• THE ordinary voter for Brexit might or might not be happy with the landscape Theresa May sketched out in Florence.

But, after decades of guerrilla warfare, the ideological old guard – John Major’s “bastards” and their anti-EU fellow travellers – must sense that they’re closing in on their goal. That goal was never to control immigration, or get money back to spend on the NHS.

As former Chancellor Nigel Lawson put it in the Financial Times: “Even more important in the longer term [than the public finances] is the ability [after Brexit] to comb through the vast corpus of EU regulations, amending it to suit the best interests of British business and our economy in general.”

They won’t be over-worried, then, about the battered pound, mounting inflation or the UK’s credit downgrades. A bonfire of regulations is their cherished prize. And the House of Commons’ lack of proper scrutiny procedures for regulations must have them champing at the bit.

Those scrutiny procedures need urgently to be toughened up to give Parliament proper control.

The highly-regarded Hansard Society has made constructive proposals for reform (see www.hansardsociety.org.uk/resources/taking-back-control-for-brexit-and-beyond-delegated-legislation).

Whether pro-Brexit or against it, anyone who doesn’t want to watch powerlessly as the UK morphs into Europe’s own Singapore (or Venezuela) should be pressing their MP, and anyone else with influence, to back these proposals.

P LAIDLAW, N1