Sir, – The UK’s EU referendum concerns strategic issues including freedom of movement and immigration, trade and the single market, the economy, global geopolitical co-operation, increasing EU political integration, sovereignty and membership costs. It is a complex question and there is no single trump card. Any voter able to make an honest and thorough analysis will conclude that there is a partial case in one or other direction.
Both campaigns fail to communicate subjects clearly or honestly. The debate ranges from well-prepared and coherent assessment, through cheap and misleading statements, to outright lies. Personal attacks are an inadequate substitute for reasoned debate.
On the one hand, Gisella Stuart MP, chairwoman of the Vote Leave campaign, describes clearly the risks of ever-increasing integration in the EU over the next few years. The main Vote Leave group focuses on immigration and sovereignty and perpetuates the lie that the UK pays £350 million each week to the EU. However, it singularly fails to describe the nature of the trade deal it hopes to negotiate after Brexit.
Having dealt a strategic blow to the EU project and refusing to accept freedom of movement (right to work) or to pay a penny to the EU, how will it ever get free access without tariffs to the single market? Add to this the fact that the UK buys only 8 per cent of EU exports but the EU buys 44 per cent (declining) of UK exports. Why would the EU do a sweet deal with the UK and encourage other member states to consider leaving? What is sovereignty worth if you throw away your part in setting standards and policies governing trade with your largest partner?
The Remain group has indeed run a campaign centred on fear, despite rallying a broad range of credible organisations to make the case to remain in the EU. It delivered some good arguments. However, it failed to explain that the biggest reason to remain is that geopolitically the UK needs to be in Europe in order to most effectively manage the major global threats and risks – Russian aggression, Chinese expansion, international terrorism and the migration crisis. In the 20th century, Britain engaged with allies to lead the way in two world wars and helped craft the peaceful world which we value so much.
This is the most strategically significant political event in the lives of every adult and child in the UK. Britain, Europe and the world deserve that voters are sufficiently well informed to make a grown-up decision. This looks highly unlikely. – Yours, etc,
JAMES O’HARA,
Hampshire,
England.
Sir, – The Brexit debate, with Ireland making a big issue of it, giving it far more publicity than it deserves, bores me to tears.
The bottom line is that a majority of British people do not want to be part of Europe, and never did. And this has little to do with economics. It never had. The British feel they are “special”, “a cut above the rest” – and thus “above” and out of place with EU membership!
They see themselves as somehow “superior” to the EU plan! Britain continues to have this image of itself, a hangover from the empire days perhaps, that suggests a “uniqueness”, a “better than the rest” mindset that certainly does not want to be lumped in as equals with the rest of Europe. And so, now they are telling us that if they are to grace us with their continued presence as members, they will require special status, special recognition, special conditions, special considerations – everything that is a hindrance to and out of keeping with unity!
Let them exit. We should even encourage them to exit if they have a problem with being a committed equal member, and let the rest of us get on with the European programme, unhindered, un-sidetracked and not distracted by this disruption! Britain has been something of a thorn in the side of European unity since the beginning, and will continue to be if this “half in and half out” saga continues. Let the European Union get on with its affairs, free of this decades-long, ever ongoing ridiculous debate and disruption. – Yours, etc,
JAMES KENNY,
Provence,
France.