Remainers’ fears

Yet again Andrew Vass makes his EU Remainer’s conviction crystal clear (Letters, 22 June), but his stated reasoning is always based on his gloomy predictions for the outcomes of Brexit, severe declines in our trading, job losses and impairment of all forms of European contact, as if “Europe” and the “EU” were synonyms.

This is very common in Remainers’ messages and letters, as in the various predictions of “Project Fear” which have, generally, not been borne out by events.

It would be more informative, and perhaps persuasive, to learn much more about his – and others from the Remainers’ side of this very important controversy – more positive justifications for the Remain stance, since these seem almost always lacking.

As I see it, we Leavers’ reasoning is based on regaining of control of the UK’S laws, borders and finances, along with much-enhanced opportunities for worldwide trading deals with a far wider scope after independence from the EU’S restrictions.

In my own view, our essentially undemocratically contrived membership has been seriously mistaken policy, culminating in the dire prospect of a “United States of Europe,” which, as an EU objective, is anathema to most of the peoples of its very disparate constituent nation states. I emphasise that, of course, we will retain very friendly relations with our fellow Europeans.

How would your convinced Remainer correspondents answer these points?

(DR) CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West, Perth

I wonder if any of the thousands of anti-brexit marchers are aware of Professor Robert Tombs’ classification of the three types of Remainer?

There are Worried Remainers who have been swayed by Project Fear. There are the Ideological Remainers who have a deleterious view of Britain and march to the EU’S drum. And then there are the Professional Remainers – committed to membership of the EU by their careers and hence personally.

This group includes executives of multinationals, professional lobbyists, academics and members of think tanks in receipt of EU grants, employees of media companies who wish to reverse Brexit and, of course, politicians, civil servants and diplomats whose working life has revolved around the EU and who see Brexit as a threat.

Each of these groups believes “that Britain is a diminished and weak country unable to function economically or politically on its own,” Professor Tombs states. An interesting analysis from the Cambridge emeritus professor of French history!

WILLIAM LONESKIE

Oxton, Lauder