinary economic assessment of Brexit on @theJeremyVine from Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz: “What Brexit was 👉it was blowing up the most important trading relationship and replacing it with nothing. Economists will tell you: be very careful when you try to replace something with nothing.” He suggests that better planning might have reduced some of the damage. But the fundamental problem remains: “We’ve lost our major market.” And what could Britain realistically have replaced it with? Nothing else offers the scale, proximity and integrated supply chains of Europe. The lack of a credible replacement was not merely a failure of planning, it was the fatal flaw at the heart of Brexit.

This is what Brexit has done to Britain. Luise Valentiner arrived in Scotland through Erasmus and made it her home for 32 years. She built a business, paid taxes and became part of her community. Before Brexit, 85% of her sales went to EU customers. Then came customs charges, returned parcels and regulations too costly for a sole trader to navigate. After three decades here, she was also forced repeatedly to prove her right to return to her own home. Add growing xenophobia and the rise of Reform, and she and her husband have finally had enough. They are leaving Scotland for Denmark. Luise has not fallen out of love with Scotland. Brexit has made living and belonging here economically, practically and emotionally exhausting. Britain is losing businesses, skills, friendships and people who enriched this country for decades. Brexit is national self-harm.