WHILST I now consider myself firmly ‘BoB’ (Bored of Brexit), there is no doubt that as part of the pantomime season Brexit provides significant entertainment as politicians and commentators try to make you believe a square is a circle or the other way round.

However, the more Brexit drones on, the more it looks like the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’.

We appear to have the same mix of leadership styles common to the British Army in the Crimean War. A strong sense of misplaced honour, incompetence and inflexibility posing as duty. Furthermore, the orders were vague and were liable to misinterpretation very much like the referendum. We, like the Light Brigade, are lemmings seem to be streaming towards the guns in front or off the white cliffs of Dover. Meanwhile, to the left and right of us we have the guns of May and Corbyn masquerading as friends. Neither is acting in the national interest. One holding on to power at all costs, the other desperate to gain power at any cost. We, the people, are stranded in the middle charging off the cliffs.

I have often asked myself what I would have done if I had been a member of the Light Brigade. As a soldier, I would probably have charged in with the rest of them to my doom. Yet during that same Battle of Balaclava, the Heavy Brigade also participated in a charge which unlike the Light Brigade’s was very successful. The difference was that their orders were clearer, and they knew what they were doing. One French general, for once on our side, commented that the Light Brigade’s charge was magnificent but that it was not a rational act of war.

There are many parallels to the Brexit saga. Initially, the British public had great sympathy and admiration for the plucky charge of the Light Brigade and its leaders.When the details started to emerge including the fiasco of the Crimean War, public sentiment very much turned against the establishment of both government and army.

The bitter lesson from this war was that Britain was still living on the glory of Wellington and its Napoleonic victories rather than ruthlessly adapting to change. However, the wise man embraces change to make things better not to return to an imperial past dead, buried and which we cannot afford. This suggests that we bin Brexit now and concentrate on sorting out the NHS, education and crime.

Luigi Gregori, Charlton Road, Andover.