Amnesia arrives
Joyce Mcmillan seems to have had a major bout of selective amnesia in her attack on Theresa May and the Dunkirk spirit (Perspective, 23 June). Brexit exists because a majority of UK voters want it to exist.
Then there was the “unnecessary” election. Funny we no longer hear about Mrs May lacking a mandate in the Brexit talks because she was never elected Prime Minister. Well, she has been now, having gained more votes and seats than Labour, Pyrrhic victory though that was.
The Tory Party is apparently also in thrall to a “neoliberal ideology”. In fact, in her social care policy, Mrs May took a courageous step away from the notion that the market settles all. Perhaps, however, Joyce Mcmillan wants younger people to continue subsidising the elderly.
Unbelievably, we come to the piece de resistance, where Ms Mcmillan declares of the 2014 independence referendum that it was possible to connect an independent Scotland with a “prosperous, just and sustainable future”. Mercifully, wiser counsels prevailed.
No mention in her article about SNP austerity. Yet, with Barnett adding 18 per cent extra per capita spending in Scotland compared to England, independence would have seen further cuts to services or taxation on a Corbynista scale, or both.
DONALD THOMSON, Salisbury Terrace, Aberdeen The SNP and others insist we should remain in the Single Market. They ignore the fact that if our membership fee was paid by the businesses trading with the other 27 members and not, as at present, by the taxpayer the tariff would be over 7 per cent. As far as Britain is concerned the Single Market is definitely not a Free Trade Area. WILLIAM W. SCOTT
St Baldred’s Road North Berwick, East Lothian The Rev Dr John Cameron’s profound pessimism (Letters, 24 June) about our future ending as a “great trading nation” is surely unwarranted, perhaps stemming from his own obvious, passionate conviction favouring the EU “project,” always centred on achieving a “United States of Europe”. As US baseball legend Yogi Berra (or was it Niels Bohr or Sam Goldwyn or Mark Twain?) opined: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially when they involve the future!”
Dr Cameron’s letter pays little heed to the strong UK negotiating position, based on the marked trading imbalance with our continental businesss partners; or to the clear choice of UK voters for parties favouring Leave and the relatively weak political position of Frau Merkel in Germany, the main EU ‘engine’, compared with that of the present Ukconservativegovernment.
Nor does he give supporting evidence for his optimistic claims about the EU’S economic and political health. Indeed, his phrase “doomladen forecasts”, about the “fallout of our leaving,” could be applied more relevantly to our UK Remainers’ pre-referendum, now discredited, propaganda than to the EU’S political future in its present form, which must now, more than ever, be in question.
If the truth were known, the EU negotiators’ Brexit position, in fact, is very likely largely to be based on bluff! We should be more optimistic about our national future, once liberated from the EU’S present trading and political constraints. (DR) CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West, Perth