SO do you think enough time has passed since the general election for us to be able to talk about Brexit on a sensible way?

Oh, I forgot. Boris Johnson doesn’t want the ‘B’ word mentioned any more. He wants us all to unite behind his oven-ready deal as we head for our golden future on the sunlit uplands.

Now call me pessimistic but I really don’t think we will see a Brexit bonus heading our way any time soon and I suspect there will be quite a lot of pain before we get any gains.

I am, of course, referring to ordinary people, not hedge fund managers who now won’t have to comply with EU regulations about disclosing their profits or foreign exchange gamblers who have made millions betting against the pound.

I fully realise that the majority of people in Warrington voted to leave the EU (54.3 per cent to Remain’s 45.7 per cent) and so I have a couple of questions for them, and for all those people who voted for the Tories at the general election.

(Leigh elected a Conservative MP. Leigh? For heaven’s sake, have you been to Leigh?)

Here are my first questions: Exactly what was it about the European Union that was so bad it was ruining your life? Which particular piece of EU legislation did you most object to? I’ve been asking this question since the referendum and still haven’t been given an answer.

But I think my second question is probably more important: Now that we are certain to leave the European Union, how will this improve your life? What benefits will not being in the EU bring to you personally?

I would like to know the answers because I simply just don’t see any benefits whatsoever. And no, having a blue passport doesn’t count.

What I do think, though, is there are a lot of people who may previously have been Labour voters who switched allegiances to the Tories in last month’s election who really think their lives are somehow, suddenly going to get better.

So my third question is: What is it that Boris Johnson’s government now has to do for you to make you think your decision to vote for it was the right thing to do? And how quickly does he have to do it?

Does your life have to improve next month, in three months, six months? Is that long enough?

And what do you do if there aren’t any sunlit uplands, just more of the same Tory austerity we have all suffered for the past nine years.

Here’s my problem. I don’t think your life is going to improve in the slightest. And I suspect it may get a whole lot worse if protections on workers’ rights are removed along with a lowering of food safety standards (think chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef), even more privatisation of the NHS, diminishing of environmental protections and more changes to the pension age.

That last one isn’t a scare story. An influential Conservative thinktank – fronted by the former work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith – has proposed the state pension age should rise to 75 over the next 16 years. If the Centre for Social Justice had its way, the retirement age would go up to 70 in less than nine years from now, as the change is phased in.

And while it’s true Duncan Smith isn’t a member of Johnson’s leadership team, he certainly has his ear. In 2019, he served as chairman for Johnson’s leadership campaign, resulting in an emphatic win, with more than 50 per cent of MPs and 66 per cent of the Conservative membership voting for Johnson to become the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.

So if it all goes horribly wrong, what do all the Leave voters and the new blue-collar Tories do? Who do they turn to? Who do they blame?

At least with the Fixed Term Parliament Act, we’ve got the next five years to contemplate our fate.

As the old curse goes: May we live in interesting times.