Rant appears based on hatred of the EU
It is difficult to know where to start with Euel Lane (Letters 4th March) and his predictable rant about the EU, for which he seems to have a deep-seated hatred.
It read rather like an article from the Daily Telegraph, Mail or Express - newspapers which have an extreme right wing agenda and a long standing dislike of anything European.
Coincidentally, the German newspaper “Bild”, to which Harry Barstow referred as praising Britain, is the German equivalent of the Daily Mail or the Sun - surprise surprise.
As has been pointed out many times, as independent sovereign nations EU members were in charge of their own vaccine policies. They made their own decision just like we did. So much for his “United States of Europe” jibe.
Mr Lane had a scattershot attack on apparent EU vindictiveness against us merely for having the temerity to leave. He has rather a touching trust in the honesty of our Prime Minister.
He forgets that Johnson, in order to say he had “got Brexit done”, signed up for a terrible agreement, lied about it, and then decided that he had not read it properly and wanted to renege on it.
In particular the Northern Ireland border problem is directly caused by the Brexit deal and threatens the Good Friday Agreement - an international agreement which if we break it will make us a pariah state.
The “vindictiveness” which Mr Lane cites is due to our Government repeatedly failing to accept that we cannot have the benefits of membership if we leave the club. We have third-country status now. Of course we could re-join the Single Market and Customs Union, which would solve the Northern
Ireland problem at a stroke and would still satisfy the result of the referendum - at least for the 99% of moderate people.
Remember that during the referendum campaign we were repeatedly assured we had no intention of leaving these. Only the hard-line right-wing nuts of Jacob Rees-mogg and the ERG, who steamrollered that through, would object.
As for the “vexatious lawsuits” and House of Lords “attempts to thwart”, these were necessary attempts to restore some democratic accountability to the process, which had been hi-jacked by the Brexit extremists.
Incidentally, it was Rees-mogg who said it probably would be nearly 50 years before we would see any benefit of Brexit - they should have put that on the side of their big red bus and see how many votes they would have got then !