Getting on with the job
Dear Editor
I note that there has been a lot of coverage in the press about our MP, Stephen Kerr, signing a so-called hard Brexit letter.
This is desperate political spin from disreputable newspapers that do nothing but foster grievance and obsess about Brexit. I took the time to read the letter and found it to be a sensible and considered series of views contrived to get elected on a Unionist platform, Mr Kerr’s ultra-Brexit posturing can serve only to undermine the Union.
Mr Kerr can argue that the drawback of membership of the Customs Union is that the UK will be required to abide by EU law in areas covered by that agreement. This is scarcely shocking. All clubs have rules. To discard the undeniable advantages of these arrangements in pursuit of the fantasy of doing just what you like is idiocy. The beauty of the EU is that it offers the convenience of shared rules and a say in how those rules are drafted.
The option of continued membership of the Customs about trade and the United Kingdom’s future relationship in the world.
Our MP is getting on with the job of making sure Stirling’s interests will be served when we leave the European Union. I am glad he is engaged positively with the issues and not protesting from the sidelines or making petty party political points.
It is Stephen Kerr who is Union should be put to Parliament, to be tested in a genuinely democratic way.
It is not for a clique of MPs with flagrant vested interests to determine the future of the whole nation.
As for not being able to “pick and choose”, the point is blindingly obvious. You can’t organise a football game if one team decides unilaterally to opt out of the off-side rule.
As for the UK’s ability to “strike deals with nations of the world ”, I am curious as to what deals Mr Kerr has in mind exactly?
What deal could possibly compensate for leaving the biggest trading bloc in the world? A trading bloc, moreover, made up our nearest neighbours on whom, as Mr Kerr has pointed out, so much of our trade relies.
I believe Mr Kerr’s position is illogical and undemocratic. This strange ideological aversion to being part of a post war union that has brought peace and prosperity, allowing the UK to work alongside its fellow European nations in a mutually beneficial way, flies in the face of objective fact and disregards empirical evidence. Those who defend a self-serving fantasy against the world of practical reality will ultimately be found out and held to account.
Victoria Lee By email
making the big arguments for free trade, control of our laws and borders, and who is ambitious and optimistic for Stirling and the United Kingdom.
Alastair Orr Vice chairman Stirling and Clackmannanshire Conservative and Unionist Association