THE countdown continues.

It is two weeks and one day until we are supposed to leave the European Union behind us.

And there is still no deal, because Brussels will never offer us an easy ride, and because the whole issue has divided our nation to the extent that BBC News can barely broadcast from Westminster Green because there are protesters dressed in Union Jack suits yelling at them in the background.

The lies that the Leave campaign told us ahead of 2016's disastrous referendum have quietly been shuffled into the background.

One of the most laughable was that a 'high tech' customs declaration service would mean we would have simple, frictionless borders. And yet, one of the major stumbling blocks to a deal has been the Northern Ireland border issue.

We were told, in loud letters on the side of Boris Johnson's battle bus, in now completely debunked figures, not least by campaigner Nigel Farage who said immediately after the vote that he could not keep that promise, that the NHS would get £350m extra a week when we left the EU.

Instead civil servants and politicians are having to take on and navigate a complex network of fisheries and agricultural policy, employment legislation, border controls, trade deals, laws, and environment, transport, security and employment legislation. That's barely scratching the surface of the complexities of Brexit. The sheer cost of employing civil servants on the scale of having to take into account every eventuality,and carry out the bureaucracy around it, has to be astronomical.

The Government's preparations for a No Deal Brexit is estimated by the Labour Party to be £171,000 an hour, or £1.9 bn.

It's not known what the exact figure is as the Government hasn't broken down the overall cost, but that could, the Labour Party says, pay for the salaries of 85,000 nurses, 50,000 secondary school teachers (more than 15 extra teachers in each school), or 49,000 police constables.

Another false promise was that the economy would be 'fine'. It was, for a while, after the Brexit vote, but forecasts for after March 29 – especially in the increasingly likely event of no-deal – are grim.

I'm not looking forward to the pound plummeting and inflation rocketing, but what is what the experts are predicting.

And we were told by no less than Michael Gove and Boris Johnson that there would be no change to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. This incredibly difficult point of negotiation, given that May's Government is propped up by the DUP, has been one of the thorniest questions.

Leave campaigners also promised wage growth, which is in turn highly unlikely if a no-deal situation leaves our economy on a bed of nails being pecked at by ravens.

There are many, many more promises that were made which were just false, and to top it off the Leave campaign broke the law.

There is nothing for it, but a second EU referendum. Those who voted to leave have been let down, and misled, and badly, by people who broke electoral law.

The only way to solve this sorry mess is to postpone Brexit and call a so-called People's Vote. If we vote remain, we can once again attempt to reform the EU from within.