David Cameron, George Osborne, Sir Keir Starmer, Barack Obama, virtually every economist, the entire City of London as well as the city of London, the international financial establishment, the majority of MPs, the House of Lords, the firmament of television, radio and entertainment, Hugh Grant, Donald Tusk, Jean Paul Juncker…

Just some of those who didn’t think Brexit was a good idea.

And then on the other side were Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and, reputedly, Vladimir Putin.

Who did the British voters side with? Well, we all know the answer to that.

On June 23, 2016, the British people served up a seismic shock when, against expectations, they voted to leave the European Union after a span of 43 years.

Across the UK the result was quite close, with 52 per cent voting Leave and 48 per cent voting to Remain.

Brexit in Shropshire

Across Shropshire, Brexiteer feeling was strong. In Telford & Wrekin the Leave-Remain split was 63 per cent to 37 per cent. In the rest of Shropshire, it was 57 per cent to 43 per cent.

It meant Shropshire had been on quite a Eurosceptic journey since the original 1975 referendum, when county voters had been markedly more enthusiastic about the then Common Market than the rest of the nation – back then 72 per cent of Salopians voted to stay in, compared to the national figure of 67 per cent.

The Brexit referendum triggered years of turbulent politics.

Embattled Prime Minister Theresa May thought she would strengthen her hand by calling a general election, but it backfired badly and she ended up in a weaker position.

Things hung in the balance until the general election of December 2019 when new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who went into the campaign with a “Get Brexit Done” slogan, won a decisive victory.

While on the subject of important votes, September 2014 saw Scotland go to the polls on the issue of independence. The result was 55 per cent in favour of remaining within the United Kingdom. Again, it was not the end of the debate.

Every decade has a year, or years, which are particularly memorable, and for the second decade of the 21st century it was 2012 which will last long in the memory.

London 2012 Olympics and Shrewsbury Town make it to League One

It brought Britain a double celebration in 2012, with the holding of the Olympic Games and Paralympics in London, together with various events across Shropshire and nationwide to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the Queen.

In the run-up to the games, thousands turned out to see the Olympic torch pass through the county, visiting places including Ludlow, Clee Hill, Cleobury Mortimer, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Much Wenlock, Ironbridge, Telford centre, and Newport.

The London 2012 Games were a tremendous success and there drawing massive attendances as well as providing a showcase to the world of modern Britain. The Olympic Park in East London, which was the principal focus, attracted up to 180,000 spectators a day.There was a nod to Shropshire’s place in the story of the modern Olympics in the form of the official mascot, which was called Wenlock, after the town of Much Wenlock.

The Wenlock Olympics founded by William Penny Brookes were one of Pierre de Coubertin’s sources of inspiration for the modern games.

The icing on the cake was a bumper medal haul for Team GB, and “Super Saturday” was chosen as Great Britain’s greatest ever moment at a summer games.

That was on Saturday, August 4, 2012, when, in 44 magical minutes, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all won gold.

Overall, the United Kingdom won 29 golds and was third in the medal table, behind the USA and China. It was Great Britain’s most successful Olympics since 1908.

In the paralympics, Mickey Bushell from Telford won gold in the 100m wheelchair race and Danielle Brown, also from Telford, won gold in the archery competition.

While on the subject of 2012 sport, in April Shrewsbury Town beat Dagenham & Redbridge 1-0 at the Greenhous Meadow to secure automatic promotion to League One. They also enjoyed a record-breaking unbeaten run in 34 home games, which was finally halted with a 1-0 defeat by Scunthorpe on September 15.

Another local success was that the Grand National was won by Neptune Collonges, owned by John Hales of Cosford.  

A right royal Party for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee at RAF Cosford

It was a summer which brought Shropshire its biggest ever royal party as, on July 12, the Queen and Prince Philip came to RAF Cosford for a spectacular and colourful diamond jubilee pageant attended by up to 40,000 people.

For that royal occasion there was wonderful weather, a rare appearance for the sun in a truly terrible summer. June was the wettest since 1860, the dullest since 1909, and the coldest since 1991. There were thunderstorms, torrential rain, and flash floods. July saw no let-up. Bridges and roads were washed away and damaged, and Pennerley saw 42mm (1.6 inches) of rain in 24 hours, making it the wettest place in Britain. Some people had to be rescued from the floods.

