THE Common Market.

It’s a phrase looking likely to be a thing of the past very soon, for us in the UK at least.

It was first established in 1957 under the Treaty of Rome when the European Economic Community was set up.

Britain joined on January 1, 1973. I was four at the time.

When I look back to my childhood, I remember the phrase constantly on people’s lips. It cropped up in TV sitcom jokes about resisting Johnny Foreigner (those being less enlightened times).

I had no idea what the Common Market was back then. Why would I?

I was too busy pulling on my Adidas trainers and Peter Bonetti goalkeeper gloves or, if it was raining, rolling out my Subbuteo pitch). I probably thought it was a place with tarpaulin-covered wooden stalls.

A market, what else could it be?

These days, 44 years down the line, we call it the Single Market.

Why the change of name?

I’m reliably informed (by Mr Wikipedia), that a common market is the first step to a single market.

A common market is built on a free-trade area with relatively free movement of capital and services. A single market is more open and sees all other trade barriers torn down.

It all sounds great, doesn’t it? Great for everyone involved. We all get to sell our goods and services to each other without paying costly duties and levies. Don’t get too excited though.

We’re about to pull out of the European single market, aren’t we?

So says Theresa May. Last June we voted (by only a sliver of a majority) to leave the European Union.

We had all the showboating of the Leavers and the whingeing by the Remainers (or Remoaners as they are now dubbed).

‘Brexit means Brexit’ became a familiar chant. Chaos ensued.

It’s still ensuing. Nobody seemed to know what was happening. We’d voted to come out, but are we really going to come out? Will we trigger Article 50? Theresa May insists she knows what she’s doing.

Theresa May insists she knows what’s right for us Brits.

Now she has told us that we will leave the single market. The announcement led to a slump in markets around the world.

Tim Farron, leader of the Lib Dems, says we should have a democratic debate on this. He’s right. Without details about how we will trade with Europe once the market gates have been padlocked and we’re on the outside, it’s hard to know how Brexit is going to work.

My fear is that Theresa May is trying to bluster through her ambitions over Britain’s future in a damaging autocratic fashion.