Italian minister shows little grasp of Brexit sentiment

IT WAS good to read that Italy’s minister of economy and finance, Pier Carlo Padoan, thinks Brexit will make the EU stronger [“Brexit brought the EU together rather than splitting us apart”, November 20]. Unfortunately, I fear the attitudes that he displays may have the opposite effect.

Nowhere is the question considered of how the EU came to lose an important member. He does acknowledge that resentment against the union has grown, fuelling radical and anti-EU movements and parties across Europe, but thinks that this is because the EU has not done enough.

If he spoke with Brexit voters in this country they might have told him that the opposite is true, but I suspect Signor Padoan was really writing to other insiders such as himself.

In a democracy you need to carry the people with you, and if you don’t they will find a way to let you know. As Oscar Wilde might have said, “to lose one country may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose any more looks like carelessness”.

PIER Carlo Padoan is either ignorant or arrogant in his pledge to speed up the integration of the remaining 27 countries of the EU when overwhelming numbers of the population in those countries desire quite the opposite.

If he is unaware of the growing strength of the Five Star movement in his own country, the National Front in France and populist parties in Austria, Poland, Hungary and even famously liberal Holland, then I suspect it will soon be arriverderci to Signor Padoan.

As even the previously unassailable German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just discovered, you ignore the wishes of your people at your peril.

IN THE hearts of hardline Brexiteers there lies a deep conviction that mainland Europe “owes us” for saving it in the two World Wars. While it is indeed true that we did, it must be remembered that, as a nation, we were heroes then.

The EU president recently thanked Britain for our fortitude during the wars. However, our current headlesschicken performance is likely to erode and deplete all the honour which our historical actions have accrued.

TELLING the EU not to put “politics above prosperity” reveals how fundamentally David Davis misunderstands the European project. While the UK sees the EU in economic and transactional terms, on the continent it is a strategic political project that seeks to advance the European cause through cooperation. Davis’s pleas will fall on deaf ears; the other 27 states will never put prosperity above politics.