Against the tide

SIR – The self-confessed contrarian Professor Patrick Minford is too modest about his previous economic prophesies (Comment, May 18).

The rejection of the prevailing Keynesian economic orthodoxy in 1981 by Professor Minford’s research team was instrumental in providing the intellectual ballast for Cabinet Thatcherites to resist pressure to U-turn against the politically painful but long overdue monetarist medicine.

In the late Eighties, Professor Minford was one of the few souls urging Margaret Thatcher to resist linking the pound to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which he correctly predicted would deepen the forthcoming economic recession.

A decade later, the political, economic and business fraternity concluded that British membership of the euro was not only desirable but inevitable. Professor Minford again provoked cacophony that ultimately saved Britain from the disastrous consequences of the EU’S single currency project.

Professor Minford’s unflinching support for Brexit based on global tariff-free trade gives cause for optimism in this uncertain period. Philip Duly

Haslemere, Surrey