As Dr Alf will recall, it was David Cameron who set hares running in the first place by calling a referendum and then going to Europe to secure concessions.

The negotiation produced next to nothing and was not legally binding, and it is clear that someone else needed to be sent in order to secure anything meaningful.

David Cameron need not have called a referendum and could have purged the party of its more troublesome right-wing elements or he could have been more like a true Conservative and thrown them “bones” to keep them happy.

He did neither, choosing instead to pretend to be all things to all men, and then topped it off by saying that he was not going to serve a 3rd term which then meant that he was a lame duck who no EU leader would make concessions to.

George Osborne would not get an austerity budget through in any event because the Government has a majority of just 12 and Corbyn’s Labour Party will not vote for further austerity.There are more than 12 Conservatives who would rebel even if 2/3rds of the 65 rebels were “whipped into line”.

On June 24th, even if the UK votes to leave the EU nothing will change for a minimum of 2 years and David Cameron will not be able to stay in office.

He has been promised a new job and should be replaced by someone more competent, like Andrea Leadsom who is well-connected with the City and is very smart and extremely polished as well as being best placed to deal with another important set of woman, Hillary Clinton, Merkel while she remains in office and of course the Queen.

The number of MPs is in any event far too great at 649 and a good clear out done proportionately could bring the total down to 200 better qualified and less greedy people.

There is no need for an “austerity budget” because the money can be found by cutting the overseas aid budget of £16 billion GBP to something nearer £1 billion GBP or if I had my way zero, reducing civil service numbers to 15,000 and reducing police constabularies and fire commands to 1 of each.

We do not need 43 county councils, plus unitary authorities plus districts, boroughs, metropolitan borough councils, city councils and mid county councils and at least 2/3rds of council workers, even in 3 star authorities like Essex are surplus to requirements and /or in non jobs.

Barnett Formula abolition would release another £33 billion GBP less extraordinary costs and we need to cut the Monarchy down to size.

These things need to be done quickly and fairly brutally in any event so that people do not have time to filibuster and endlessly find reasons not to do anything and any investment bankers like Jamie Dimon and others who have made threats need to be told where to get off and have their bluff called.

John Gelmini