Governments must protect their own first

THERE have been several letters recently regarding ‘nationalism’ including (predictably) those from Mr Westerman who appears to think that ‘nationalism’ is something that is only practiced by the UK and as usual cannot resist in taking another ‘pop’ at those who voted to leave the EU.

Perhaps he should be reminded that protecting one’s own interests is not some sort of selfish attitude to everyone else, as he seem to imply. Governments have a duty to protect their own people first.

This ‘each country for itself’ is not new when problems occur, Germany and France initially blocked exports of PPE equipment to other member states in order to protect their own supplies, and deliberately spread rumours that our AZ vaccine was not effective on over-65s in order to cover their own incompetent procurement procedures, and protect the ones produced in Germany.

It would seem that when a crisis occurs, EU solidarity evaporates in the face of national interests.

The events of the past months have highlighted the incompetence of Brussels when a crisis occurs and their inability to take rapid action unless all 27 countries are consulted and it is interesting to see that several EU countries are now engaging in what Mr Westerman calls ‘nationalism’ by making their own deals for vaccines from Russia and China.

Readers may also remember a number of EU countries shutting their borders after Germany let in thousands of refugees and then demanded that other countries take a share; and going back a few years, French farmers were overturning our lorries and burning any contents containing our meat exports and more recently using their trawlers to attack our fishing boats – that’s nationalism!

It would be nice if those who will not reconcile themselves to the fact that the UK has left the EU would just for once start to think about backing their own country instead of criticizing it all the time.

Paul Mercer Tavistock, Devon