Moving on to September 9, 2015, the Queen became Britain’s longest reigning monarch. At 17:30 BST she had reigned for 23,226 days, 16 hours and approximately 30 minutes – surpassing the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria of 63 years and 216 days. But let’s go back to the very start of the decade, which literally started with a bang.

Gas explosion and a local soldier wins the George Cross

On January 3, 2010, a huge gas explosion demolished a shop with flats above at the junction of Bridge Street and Smithfield Road, Shrewsbury, the blast being heard across the town. Twelve people were hurt, three seriously.

In 2010, Telford soldier Staff Sergeant Kim Hughes, a bomb disposal expert, was awarded the George Cross. And in December that year another Telford soldier, Corporal Ricky Furgusson, received the Military Cross for repeatedly ignoring his own safety and going to the aid of injured colleagues in Afghanistan.

Ricky’s distinguished service had come at great personal cost, losing his legs, fingers and eye in a bomb blast.

In receiving his award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he achieved his ambition of being able to walk up to collect it, thanks to £32,000 carbon fibre legs.

Meanwhile America was to settle a debt, tracking down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, to a compound in northern Pakistan. In May 2011 a special operations unit raided the compound and killed him.

The Shropshire Star brings locals all the news

For the Shropshire Star, in common with the rest of the regional press, it was a decade of transition.

The international financial crisis had cast a long shadow, and advertising revenues fell sharply, while the trend continued of people accessing their news on the internet. It meant cutting of cloth, with some redundancies and closures of local offices.

The way ahead was clear, adapting to the new environment by combining traditional print with an ever-improving website so our readers could get their Star in whatever form they wished to consume it.

There was also a major redesign, and a change you may not have noticed – the paper’s physical dimensions were slightly reduced. For concert-goers, it was a decade of delights, with some big names appearing at open air events, such as Sir Elton John who entertained 16,000 people at the Greenhouse Meadow in Shrewsbury in June 2011.

The principle of local administration of justice took a series of knocks in Shropshire.

Magistrates courts in Oswestry and Market Drayton closed in 2011, and in 2013 Shrewsbury magistrates court was downgraded, and then in 2016 closed for good, leaving Telford as the county’s only remaining magistrates court.

Goodbyes? The Dana, Shrewsbury jail, closed in 2013 after over 200 years, but has seen a new life as a tourist attraction and film and television set. And Ludlow Festival was held for the last time.

Copthorne Barracks, for so long a home to the army in the county, was put up for sale in 2015, and Ironbridge Power Station was closed in November that year, and in 2019 the cooling towers were blown up.

But 2015 saw a comeback too, with the first official sighting of a pine marten in England for 100 years, in woods in west Shropshire, and there was a hello to a new leader of the Labour Party – Jeremy Corbyn, who had been brought up in the county.

The closure of the historic Coalbrookdale Works in 2017 brought an end to over 300 years of industry on the site stretching back to the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

As icons of the Industrial Revolution go, there is none greater than the Iron Bridge, which was officially reopened in January 2019 sporting an entire new look – it was painted red, which investigations had suggested was its original colour.

Cutting the ribbon live on BBC’s One Show was Michael Darby, great-great-great grandson of Abraham Darby III who built the bridge.

Less happily, in 2019 leaked details of an independent inquiry into maternity care at the Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital Trust talked of a ‘toxic culture’ going back 40 years with children left with permanent disability, staff routinely dismissing parents’ concerns, being unkind, and getting dead babies’ names wrong. Dozens of babies and mothers were thought to have died or been left disabled due to poor care.

But let’s end on a positive note of admirable achievement In February 2018, three women rowers, two from Shropshire, made history. Di Carrington, 62, from Pontesbury, was the oldest woman to row the Atlantic. The others were 55-year-old Shrewsbury midwife Sharon Magrath, and 54-year-old lawyer Elaine Theaker from Abergavenny.

They rowed the 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean in a journey which took 60 days, 18 hours and 34 minutes. They also set a record for the fastest female trip across the ocean.