REMAINERS such as myself are unconvinced by the referendum result for two reasons.

First, the votes were leave 17,410,742, remain 16,141,241, a majority of 1,269,241 or 3.8% but on only a 72% turn-out, i.e. over a quarter of those entitled to vote did not do so.

There were 26,033 spoiled papers.

Whether you consider the numbers or the percentage makes no difference to the fact that this was a highly marginal outcome.

The result is, of course, valid.

But unfortunately it wasn't decisive.

Secondly, much of the leave campaign was based on downright lies, for example that bus with the slogan on the side claiming that if we stopped sending money to Brussels we would have an extra £350 million a week to spend on the NHS.

Then 'Take back control!', which even claimed that the interfering Brussels bureaucrats told us what colour our passports should be when in fact the EU had no policy on the subject and left it to individual countries to choose whatever colour they wanted.

If a deal isn't struck by the end of December, we face the prospect in the new year of massive queues of lorries clogging up the Channel crossings trying to bring in vital imports of food and medicines or taking economically vital British exports - all this needless disruption when we have the Covid-19 pandemic to deal with.

No wonder, as my newspaper this morning reports, most polls show that a majority of people now think Brexit was a mistake, and by a large margin: 48% to 39%.

A quarter of those who voted for Brexit in 2016 have, it appears, now changed their minds.

Martin Kyrle

Chandler's Ford