Time for the UK to shine brightly again

I COULDN’T let Mr Mike Baldwin’s negative letter last Saturday go unchallenged.

First, we are ‘out’ so it’s best to make the best of the new environment and that goes for him too.

Second, a good trade deal with the EU has been reached, giving what the electorate demanded.

Not everyone will be happy about its terms but these are the ones on which we start this new relationship and we’ll keep negotiating!

I was never so negative about the economic consequences of leaving. In fact, after a short-term blip, I expected the UK to regain its poise and move ahead of the EU.

The EU will continue to be tied in its own growing morass of bureaucracy and political federalism, all holding it back.

I don’t agree with the forecasts of large losses for the UK economy and instead expect things to begin to advance quite quickly after this initial ‘indigestion’, the pandemic’s impacts allowing all of us, of course.

Finally, he overlooks the colossal net contribution we had been making every year – perhaps £14billion in the last year. Whatever else we ‘gain’, we save that. That’s a real figure and no simple projection based on numerous factors.

One of the biggest reasons the EU will slow and gradually implode?

Its intransigence and inability of reforming and removing the colossal political expedient which its citizens never wanted and don’t want now.

Peace by all means, but not at the sacrifice of individual nations, their uniqueness and well-being.

Our leaving ‘option’ was the biggest reason the EU had to navelgaze and change for its own benefit but its unelected political leaders and other zealots didn’t want to upset the experiment, despite the great benefits to ‘themselves’ too in so doing. We’d have stayed in a much reformed ‘Club’ had it done so.

I think, too, he has to realise that the EU wasn’t responsible for our NHS and its great services, nor our children’s education, the elderly’s home help or many other things.

Let us trust we can now break truly free from things which have held us back for years and begin to shine more brightly and on the world stage once again, albeit still being as friendly with our neighbouring colleagues as we have always been previously, for mutual benefit.

Philip J Milton Economist and financial adviser Barnstaple