AS one who voted for Brexit in the June referendum, I am becoming deeply annoyed by the antics, moans and ignorance of the Remainers. I know what I voted for, and that was for a return of greater control over my own life and over what impinges upon it.
Heaven knows that government in the UK and Scotland meddles too much (always in the interests of 'fairness and equality', you understand, and always meaning higher taxes, borrowing and public spending under the control of self-serving professionals and interest groups). But government and law-making by Brussels is a miasmic racket of Eurocrats and snouts-in-the-trough politicians over whom I and my fellow-citizens have no meaningful influence whatsoever. All this talk about international security and peace emanating from EU membership is so much condescending guff, as if, at the first opportunity in the absence of the EU, the Germans and French would be at each other's throats, and the UK would have to sort them out, again. We are all democracies now, and there is no historic instance of democracies fighting one another. Moreover, we have Nato, whose effectiveness puts the EU, its grandiose fantasies and its failure to contribute full payments (UK excepted) to shame.
The Remainers are always telling us what an economic disaster Brexit is and will be (“Inevitable cost of Brexit laid on the table at Scottish Chambers dinner”, Herald Business, December 2). They never analyse the budgetary and trade cost of membership of the EU: money thrown at subsidies for agriculture across Europe, and largely stumped up by UK consumers on food imports from outside the EU burdened as they are by the Common External Tariff. Sterling devaluation has more than offset Single Market tariff barriers.
Quoting the report by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that came as part of the Autumn Statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Remainers and all our political parties in Scotland tell us of an economic growth crash in 2017 and 2018. Except that the report did not say that: a forecast is a speculation not a fact, and this one, which produced the claim that Brexit would cause a £60 billion back hole in the public finances, led Robert Chote, chairman of the OBR) to acknowledge that "gloomy" one had no information with which to underpin it regarding the Government's plans.
After Brexit triggered a devaluation of sterling, home consumption, inward investment to the UK and UK exports have markedly increased, and imports have fallen. Our total employment has risen to its highest ever, 32million; unemployment has fallen to 4.8% per cent. The real worry for the UK is not Brexit, but what will happen to the EU as a major UK export market.
Our Scottish political leaders are incapable of getting their heads around any of these economic complexities. Some are foolish enough to see Brexit solely as an independence opportunity: they care nothing for the poor and vulnerable. We are better off in the Brexit UK rather than in the crumbling EU.
Richard Mowbray,
14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.
YOU characterise Chancellor Philip Hammond’s comments on the prospects of a special Brexit arrangement for Scotland as him “slapping” down Nicola Sturgeon’s ambitions for a separate deal (“Sturgeon bid for Scots deal on Brexit is slapped down”, The Herald, December 2). Yet the truth is that during his visit to Scotland he tried his best to avoid answering reporters pushing him on this issue.
He is well aware that the SNP’s stance of insisting that they want what everyone tells them they cannot have is in part intended to create grievance off the back of an apparent intransigence on the part of the UK Government. What he did eventually say when pressed by the media was simply a reflection of what numbers of EU leaders and experienced European commentators have said, namely that a different arrangement for immigration and trade between Scotland and the EU compared with the eventual deal for the rest of the UK, is simply “impractical. Critically, the First Minister is fully aware of this fact, but is playing out a charade that everyone else is expected to go along with until she decides, at no surprise to anyone, to pull her independence referendum rabbit out of her First Minister’s hat.
Keith Howell,
White Moss, West Linton, Peeblesshire.
TUCKED away in your Wednesday edition, in a small box on page six is an item that I feel merited front-page coverage. The Europhile SNP apparently spent a mere £90,000 on its Remain campaign, only a few thousand more than it spent on previously taking Glasgow East from Labour (“SNP attacked for low spending on Remain”, The Herald November 30. Are these figures an indication of its political priorities?
Could one further conclude that, having lost the Independence Referendum, and seen the oil price crash, shattering their economic argument for independence, the SNP thought that their best hope of achieving their aims might be to ride on a post-Brexit bounce to independence, thereafter seeking to maintain, in one way or another Scotland's place in Europe?
When one thinks of the vitriol thrown at Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned tirelessly to remain in an EU that he
admitted needed reform, the widow's mite the SNP spent on the fight against Brexit appears pathetic and deeply politically suspect - and has attracted no parallel criticism.
Were the Labour Party in Scotland not so pathetic under Kezia Dugdale, it could make hay of this. But – like the country's diminishing performance on transport, education, health and other indicators, I fear this will just
be another issue brushed aside by Teflon Nicola Sturgeon, grandstanding on Brexit in order to deflect attention from the fact that the governance of Scotland gets worse.
Ian R Mitchell,
21 Woodside Terrace, Glasgow.
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