Also, by asking for so much, they are making it inevitable that every applicant will leave something off. The last 5 years worth of data from all your relatives?? Every application will have a mistake. Then, they can use that mistake/omission to selectively prosecute immigrants and tourists.

More importantly, any case for closer UK-EU relations will have to be made - extensively and in public - in Brussels. Failing to do so has already nearly sunk the existing reset several times. But few UK leaders have ever been brave enough to do this.

To take my tongue out of my cheek*, it continues to be one of the more striking pressures facing Reform that their voters are the *least* religious in the UK and so many of their senior members and funders are really intensely religious.

*Je ne regrette rien