I voted leave as wanted to improve our nation
HAVING written recently about the inadequacies of the fishing deal, I thought I wouldn’t have to return to Brexit as a topic any time soon. For at long last the wishes of the public, democratically shown in the 2016 referendum, have come to pass and we are now finally out of the European Union. However I feel that as someone who has long been a Eurosceptic, I must comment on the latest correspondence from Europhile Alan Handler (January 8). You see I didn’t “blindly vote leave”, nor was I supporting EU withdrawal as “an idea founded on xenophobia, a false notion of sovereignty and a nostalgic view of the past.” Rather I believed that unrestricted immigration was having a harmful effect on the least affluent members of society. It creates an additional supply of workers, all seeking employment if they haven’t got a job to go to. This makes it harder for individuals to find work, and acts as a depressant on wages. No wonder therefore that big business backed our continued membership.
On the other hand, more people in any country means a greater demand for services and goods, including of course somewhere to live. Rents increase, as do house prices.
This may benefit the propertyowning classes, but not the low-paid who will find a greater share of their meagre income going on accommodation costs. Meanwhile a realistic look at the world will see a rise in the economic strength of non-Western countries. Indeed China is expected to pass the United States’ share by 2030, just nine years away. So we shouldn’t be tied to historic European nations, whose influence grows less and less. Incidentally, I always thought that it was NATO and the UN which were more important in maintaining “liberty and peace”, with the EU’s emphasis always being on the economy. That’s why its original name was the European Economic Community, or EEC for short.
And I would stress that as one of the nuclear powers, for good or bad, and a permanent member of the UN security council it ill beholds Mr Handler to talk our country down.